Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
nonstate actor participation, which can be best seen in changes made in
the multistakeholder dialogues.
While the overall integration of major groups at the UNCSD has vastly
increased since Johannesburg, the interactive dialogs with Major Groups
have lost much of their effectiveness. The UNCSD Multi-stakeholder
Dialogues, fi rst launched at CSD6 in 1997, have served as a model for
hybrid governance across and beyond the UN system (Hemmati 2002;
CBI 2002). Their earlier effectiveness stemmed largely from their facilita-
tive structure, which enabled ample time for focused, interactive exchange.
Post-Johannesburg, the length of the dialogs has been vastly shortened,
leaving insuffi cient time for collaborative and synthetic exchange.
Pre-Johannesburg, the dialogs consisted of twelve hours of focused
discussion, broken into four 3-hour sessions. These were typically held
over the course of two days, and efforts were made to ensure they were
scheduled at times that did not compete with other sessions. Each session
began with 8-minute opening statements by each major group and one
8-minute statement each from a Northern and Southern government
representative. After these statements, the fl oor was opened for 2-minute
reaction statements from authorized participants who wished to clarify,
extend, or build on the ideas that had been entered for consideration.
Most years, the chair of the dialog meeting, who was usually also the
chair of the UNCSD and a high-level government offi cial, choreographed
the conversation to encourage collaborative problem solving and the
resolution of long-standing sectoral disagreements. The results were
impressive to observe, especially in those years when multisectoral initia-
tives, such as the Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development initia-
tive (SARD) and the Multi-stakeholder Review of Voluntary Initiatives,
were born from the dialogs and endured well beyond the UNCSD
meetings.
Ten years later, during CSD16, the dialogs were allotted approxi-
mately one-third of the time, broken into 1.5-hour slots, spread across
the two weeks of meetings, and they competed with other sessions. The
challenges presented by this structure were highlighted by the fi rst dialog
at CSD16. Each major group was asked to present a three-minute state-
ment representing their sectors' views on agriculture and rural develop-
ment. The diffi culty of this task was illustrated by the fact that only one
of the groups presented a statement in three minutes or less. While some
interaction took place between the Major Groups and governments,
there was certainly insuffi cient time to address any dimension of agricul-
ture or rural development in a way that recognized its complexity. In
