|
|
|
|
|
|
Daily Web Coverage
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Highlights from Wednesday, 7 September 2005
On
Wednesday, 7 September, experts participated
in morning field trips
and reconvened at noon in the
conference center to hear a Plenary
presentation on SCP activities in Costa
Rica. In the afternoon, experts continued
their work in working groups, and heard a
panel on cooperation dialogues.
|
|
|
Presentation of SCP activities in Costa
Rica
|
|
|
|
|
Sergio Musmanni,
Director, Costa Rica National
Cleaner Production Center |
|
|
|
|
Sergio Musmanni, Director, National
Cleaner Production Center, Costa Rica,
outlined SCP activities in Costa Rica.
These included: an environmental
discharge fee to internalize water
production costs; a UNEP/Wuppertal
Institute “Efficient Entrepreneur
Calendar” helping companies achieve SCP
autonomously; sector-specific guides and
an eco-design manual; plans to promote
degradable plastics for niche
applications; integrating cleaner
production goals into a broader
corporate social responsibility
initiative; “Fempac,” a Costa Rican
packaging scheme following Europe’s
successful “Green Dot;” and an
initiative establishing baselines of
material imports for planning their
recycling, treatment and disposal. He
said Costa Rica’s current electricity
generation is relatively low impact, but
that fossil fuel consumption was
projected to increase, and that this
should be averted through efficient
public transport and car sharing,
increased biomass power capacity and
renewable fuels programmes. He outlined
challenges including: finance and
technology transfer; encouraging life
cycle thinking; hazardous materials
treatment and accounting; increasing
waste collection efficiency; developing
regulatory land use plans, ecolabels and
awards; and increasing consumer
awareness and engagement. |
|
|
|
up to top |
Working Group I - Production Processes
and Industrial Development
|
|
|
|
|
|
Takeshi Koga,
Fujitsu Limited, Japan
|
|
|
|
WG-I
Co-Chair Edwin Piñero,
Office of the Federal
Environmental Executive, United
States
|
|
|
|
WG-I
Co-Chair Olivia la O'Castillo,
Asia Pacific Roundtable for
Sustainable Consumption and
Production (APRSCP), Philippines |
|
|
|
|
Takeshi Koga, Fujitsu Ltd, presented
“Fujitsu’s Activities to Raise
Environmental Values of Products”. He
outlined life cycle costing, which
expresses social and financial costs
within a single index and, using
examples, showed how it can reflect
product improvements in a way consumers
can easily understand. He highlighted
the life cycle assessment label Ecoleaf,
which has been rapidly adopted by
producers. He stressed that responsible
businesses also paid attention to their
suppliers’ environmental impact, and
outlined Fujitsu’s processes of
promoting SCP among suppliers.
In
the ensuing debate, participants
discussed whether customers will pay
more for eco-design, industry-government
cooperation, the 3Rs initiative, and
“top runner” standards.
Closing the working group, participants
discussed practical recommendations.
Suggestions included: reaching companies
through chambers of commerce;
encouraging Cleaner Production Centers
to focus on SMEs; including SCP in all
levels of education, notably in business
schools; calculating the cost of
inaction; developing SCP indices; and
integrating SCP into national accounts. |
|
|
|
up to top |
Working Group II - Urban Planning and
Waste Management |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Miguel Araujo,
Basel Convention Secretariat |
|
|
|
WG-II Co-Chair
Cristina Cortinas de Navas,
Mexico |
|
|
|
WG-II Co-Chair Kazuyoshi
Okazawa, Ministry of the
Environment, Japan |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Miguel Araujo, Basel Convention
Secretariat, made a presentation on the
“Basel Convention and the Global Waste
Challenge.” He reviewed goals and
achievements of the Convention,
including the Global Network of Basel
Convention Regional Centers, and
outlined the 2004 Ministerial statement
on partnerships for meeting the global
waste challenge. He said the GEF
recently began supporting Basel
Convention-related work, and that
strengthening Regional Centers would
enable countries to access more
financial resources and submit stronger
proposals.
