NGO-UNESCO Liaison Committee proposals
for the Johannesburg Summit and follow-up

«LET US NEVER FORGET THE CENTRAL ROLE EDUCATION PLAYSIN PROMOTING EQUITABLE AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT»¹

Looking ahead to the World Summit on Sustainable Development being held in Johannesburg (South Africa) from 26 August to 6 September 2002, the NGO-UNESCO Liaison Committee has a number of proposals to make around the following considerations:

•    Both formal and non formal education must be central elements of sustainable development and NGOs have a vast potential input to give drawn from countless field projects;

•    There must be a greater focus than ever on rural/urban issues, especially education,

•    Sustainable development means that everyone’s needs for food, housing, access to drinking water, health care, education, employment, transport and cultural development must be met. There is also a compelling need to see that the poorest communities are effectively reached.

•     Any sustainable action absolutely must accommodate the broader issues of economic, social and cultural development, poverty alleviation, balanced resource use, employment and quality of life,

•     A safe, healthy environment which respects human dignity is essential if all the world’s children are to have opportunities to develop, and adults the certainty of places to live and work.

•     Capacity-building partnerships must be forged with the poorest families and groups to give them a voice and access to all community opportunities.

With this in mind, the NGO-UNESCO Liaison Committee is proposing activities in the following areas:

- local knowledge;

- cultural heritage;

- higher education;

- water resources;

-     the Internet.

A partnership project could be decided on at Johannesburg and run over the long-term between field NGOs, their constituencies (the most disadvantaged communities), international NGOs and UNESCO, to leverage local knowledge, including that of poor communities, bearing in mind the Joint Programming Committee’s document «Eradication de la pauvreté: Rebâtir un monde qui ne laisse personne de côté» (Poverty eradication: Rebuilding an inclusive world»)².

«All we know how to do is embroider». «Would you draw for us?» was the appeal made to an art teacher thirty years ago by a small group of young Pondicherry girls doomed to unemployment.

A proactive partnership, based on trust, joy in beauty, and pride in being valued, gave an impetus to real North/South development that created paid jobs as a day nursery, health clinic and school grew out of the drawing and embroidery workshop.

Transferable, adaptable development strategies, with their own momentum: local knowledge, be it in crafts, medicine or water- and food-efficiency must be catalogued and written down if they are not to be lost. If more widely promoted, they could inform non formal education and training «for sustainable development» which respects «equality of access for girls and boys, women and men»³.

Seeing the general drift of globalization, which is prone to oust tradition in favour of a uniform, destructive modern way of life, and on the basis of the work done by various NGOs

The Liaison Committee proposes to compile an
«ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF LOCAL KNOWLEDGE»
and requests UNESCO to produce it.

International languages would enable adaptable practices to be transferred elsewhere: topics of specific relevance could be translated into local languages to reach the poorest of the poor.

By helping conserve a rich and varied heritage, this publication would contribute to «upholding and celebrating» local languages and linguistic pluralism - a major concern of NGOs and UNESCO - while promoting the sustainability of development and respect for others by being «people-centred».

«The cultural heritage is not only an instrument for peace and reconciliation, but also a factor of development», was the Director-General of UNESCO’s message at the start of the United Nations Year for Cultural Heritage (2002).

Over time, the cultural heritage has become a complex reality increasingly inseparable from the life and development of societies. In its many manifestations today - tangible and intangible heritage - cultural heritage is an undoubted building block of sustainable development.

The NGOs that have relations with UNESCO have long been engaged in a wide range of initiatives to protect and maximize public awareness of different facets of that heritage, focusing on its universal role.

NGOs from all spheres of activity have worked out recommendations for humanizing urban public spaces - streets, squares, parks - with the aim of educating particularly teenage boys and girls in their historical development. This involves the authorities working in partnership with professionals and local communities to:

1.    see that public spaces have an identity which reflects their historical context in a way which is meaningful to all

2.   involve young people in devising a narrative history of the changes undergone by these public spaces

3.   recognize that traditional public spaces for local communities are enabling environments for exchanging and handing down oral traditions, and are part of the «cultural heritage». Public spaces are about transmitting cultures and civilizations, and are building blocks of attachment to society.

