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ECA says greater linkage exists between good governance and sustainable development
ECA Press Release No. 95/2012
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 17 June 2012 (ECA) - A senior official of the UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) today presented Africa's perspectives on Institutional Framework for Sustainable Development, highlighting the continent's intellectual contributions towards one of the main themes of the Rio Conference - Institutional Framework for Sustainable Development.
During an event organized at the margins of the ongoing Rio+20 to present Africa's findings of a study on Institutional Framework for Sustainable Development, Dr. Josué Dioné, Director, Food Security and Sustainable Development Division at the ECA presented some of the key findings of the study led by ECA.
He said that the study found that regional and subregional institutions such as African Union organs, the Regional Economic Communities and the ECA play a central role in promoting effective institutional and strategic frameworks for sustainable development in Africa.
According to ECA's Information and Communication Service, the report finds that appreciable progress has been made towards strengthening institutional and programmatic linkages on the continent.
It also finds that the links between good governance and sustainable development is now widely recognized, which is good for Africa because of the preeminence of governance on the content's development agenda.
Dione however recognized some of the challenges the continent has to address in order to accelerate the achievement of a balanced integration of the three pillars in planning, budgeting and implementation of plans and programmes.
He said there was still insufficient coordination and synergy among relevant institutions, while ministers in charge of planning and finance are still not sufficiently involved in sustainable development issues.
This is a serious challenge to achieving a balanced integration of the three pillars of sustainable development, according to Dione.
To these challenges, the report includes inadequate human, institutional and financial resources at all levels.
Following Dione's presentation, three speakers took the floor for a panel discussion structured to provide an international, regional, subregional and national perspectives to the report.
The subregional perspective was given by Dr Lapodini Marc Atouga, Commissioner for Agriculture, Environment and Water Resources, ECOWAS Commission who outlined the organisation's vision and work programme, stressing areas of sustainable development. Mr. Luc Oyoubi, Minister of Economy, Labour and Sustainable Development in Gabon provided a national-level perspective; and it was Ms. Susanne Salz, Head, Secretary General's Office, ICLEI World Secretariat who gave the national level vision.
For Ms Susanne Salz, the use of the word "pillars" when discussing sustainable development is totally inappropriate, because
"pillars" are by definition, independent and parallel. She therefore suggested that replacing "pillars of sustainable development"
with " dimensions of sustainable development", would convey three dimensions of a single goal: development.
Following the presentation, a lively discussion ensued, with the aim of answering a number key questions, one of which was on what institutional frameworks are needed at regional, sub-regional, national and local levels to achieve a balanced integration and enhance implementation.
Some participants were worried about what could be done to ensure that decisions from forums such as Rio+20 actually get implemented in Africa.
Others suggested that Africa should not expect salvation from such conferences; and that instead, it should look inwards for solutions to its development, rather than depending on the expected outcomes of Rio+20, participants agreed.
The need was also expressed to develop local vocabularies on sustainable development to better sensitize Africans at the community level so that everyone understands the meaning and significance of sustainable development within their respective social and economic contexts.
Josue agreed and pointed out that Africa is not quite sensitive to much of the development indicators with which their progress is measured. He quoted South African former Minister of Finance, Dr. Trevor Manuel , who once said that " ïf you can't measure it, you can't manage it".
"We need to develop M&E mechanisms to measure progress... ECA has carried out studies that assess sustainable development in many African countries and we know definitively what works and where", he said.
Prof Jaques Prescott, a Canadian researcher and scholar present at the side-event said that his group had developed profiles of sustainable development governance in 56 francophonie countries using eight indicators and promised to translate the report into english for wider accessibility.
The Africa report served as one of the background documents for the Africa Regional Preparatory Conference for Rio+20 and informed the Africa Consensus Statement to Rio+20.
It aims to guide the establishment, strengthening and operationalization of institutions, and the development and implementation of policies and strategies on sustainable development at the regional, subregional and national levels
3/25/2014 Article - ECA says greater linkage exists between good governance and sustainable development
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© 2012 Economic Commission for Africa
implementation of policies and strategies on sustainable development at the regional, subregional and national levels Issued by:
ECA Information and Communication Service P.O. Box 3001
Addis Ababa Ethiopia
Tel: 251 11 5445098 Fax: +251-11-551 03 65 E-mail: [email protected]
Web: www.uneca.org
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