One good decision at the Earth Summit: to improve sanitation.

Abstract

Despite disappointments for environmentalists, the Johannesburg Summit on Sustainable Development (26 August-4 September) did achieve one encouraging result for health. A clause in the internationally agreed conclusions calls for the "halving of the proportion of people without access to basic sanitation" by 2015. Johannesburg set few definite targets, and most that were set aren't new--they simply repeat a small proportion of the impressive targets agreed by the 189 member states of the UN at the Millennium Summit in September 2000. But Johannesburg's clause on sanitation is a genuine addition, and so deserves some attention. Richard Helmer, Director of WHO's Department of Protection of the Human Environment, told the Bulletin: "It was very important. In the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) sanitation was explicitly excluded. We only had water supply; sanitation was only mentioned obliquely under habitat--that 100 million urban dwellers were to get better conditions, and things like that. The US didn't like it. They said it made an unnecessary commitment that we could not keep." But now there is a commitment to improved sanitation, in a clause added to the MDG, which says: "to halve, by the year 2015, the proportion of people who are unable to reach or to afford safe drinking-water". And there is one further benefit: progress towards reaching the targets is not to be left to chance, but will be monitored by Mark Malloch Brown, head of the UN Development Programme, who was also appointed "scorekeeper" for the follow-up to the MDGs. Malloch Brown told Geoffrey Lean, environment correspondent for The Independent newspaper in the UK, that he aimed to ensure that Johannesburg is not followed by a period of inaction as previous summits have been. Malloch Brown is due to report to the UN General Assembly in October on the efforts of 15 countries to attain the MDGs, and will now expand his work to monitor the progress of every country in the developing world every year. "This is going to be a revolution in implementing decisions" Malloch Brown told the The Independent. Johannesburg Summit Secretary-General Nitin Desai informed delegates that the water and sanitation goals were backed up by announcements of concrete projects and partnerships--with the US announcing an investment of US$ 970 million in water projects over the next three years, and the European Union announcing its commitment to partnerships to meet the new goals, primarily in Africa and Central Asia. …