4.   regularly assess the changing ways in which public spaces are used.

Furthermore, as part of the «International Decade for a Culture of Peace and Non-Violence for the Children of the World», the NGO International Conference held in Paris from 12 to 15 December 2001 backed the initiative instigated by the call made by the Director-General of UNESCO to designate «squares or historic monuments as a messenger of peace symbolizing the political will and the will of the people to serve the cause of peace and non-violence».

Wishing to promote discovery of the cultural heritage in a spirit of dialogue, peace and reconciliation throughout 2002,

the NGO-UNESCO Liaison Committee plans to stage
a day conference for NGOs in 2002 on
«cultural heritage, delivering peace and sustainable development».

This day conference would enable wide-ranging exchanges of information between NGOs on using the cultural heritage for peace education, on «messenger of peace» sites and the cultural heritage as a force for sustainable development.

The Joint Programming Committee on «Science and Ethics» set up by the NGO-UNESCO Liaison Committee set itself the task of getting «non-specialist» NGOs to step into the non-scientific debate on ethical and social issues raised by scientific and technical advances and their applications. Water raises issues of human rights going unheeded that call society as a whole to account - NGOs no less than researchers or policy-makers.

      While the average New Yorker uses 680 litres of water a day - 1/200th of it for drinking - Kenyans have 4 litres a day each for all their needs, and an African woman spends 1/5th of her time - i.e. of her life - in the daily chore of fetching water often long distances from where it will be used. Meanwhile the annual per capita quantity of available fresh water has fallen by 30% when in fact only 1% of the planet’s drinking water resources are being used.

      Water is one of the Earth’s three basic sources of life. The shortage of drinking water is crippling the health of many developing country populations - especially the LDCs - and their future progress towards a sustainable, holistic development. Over 40 000 children between the ages of one month and ten years die every day from pollution-related diseases caused by increasingly wanton water pollution.

      Access to drinking water is a fundamental human right, because life depends on it. But, a third of people in developing countries have no access to drinking water, which means the 25 litres of water per person per day which is the absolute minimum for health. Water distribution is unequal and inequitable not just at world level, between North and South, but also within countries, towns and villages.

      How can we, especially through formal or non formal education, achieve «equitable sharing of available water», «rational consumption which eliminates waste», «control pollution and recycle wastewater», «finally, learn to value and respect this universal source of life»? All these are touchstone issues which to a large extent underpin sustainable human development.

Linked into the 32^nd session of the UNESCO General Conference
the Liaison Committee proposes hosting a round table discussion on
«Learning about water, for a humane, fairer and more decent society:
our common cause»

      The consumption, management and conservation of water are both individual and collective responsibilities. Education and information must be part and parcel of a water management policy. Efficient water management requires a full and proper holistic approach at all levels from production to discharge into the environment. Water cannot be treated as a commodity to be bought and sold.

      Concern for the welfare of future generations should prompt us to «hand back to our children» and the generations that come after them «the Earth we have borrowed from them» in a decent state of sustainable human development.

Three organizations linking together universities and UNESCO formed an alliance to create a «Global Higher Education Sustainability Partnership (GHESP)» and signed the Lüneburg  Declaration and Action Plan confirming the indispensable role that universities can play in promoting and protecting sustainable development through education, research and action to serve the community. The GHESP stakeholders pledged to address the interlinked issues of globalization, the debt burden, justice, democracy, peace and environmental protection by creating a global learning environment. UNESCO’s involvement will come in particular through support to enable the GHESP to prosper, and in particular to enable developing country universities to play an active role in the effort. GHESP will form part of the Johannesburg follow-up process and subject-specialist workshops will get under way in September 2002 in developing countries to identify and share good practice and resources, and to make a start on developing new ones if needs be.

UNESCO should set up a website on sustainable development issues, like that developed for the International Year for a Culture of Peace, where NGOs can contribute their experiences and case studies to a real platform for exchange and communication.