The Commission on Sustainable
Development (CSD) was established by the UN
General Assembly in December 1992 and given the task of ensuring
the effective follow-up of the UN Conference on Environment and
Development 1992, otherwise known as the Earth Summit.
The CSD is:
- the high-level forum for sustainable development within the UN
system and encourages and facilitates dialogue among Ministers and
between Ministers and civil society.
- a functional commission of ECOSOC and consists of 53 elected
members, which serve 3 year terms each. Usually around 170 nations
attend the annual meetings.
- responsible for reviewing progress in the implementation of
some key international documents on sustainability, namely Agenda
21 and the Rio Declaration (both adopted in 1992), as
well as providing policy guidance to follow up the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation (JPOI;
adopted at the Earth Summit in 2002).
- a process that runs in two year cycles, one year for policy and
one for review of the implementation.
18th Session of the CSD - CSD-18
The CSD process runs in two year cycles, one policy year and one
review year. 2010 is a review year and 18th session of the CSD ran from 3-14
May 2010 in New York. The main themes are Mining, Transport,
Chemicals, Waste Management and also the 10-year Framework of
Programmes.
19th Session of the CSD - CSD-19
CSD-19 was held from 2-13 May 2011 in New York.
As part of the policy session of the fourth implementation cycle of
CSD, member states, civil society organizations and related UN
agencies have been working on the issues of transport, chemicals,
waste management, mining and the 10 year framework of programmes on
sustainable consumption and production as a follow up of the
decisions taken during the CSD 18 in 2010.
Unfortunately, at the very end of these negotiations (Friday
13th), with many of the thematic policy recommendations
already agreed -the policy text for the 10-year framework of
programmes among them- member states were not able to achieve a
final consensus regarding a particular issue and this policy cycle
ended with no substantive results.
This lack of consensus among governments and the consequent
failure of CSD 19 becomes a complicated precedent for the
negotiations of the Rio+20 earth summit and it certainly represents
a bad sign for civil society organizations working for many years
on this issue -CI among them- because it generates a significant
gap in the process towards the achievement of the required global,
regional and national policies, measures and actions to address the
current patterns of production and consumption in a more
sustainable manner.