Participants then discussed
recommendations from the working groups,
noting that in some cases much untapped
funding exists, and that in other cases
funds are lacking and that the challenge
is to close this gap. Recommendations
included the following: sustainable
funding for municipalities; integration
of family planning into long term urban
planning; setting up SCP centers in
every country, which could be linked to
existing networks such as NCPCs, the
World Urban Forum or UN Habitat;
innovative financing, such as using the
CDM funds available at the World Bank; a
sustainable development trust fund
administered by the UN; tapping
into existing initiatives that reward
innovative project proposals, such as
the SEED Initiative and the World Bank’s
Development Marketplace; better
coordination between UN agencies
addressing SCP and sustainable
livelihoods; and preparation of a
sustainable urban environmental
programme by every capital city in every
country. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
The Co-Chairs discuss the
recommendations with Bas de
Leeuw, UNEP (left), and
Brian Williams, UN Habitat
(right) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Working Group III - Sustainable
Consumption and Product Development |
|
|
|
|
Eveline Venanzoni, Swiss
Agency for the Environment,
Forests and Landscape |
|
|
|
WG-III
Co-Chair, Paul Hofseth,
Ministry of the Environment of
Norway
|
|
|
|
Eveline Venanzoni, Swiss Agency for the
Environment, Forests and Landscape,
outlined success factors for sustainable
public procurement, including: a
sustainable development strategy and
high-level commitment; centralized
procurement organization as in the Swiss
case; a conducive legal framework; a
leading procurement body; cooperation of
competent partners; awareness-raising of
all stakeholders involved in public
procurement; handbooks, practical tools,
and economical product criteria;
training of purchasers; and
international collaboration and
information-sharing. Drawing on case
studies, she concluded that sustainable
public procurement was already possible
and that minimum sustainability criteria
should be met by all suppliers as entry
preconditions to the global market. She
said a Marrakech sustainable public
procurement task force should work on
these issues, giving practical examples
of how this might work. |
|
During breakout groups, participants
discussed priorities for action. On
institutional procurement,
recommendations included: sharing
information and experiences, perhaps
through websites; shared national or
international procurement to increase
purchasing power; training purchasers; a
product database; and sharing
information with private sector
purchasers.
On sustainable culture and
lifestyles, recommendations included
building national action plans, NGO
pressure for implementation, and best
practice sharing. On product design,
participants recommended developing a
shared vision and progress indicators,
and focusing on education and raising
awareness. |
|
Working Group IV - Regional and National
Strategies for SCP |
During the discussion on national SCP
strategies, common challenges in both
developed and developing countries were
identified. Some participants stressed
the importance of integrating SCP into
national sustainable development
strategies as an overall national
objective, and of developing concrete
sectoral action plans that promote SCP,
with targets and indicators. Lack of
public understanding of SCP was
identified as a challenge. Participants
agreed that for some developing
countries SCP is still a new issue and
not a priority, and that integrating SCP
into poverty reduction strategies would
be a better approach. Participants
acknowledged that countries and regions
had different priorities, but identified
some common priorities for action,
including public procurement and
government leading by example, education
and awareness-raising, changing
behavior,
energy, poverty reduction, and
overcoming trade barriers and
distortions. Individual examples from
Switzerland and Norway included setting
climate change as a national
environmental priority and exploring
polices to promote sustainable use of
energy, in order to achieve Kyoto
Protocol targets.
Participants discussed: involving
stakeholders early on to utilize their
expertise; the need for clear, coherent
targets on SCP and sound, scientific
evidence-based decision making;
integrating progress monitoring into the
strategie formulation process;
and establishing a small set of globally
accepted indicators, which reflect the
ecological, social and economic
dimensions of SCP, and are easily
communicated.
|
|
|
|
WG-IV
Co-Chair Terence Ilott,
Department for Environment, Food
and Rural Affairs (DEFRA),
United Kingdom |
|
|
WG-IV
Co-Chair Philip Acquah,
Environmental Protection Agency,
Ghana |
|
|
|
The
working group broke into smaller groups
to discuss questions related to:
guidelines to SCP strategy formulation;
SCP linkages to poverty reduction
strategies, especially the MDGs;
indicators and monitoring; bringing
together policy makers and academics;
involving the private sector, NGOs and
local governments more effectively;
further work on the costs of inaction;
and sustainable procurement. During the
discussions, participants reiterated
that different countries required
different strategies, said voluntary
approaches had limits, and discussed
whether to establish new strategies or
to integrate SCP into existing
strategies. On links with poverty
reduction, issues addressed included
more cooperation between
the SCP agenda and poverty reduction,
especially the MDGs, and mainstreaming
SCP into Poverty Reduction Strategies (PRS).
