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| Highlights from the Summit |
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The World Bank and WSSD
The World Bank, as the world's largest lender for sustainable development, was fully committed to the goals of the World Summit on Sustainable Development and the UN process leading up to the Summit. The Summit provided the Bank the opportunity to work with the United Nations, our clients and other partners to move forward the sustainable development agenda and poverty reduction goals.
The World Bank's participation in the Summit included both intellectual contributions as well as a number of side events and parallel events. The Bank's Johannesburg Agenda provides an overview of the key issue areas in which the Bank contributed to the Summit, while Agenda 21 Stocktaking offers a retrospective of the Bank's work in the last decade to implement Agenda 21, including lessons learned. Links to both of these documents, as well as a list of side events in which the World Bank participated, can be found in the box above on the right.
In addition to on-going economic work and lending activities, the Bank's involvement in the Summit process focused on five main activities:
- Contributing to the UN process of regional and global preparatory meetings and to the Summit. This involved working closely with the NGO community and the UN multi-stakeholder dialogue process on thematic issues. In addition, we continued our close partnership with the UN on achieving the objectives of the Financing for Development Summit, which was held in Monterrey, Mexico, in late March 2002.
- Offering an intellectual framework for analysis on issues of central concern to the Summit. The 2002/2003 World Development Report, Transforming Growth: Neighbor, Nature and Future, provided a substantial contribution to the debate on sustainable growth and development.
- Undertaking analytical work on key thematic issues including innovative financing for sustainable development, poverty/environment linkages, and globalization. We completed a stocking-taking exercise on what the Bank has contributed to implementing Agenda 21.
- Aligning our strategies and lending priorities with the Millennium Development Goals and urging the Summit to align its priorities with the Millennium Declaration. These Goals, agreed to by over 150 heads of state and government at the United Nations Millennium Summit in 2000, aim to halve the number of the world's poor by 2015. The Bank is helping to define sustainability indicators, cost out in realistic terms what financial resources will be needed to achieve these goals, and monitor progress. The Bank's lending program will directly support the Goals.
- Urging the adoption of a new national accounting for sustainability system which combines monetary accounts with biophysical accounts to track progress towards sustainability. The two measures together provide policymakers with detailed information on economic and ecological viability and illuminate the relationship between national and global sustainability.
Staff from across the World Bank Group and from many sectors helped to prepare for the Summit, including environment; agriculture and rural development on food security issues; social development on issues related to conflict and community-driven development; health; energy; and water and sanitation. Each of these sectors worked with its external partners in the lead-up to the Johannesburg Summit.
We have also integrated on-going Bank work on poverty reduction strategies, globalization, market access, debt reduction, resource mobilization, and private sector development as key issues in the development debate.
The World Bank Institute (WBI), with its mandate for capacity building, has organized a series of Global Dialogues, using videoconferencing and email discussions, on key issues such as food security, water, and energy. WBI is also working closely with the world's parliamentarians (with GLOBE), and is offering a range of learning and training events in preparation for the Summit.
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