World Summit on Sustainable Development

Steve Swart MP – ACDP

Thursday, 15 August 2002

In Parliament today Steve Swart MP for the African Christian Democratic Party gave the following speech during a debate on the upcoming World Summit on Sustainable Development:


Madame Speaker,

Much has been said by the Minister and other Honourable Members both last week and today; about the World Summit on Sustainable Development.

What is Sustainable Development: “Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”

The Johannesburg Summit is about the construction of a global partnership for the environmentally sustainable social and economic development of the poor. The main task of the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development is to focus on implementation plans. It must result in a programme of action whose elements will include access to energy, food security, health care, primary education and technology transfer.

It is also essential that the proposed Friends of the Chair meeting to take place prior to the main conference achieve substantial consensus on as many as possible of the outstanding issues in the Chairman’s draft text for the conference to be a success.

The critical issue facing us, as Parliamentarians, will be monitoring the implementation of the final agreement arising from the Summit. The Inter – Parliamentary Union focus on the role of Parliamentarians in ensuring implementation and accountability, with particular reference to compliance with reporting requirements, will go a long way to ensure that the implementation problems following the 1992 RIO agreement are not repeated.

We are proud that the Honourable Gwen Mshlanghu serves on the executive of the IPU and will undoubtedly make valuable inputs at its meetings during the summit.

As the Honourable Minister has previously indicated, the last decade was marked by unprecedented level of global concern for the protection of the Earth’s fragile environment. South Africa is of the view that Johannesburg Summit must negotiate a new global deal or partnership that brings the economic and social pillars of sustainable development back into the equation.

A new global deal on sustainable development is possible because of certain key international developments: The decision of the UN Millennium Summit in 2000 to halve world poverty by the year 2015; the World Trade Organisation’s Doha decision to embark on a development round of negotiations; and the adoption of the Monterey Consensus by UN Finance for Development’s conference providing a framework for development financing.

It must be noted that the ACDP does not agree with all aspects contained in the Chairman’s Text for Negotiations, (particularly clause 4 (i) relating to reproductive health care). We will however positively contribute to the debate surrounding the implementation plans in the six priority areas of health, education, water and sanitation, energy, food security and technology.

Poverty alleviation is clearly a main thrust of the conference, and quite correctly so. Recently, various organisations including the World Health Organisation, the UN Development Programme, the World Bank and Oxfam calculated the total cost of implementing Millennium Development Goals (which aim to halve the world’s poverty by 2015). The lowest quote came in at $50 billion, and the highest at $100 billion a year. In this regard, it is significant that the UN Development Programme reports that the world spends $780 billion on war and military force every year. This amounts to $65 billion a month or $ 2 billion per day. [1]

It is also astonishing that the assets of the three richest people in the world match the combined national economies of the 48 poorest countries. Furthermore, that nearly 3600 children die every day from preventative diarrhoea, mostly caused by contaminated water.

What role can religious communities and churches play? Whilst Churches continue to play a pivotal role in poverty alleviation worldwide, Churches can also contribute theological and moral substance to the discussion at the World Summit. The biblical steward model holds that we are trustees and keepers of creation. We need to understand that we are wielders of extraordinary cumulative power that can affect all of life in fundamental and unprecedented ways. We now possess the knowledge to build and destroy on a massive scale. Our knowledge is outstripped only by our ignorance and its dangers: the steward’s moral quest then is for a just and sustaining use of unprecedented knowledge and power.[2]

It is opposite therefore to conclude with a Creation Care Prayer, which Churches are encouraged to use on the eve of the Summit on Sunday 25 August 2002.

Creation Care Prayer:

C reating God, you have given us a vision of a new heaven and a new earth…
R esources conserved
E arth tended
A tmosphere cleansed
T rees planted
I njustice ended
O ceans teeming
N ations at peace

C reator, Redeemer, Sustainer
A lert nations , enthuse Churches,
R eceive our commitment and so entwine our lives with Your purpose.
E arth and heaven will then sing of Your glory. Amen


I thank you


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For further comment please call Steve Swart MP at 083 285 6290 or ACDP Media Liaison Liza Bloemetje at 082 47 81037





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[1] Source World Watch Institute’s State of the World 2002, UNEP, UNDP and EPA

[2] Larry Rasmussen, Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Social Ethics at Union Theological Seminary, as quoted in The Christian Century, October 23, 1991, pp. 964967