PEOPLE, planet, and prosperity will be the themes of the United Nations Summit on Sustainable Development in South Africa attended by around 60,000 delegates from around the world, Agriculture Minister Costas Themistocleous said yesterday.
Themistocleous, speaking before departing for Johannesburg yesterday afternoon, said the Earth Summit, which starts tomorrow, will be attended by more than 110 state leaders. President Glafcos Clerides is unable to attend because of the ongoing talks on the Cyprus problem.
The Summit on Sustainable Development will also include leaders of non-governmental organisations, businesses and other major groups to focus the world’s attention on meeting difficult challenges, including the improvement of people’s lives and conservation of natural resources in a world with an ever-growing population, increasing demands for food, water, shelter, sanitation, energy, health services and economic security.
The World Summit is expected to look at what progress has been made in implementing Agenda 21, the broad action plan for achieving sustainable development in the 21st Century, adopted at the Rio Summit 10 years ago.
Agenda 21 is an unprecedented global plan of action for sustainable development.
The Johannesburg Summit, whose theme is ‘people, planet, prosperity’, will focus on social development, poverty eradication and environmental conservation.
Delegates are expected to draft a new action plan that contains concrete and practical ways of achieving sustainable development.
The Summit is expected to showcase examples of workable sustainable development programmes around the world.
The hope is that the wealthy nations will recognise the scale of problems facing poor countries and that they will be able to integrate sustainability into their own development agendas.
Some of the key issues to be addressed include fresh water and sanitation, energy, food security, healthcare, primary education, and technology.
Themistocleous said differences that need to be bridged during the Summit include differences on the way certain principles that were agreed upon in Rio are interpreted, and good government and human rights.
Other sticking points are financing issues and official development aid, internationalisation and trade as well as adopting targets and the time schedules for their achievement and implementation.
Among the proposals expected to be put forward by the European Union are cutting in half by 2015 the number of people without access to fresh water and sewage systems, fighting the spread of communicable disease, increased investments in health, and a 10-year action plan on sustainable consumption and production.
The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.
