IC Summary Report

Implementation Conference:

Stakeholder Action for Our Common Future

Executive Summary

The purpose of the “Implementation Conference: Stakeholder Action for Our Common Future” (IC) was to inspire stakeholders to create collectively, clear, measurable on-going action to deliver the Sustainable Development Agreements.

The Implementation Conference process and event was designed to support the movement of citizens and organisations coming together in multi-stakeholder processes or partnerships, at local, national and international levels. Many stakeholders are determined to take action within their sphere of control and reach. People are keen to work out complementary roles and responsibilities with governments and thus develop a key component of sustainable development governance.

While much can be achieved by individual organisations, working in partnerships can often be more effective. Partnerships are not new but the Earth Summit 2002 process has brought this movement to the fore. The IC was aiming to contribute to harnessing its energy, creativity and courage, and thus delivering real change on the ground.

The Implementation Conference process and event poignantly highlighted the vital role of participation in generating commitment to action. Taking the lead from existing (and emerging) Sustainable Development Agreements, stakeholder identified areas of future collaboration and agreed action plans that they are pursuing in partnership initiatives.

Developed between June 2001 and August 2002, the process culminated in a 3 day event immediately preceding the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa (24 – 26 August 2002). This event represented just one step towards inspiring collective action for sustainable development. Ongoing follow-up by both Stakeholder Forum and IC participants aims to ensure this momentum is sustained and expanded upon, beyond the IC outcomes generated in Johannesburg. In addition, Stakeholder Forum and IC participants and partners will share their experiences and recommendations with UN DESA as it is preparing the follow-up mechanisms to the Type 2 Summit Outcomes.

In preparation of the IC event, we engaged in several stages of consultations with a broad range of stakeholder organisations, governments, and international agencies:

	Consulting with Stakeholder Forum's 45 member International Advisory Board on which issues the IC process should focus on. This resulted in the four key issues of freshwater, energy, food security, and health – all to be addressed with a focus on the eradication of poverty, good governance, and gender equity. The salience of the four IC issues was subsequently re-affirmed by their close correlation with the five WSSD thematic areas: Water, Energy, Health, Agriculture and Biodiversity.
	Establishing multi-stakeholder advisory groups to each issue, tasked with identifying potential areas for collaborative action and partner organisations to engage. This led to a gradual refining of an initially the extensive list of potential action areas identified for each issue (in four rolling "Issue Papers").
	Identifying small, multi-stakeholder Action Plan Groups of interested parties and developing draft Action Plans. These groups communicated by email and telephone conferencing well before the IC event.
	Identifying "champions" for most of the Action Plan Groups, ie key stakeholder representatives who took an encouraging leadership role within their groups.
	Inviting participants who were interested in a draft Action Plan, and motivated and mandated to engage in a partnership agreement.
	Establishing a core team of professional facilitators who identified a gender-balanced team of facilitators from around the globe who had experience with multi-stakeholder settings and sustainable development issues. Individual facilitators were linked up with individual Action Plan groups.
	Facilitating the development of focused, tailor-made agendas for each workgroup, in close consultation with potential participants.
	If the Action Plan groups so wished, we facilitated the submission of the Action Plans as WSSD "Type 2 Partnership Initiatives". By August 2002, 14 initiatives were submitted.
	Throughout the preparatory process, the IC Team fed information into the official preparatory process for the Summit, via forwarding the issue papers as they developed through several revisions, holding side events at PrepComs, and actively participating in the discussions on the Type 2 Summit Outcomes.

Over four hundred stakeholders from over 50 countries participated at the Implementation Conference itself. Supported by a 25 strong international facilitation team, 25 small, multi-stakeholder Action Plan groups worked over 3 days, developing 25 concrete, agreed and owned collaborative actions plans focussing on specific aspects of existing and emerging policy agreements within one of the four issues:

Freshwater

	Multi-stakeholder Review of Global Water / Sanitation Supply Strategies
	Training and Capacity Building on Gender Mainstreaming in Integrated Water Resource Management
	Local Government Freshwater Capacity Building in Asia Pacific
	International Rainwater Harvesting Alliance
	Water Wise Programme – Promoting Social Solutions for Wise Use of Water
	Eradication of Diarrhoeal Disease in the Limpopo River Basin
	Strengthening Public Water Systems

Food Security

	Capacity Building for Agricultural Media Professionals (AMPs)
	Local Enterprise Development Network
	Expansion of AgLearn
	Secure and Equitable Access to Land Partnership Programme (SEAL)
	Ecoagriculture
	Smallholder Irrigation Promotion in Semi-arid Areas

Sustainable Energy

	Biomass
	Solar Best Practice
	Global Eco Village Workshop
	Assessing Best Practice
	Network of Oil-Affected Communities (NOAC)

Health

	HIV and AIDS in the World of Work
	'Drop the Malaria Tax’ Campaign
	Migration of Health Workers
	Media for Development
	The Indaba Declaration on Food, Nutrition, Health and Sustainable Development
	Partnerships for Health Research

The outcomes of the IC were also presented at Earth Summit 2002 as part of the partnership presentation events.

These partnerships are about action for putting international agreements into practice. They are not about lobbying governments. Impacting policy-making was not the primary concern of the participants who gathered at the IC. However, it is hoped that the stakeholders’ actions and what we learn from them will indeed feed into policy making in the future.

The Implementation Conference process and event was supported by a range of institutions and organisations – governments, international agencies, foundations, corporations, and other stakeholders (see Partners).

For any questions please contact the Project Coordinators:

Minu Hemmati, email minush@aol.com; Tel +44 20 7089 4309

Robert Whitfield, email rwhitfield@earthsummit2002.org; Tel +44 207 089 4319

Stakeholder Forum for Our Common Future

7 Holyrood Street, London SE1 2EL, UK

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