On indicators, the group advocated
developing a small set of key indicators
at the international level, which could
be adapted for national-level use.
|
|
|
up to top |
Working Group V -
Energy, Climate and Air Pollution |
Experts were asked to identify
priorities at the national and
international levels for improving
energy efficiency, reducing air
pollution, and cooperation. At the
national level, experts identified their
countries’ priorities including: energy
efficiency awareness; public procurement
and contracting schemes; sustainable
transport strategies, including rural
transport; demonstration of renewable
energies from a life-cycle perspective;
capacity building; pollution monitoring
systems; access to technology; and
identifying new energy technologies and
barriers to those technologies.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
At the international level,
experts identified priorities
including: prioritizing
partnerships that have proved
effective, like the Global Forum
for Sustainable Energy; working
on knowledge management tools in
the field of sustainable energy;
climate change, which experts
said the Marrakech Process
should only tackle if there was
added value in the SCP context;
importing old, inefficient
appliances from developed
countries to developing
countries, links to the Basel
convention and the relationship
between hazardous appliances and
energy efficiency; prioritizing
sustainability over bulk power
generation in international
financing for energy projects;
disseminating information on
national capacities; and
facilitating procedures for
access to finance. One expert
explained the Australian
approach to energy efficiency in
large industry users, with a
policy mandating the top 200
consumers to undergo an energy
efficiency opportunities
assessment and make its results
public. Another expert expressed
the need for facilitators to
assist knowledge exchange and
technology transfer. It was
noted that for small island
developing States, aggregation
of projects was sometimes
necessary to reach the minimum
size for international donor
funding. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
WG-V
Co-Chair Elfriede-Anna More,
Ministry of Agriculture,
Forestry, Environment and Water
Management, Austria |
|
|
|
WG-V Co-Chair David Barrett,
Jamaica, Manager, Energy and
Environment, Petroleum
Corporation of Jamaica |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Edgar Ortiz, Fondo
Nacional de Financiamiento
Forestal, Costa Rica |
|
|
|
|
Edgar Ortiz, National
Forest Financing Fund,
Costa Rica, discussed
mainstreaming payments
for environmental
services in Costa Rica,
with particular emphasis
on accessing carbon
markets. He explained
that there are two
market segments for
carbon emission
reductions, the Kyoto
and the non-Kyoto, which
obey different rules and
pay different prices. He
described the CDM from
the supply side
perspective, explaining
that “Kyoto lands” are
those not forested
before 1989, and thus
eligible for
aforestation under Kyoto
mechanisms. The ensuing
discussion focused on
the CDM and market
carbons. |
|
|
|
|
|
David Capper, Department
for Environment, Food and Rural
Affairs(DEFRA), UK |
|
|
|
|
|
|
David Capper discussed
Sustainable Products Task Force,
and experts agreed that it would
enhance international
cooperation on energy appliance
efficiency, as long as it
complements existing work in the
field. |
|
|
|
|
Panel discussion on Cooperation Dialogue
sessions |
|
|
|
|
Allan Flores,
Vice-Minister of Environment and
Energy, Costa Rica
|
|
|
|
James Riordan,
Environment Canada
|
|
|
|
Sherif Arif, Regional
Environmental and Safeguard
Advisor, Urban Planning and
Waste Management, World Bank |
|
|
|
Moderator James Riordan, Canada,
reported on outcomes of the cooperation
dialogue sessions and said all agreed
that poverty eradication was the
starting point. He reported that the
sessions covered: reference to the MDGs;
emphasis by development agencies on
priorities set by governments in their
national development plans; ownership of
development initiatives by governments;
harmonization of work between
development agencies; developing
South-South cooperation; supporting
regional projects; and preparing and
implementing CDM projects.
Sherif Arif, World Bank, stated that the
World Bank would finance projects in
sectors leading to SCP, and highlighted
incentives, institutions, investment and
information as necessary components of
eligible projects. He said approximately
$500 million was available from the Bank
for CDM projects and invited countries
to submit proposals. He also said that
free trade will have a long term impact
on SCP, and said this needs to be
addressed.
|
|
|
Yamada Taizo, Japan
International Cooperation Agency |
|
|
|
Kathleen Abdullah, UN
DESA
|
|
|
|
|
Yamada Taizo, JICA, Japan, stressed that
aid agencies need to know how they can
be useful to the Marrakech Process. He
said more support was needed, and that
that the application process can be very
cumbersome. Taizo noted that this
meeting provides a forum to discuss
issues at the technical level without
political discussion.
Kathleen Abdullah, UN DESA, stressed
that UN DESA is not a typical donor
agency. She underscored the need to see
how innovative ideas from one project
fit into another SCP project, and to
make sure that available funds get used
in SCP projects. She stressed the
importance of the private sector and the
need to work more closely with WSSD
partnerships. |
up to top |
|
Around the meeting
Delegates before the
presentation of SCP activities
in Costa Rica
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Delegates during the official
dinner |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
up to top |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|