Johannesburg and Beyond: The 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development and the Rise of Partnerships

Georgetown International Environmental Law Review, Spring 2006 by Scherr, S Jacob, Gregg, R Juge

I. INTRODUCTION

In early September 2002, presidents and prime ministers from more than one hundred nations gathered in Johannesburg, South Africa for the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD). U.S. President George W. Bush's absence was conspicuous, and protestors repeatedly interrupted U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell's speech on the Summit's final day. The meeting produced no new treaties, no new international institutions, and no major new financial commitments. At the time, many labeled the Summit a failure and expressed particularly great disappointment with the lack of U.S. leadership.

Yet an in-depth look at the Johannesburg Summit reveals a much different picture. The Summit represented a dramatic break with past U.N. megaconferences. In Johannesburg, there was a recognition that governments had failed to make progress in fulfilling the promises to sustainable development they made a decade earlier at the Rio Earth Summit and that there was a need to focus on implementation. While the Johannesburg Summit followed the well-established pattern of producing, after months of negotiations, a statement of principles and an extensive plan of action, the United Nations, for the first time, encouraged and recorded some 260 sustainable development "partnerships."1 Similar voluntary, cooperative ventures, involving self-selected groups of governments, international agencies, nongovernmental organizations, and corporations, have long been a part of the international scene. Johannesburg, however, brought a new formal recognition of these commitments.2

In Johannesburg, the United States strongly advocated for partnerships. The United States announced nineteen of its own new partnerships, setting an important example.3 These included initiatives on water, energy, clean fuels, and the protection of tropical forests in the Congo Basin.4 The United States was not alone in its desire for a new, more focused, and strategic way to produce real results from these international gatherings. The partnership concept had support from the United Nations, other governments, and outside experts. However, the United States' high profile as a proponent of partnerships generated concerns. The United States was seen by some as hostile to international norms and processes. Furthermore, the United States was perceived as unwilling to address sustainable development in its own country. There were questions as to whether the United States' focus on partnerships was merely a ruse for avoiding governmental commitments.5

The use of the term "partnership" also caused confusion and difficulties in Johannesburg. A partnership implies a legal relationship that requires equality of responsibility and decisionmaking power. Many were, and still are, concerned that such arrangements cannot work in a world where there is great disparity of wealth and power not only between nations, but also among corporations, governments, and citizen groups. Also, the term is often used in regard to so-called "public-private partnerships," whereby corporations are contracted to provide services for governments. Such arrangements for providing water and other basic services in developing countries have generated significant controversy.6

Awareness of such concerns and suspicions apparently prompted U.S. Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs Paula Dobriansky to state at the Summit:

Over the coming months and years, you will be hearing a lot about these partnerships. You will hear a lot about commitment and resolve. Hold us accountable for the initiatives we identify and for their successful implementation. At the same time, hold all governments-in developed and developing countries alike-accountable for implementing concrete actions to improve the lives of all our citizens. We owe this and future generations nothing less.7

This article is in part a response to Under secretary Dobriansky's challenge. In Part II, the article provides the background and context for the emergence of the partnership approach at the Johannesburg Summit as a means to fill the growing "implementation gap" between governmental commitments and action. The article then reviews international efforts to ensure that the partnerships meet their objectives and identifies some of the principal obstacles to doing so. Part II examines three key U.S. partnerships announced in Johannesburg: the Water for the Poor Initiative, the Congo Basin Forest Partnership, and the Clean Energy Initiative. Part IV explores the continuing international controversy surrounding U.S. efforts to promote partnerships as opposed to new treaty commitments, as evidenced in the cases of mercury and climate change. Finally, the article concludes that just as traditional international regimes have experienced implementation problems, shifting the approach from treaties and plans of action to partnerships alone does not automatically produce action. Effective engagement by civil society is essential to assure concrete, on-the-ground results.