Sustainable Development Strategy

By Kh. Atiar Rahman

The developing countries need to play a vital role for the green house gases prevailing in the atmosphere. For this reason, their estimation envisages that the North should arrange required financial aids to the South to acclimatize the changing circumstances of the climate in question. And as such the integrated developing country need to move towards technical hitches for the North. The North is not in a position to accept any remarkable accountability. For negotiating the issue of climate change, an International Negotiating Committee on Climate Change needs to come forward for negotiating the matter as a tentative flow.

In the preliminary meeting, the South stipulated new and additional resources for their economic development. The North was very much interested to know about Southern commitments before dealing with the financial issue. No substantive result was therefore achieved. According to Geneva convention, the North and South are in a situation of confrontation on the question of creating a climate fund. The North expressed their willingness in favour of using the World Bank in this regard, but the South was against the idea. The idea of 'pledge and review' was rejected by the South that they should commit themselves to a process and no external could judge their domestic policies. The difference of opinion was evident in the third session of the INC in Nairobi. The pattern was continued when the INC met for its fourth session in Geneva in December 1991. In New York the fifth session of the INC showed the same situation between the North and South. The North was pressurizing the South for accepting the Global Environmental Facility as the funding channel. The North and South were therefore in a position of conflict in the meeting. The mood of the meeting was not improved by suggesting that if no climate change convention was negotiated President Bush would not go to Rio. At the same time to sweeten the threat, the US announced a $75 million aid plan to help curb developing countries green house emission.

Finally, the developing countries thought that the failure to finalize the convention would postpone the prospect of Western aid and technology to help tackle the effect of climate change they therefore accepted the GEF as an 'interim' financial mechanism of the convention. Regarding the issue of 'pledge and review', countries were required to supply information on their implementation of the convention, and a body was established to look at this information. At last, agreement on the convention was achieved and it was open for signature in Rio. The long discussion about the environmental conferences reveals that both parties have different types of interests and problems. The agreement in Rio was without sufficient commitments from both side. The concept of sustainable development has not been followed by both the parties. The right to achieve economic growth by the South was repeatedly voiced in those conferences and the needs for additional fund were also repeatedly raised. These demands were not sufficiently met by the North. These issues shows that the future relations of the North and the South on sustainable development depends highly on the attitude of the both the parties, though mostly on the attitudes of the North. Although the North has given commitments of financial support, these have not been sufficient for achieving sustainable development. If the North provides adequate financial resources and environment friendly technology at a good price to the South, then the sustainable development will bring co-operation between them, otherwise conflicts will not only remain, but will also be resolved virtually.

In view of the above it is evident that there are differences of opinion between the North and the South on the way of achieving sustainable development. Although, there exists problems, it has also shown that some sort of co-operation exists from previous initiatives on the issue. It is true that some Southern countries allocate much of their hard earned money for defense purpose, but in environmental conferences they always fight for financial support. This case is however not true for most of the Southern countries. Most of the Southern countries are forced to over exploit the natural resources on which their future depends. For that reason, the North have to spare additional financial help to the South to face these environmental challenges.

Kh. Atiar Rahman is a Prolific Author and a Poet. He has many publication in national and international media.