A COMMUNITY PERSPECTIVE ON THE WORLD SUMMIT AND POVERTY
Mr Sandile Ndawonde,
Director, Green Network, Pietermaritzburg
From a community perspective there are many environmental problems that relate to poverty, including waste management, land use, flood control and water supply and sanitation. Communities need to be empowered through the WSSD. They are looking to the summit to provide examples and case histories of approaches that work as well as those that don’t. Communities need better information and communication, technology transfer and support ot build their capacity.
While waste management can contribute to sustainable development and poverty alleviation, there are concerns that the failure to address it through the WTO leaves the door open for trade in toxic waste. There are initiatives on land use and some Green Network affiliates are involved in the Department of Agriculture’s Land Care Programme. However, they believe the programme should be reviewed because it focuses on food production and does not address areas like building soil fertility and preventing or minimising natural disasters like floods. There has also been talk of a sustainable livelihood programme but community organisations have not had information about this. They would like to know more about it.
Communities would like to see the WSSD leading to closer working relationships between government, communities and NGOs. A fundamental need is to improve decision making processes so that people on the ground whose activities have positive or negative impacts on the environment and on poverty become part of the decision making process. As part of the process government and all the other parties involved need to make sure that information reaches the people on the ground. Community based organisations need information on trends and what is happening in different sectors from government and researchers, they in turn need to know more about what is happening on the ground. CBOs need more capacity to get information to the people. There are CBOs and NGOs that are doing good work in communities to achieve sustainable development but they need training in environmental issues and in leadership and management skills.
All those involved need to learn from past experience. Networks like the Green Network play an important role here, helping people to avoid repeating mistakes. They help to identify needs so that programmes and projects can be initiated to meet those needs. CBOs will need funding to continue their work after the WSSD as they fill an important gap left by the lack of communication between government at local, district and national level. This is also something that needs attention.
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