ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY
8.3 World Summit on Sustainable Development 2002 (WSSD)The WSSD was held in Johannesburg in 2002.
Its objectives were to review progress in the ten
years since the Rio Earth Summit, and to give aGlobal environmental politics and sustainable development
process. It was the largest ever international
conference, and alongside it 40,000 people
attended the parallel Global People’s Forum of
NGOs, yet the most powerful world leader,
President Bush, refused to go. Although the
WSSD briefly put the environment back on the
international agenda, it disappointed most
observers. The key outcome was the ‘Plan of
Implementation’ for Agenda 21, which identifies
the processes necessary to deliver sustainable
development. Yet there are few specific targets,
apart from new commitments to improve
sanitation and access to drinking water; inparticular, the absence of commitments on
renewable energy was a major failing. One
focus of the WSSD was the promulgation of
new forms of partnership between government,
businesses and NGOs, giving a much bigger
role to the corporate sector. Indeed, some
critics felt that the summit was effectively
hijacked by corporate interests – leading to a
‘privatisation of sustainable development’ (von
Frantzius 2004 : 469). Overall, despite some
limited achievements, the WSSD was a wasted
opportunity. Undermined by the USA, and let
down by the lack of leadership from the EU, it
was too big, too unwieldy and too complex to
be successful.
See Seyfang ( 2003 ), Wapner ( 2003 ), von Frantzius
(2004) and Baker ( 2006 : 64–9).The reach of sustainable development has extended far beyond gov-
ernment into the world of business and civil society. The World Bank
has sought to throw off its poor reputation with environmentalists by
developing an environmental strategy document,Making Sustainable Com-
mitments,publishing annual environmental reports, holding regular semi-
nars and sponsoring research on a wide range of environmental issues (see
http://www.worldbank.org/). The World Bank is host to the Global Environ-
ment Facility, which is the institution responsible for channelling financial
assistance for sustainable development from Northern to Southern nations
(see Box9.3). The World Business Council for Sustainable Development, estab-
lished in its current form in 1995, is a coalition of around 180 international
companies from 35 countries and 20 industrial sectors, linked to a global
network of 50 national and regional business councils of over 1,000 business
leaders. Its mission is ‘to provide business leadership as a catalyst for change
toward sustainable development and support the business licence to operate,
innovate and grow in a world increasingly shaped by sustainable develop-
ment issues’ (WBCSD 2006 ). Many trade associations have also declared their
support for sustainable development; for example, the insurance industry
(which potentially has much to lose if climate change leads to rising sea-
levels, floods and storms) has issued a Statement of Environmental Commit-
ment signed by over ninety leading insurance companies from twenty-seven
countries (see http://www.unepfi.org/). These international efforts have been
widely replicated at the national level, where state-sponsored round-tables