The Earth Summit 2002 in South Africa offered an ideal context for stakeholders to come together and work out how to do their part in implementing the Sustainable Development Agreements.

The Implementation Conference was seeking to initiate and strengthen collaborative stakeholder implementation of sustainable development. As such it was a stepping-stone in a long-term process, which Stakeholder Forum started in the autumn of 2001.

Within the framework of type 1 & type 2 outcome documents for the Johannesburg Summit, the Implementation Conference has been developing type 2 outcomes: partnership initiatives to further the implementation of the sustainable development agreements.

In a consultation process with Stakeholder Forum's International Advisory Board in the summer of 2001, four issue areas were identified for the IC: 

Multi-stakeholder Issue Advisory Groups were established and have been guiding the developments, identifying possible collaborative action plans and potential partners for each issue. 

About one hundred participants per issue were taking part in the preparatory process and overall more than 400 people attended the conference (programme). Participants were expected to arrive motivated and mandated to collaborate and commit to collaborative action plans.

We had developed a detailed but flexible conference process, including: overall project management; extensive consultations and preparations via the Issue Advisory Groups and a wider network on all issues; professional facilitation; knowledge management; accompanying research; production of conference material; etc. Click here for the IC Team.

The conference was be held in Johannesburg, South Africa, immediately prior to the official UN Summit (more about the IC Event). 

A core team is based at Stakeholder Forum. Advisory Group members and facilitators are based around the world.

The Implementation Conference forms a key part of the long-term process of building a multi-stakeholder movement towards sustainable development. The process is building on existing networks and on Stakeholder Forum's work on multi-stakeholder processes, the principles and practical guidelines developed for stakeholder participation and collaboration, published in "Multi-Stakeholder Processes for Governance and Sustainability - Beyond Deadlock and Conflict" (by Minu Hemmati; Earthscan, London 2002). The book offers a set of principles for multi-stakeholder processes and a checklist for those developing dialogues and partnerships. Learn more at www.earthsummit2002.org/msp.