Youth Conference on Sustainable Development

The Global Youth Reporters Program, launched in Lund last year during Global Youth Convention 2000, aims to keep the young people's environment movement in the news right up to Johannesburg 2002, and beyond. Five fledging journalists - from Latvia, Thailand, Georgia, Nigera and Canada - are covering the Borgholm conference.

YOUTH ENVIRONMENT CONFERENCE SEEKS DEBT CANCELLATION, END TO ARMS TRADE
By GYRP reporters

BORGHOLM, May 26 (GYRP) - An environmental conference of young people from more than 100 countries ended on Saturday with calls for the cancellation of Third World debt, a moratorium on genetic modification and an end to arms manufacture.

A resolution approved at the end of the EU-sponsored gathering in southeast Sweden also declared that sustainability should be placed at the core of education curriculums around the world.

Swedish Environment Minister Kjell Larsson promised to take the conclusions of the Youth Conference on Environment and Sustainable Development into account in drafting the European Union's submissions to next year's world environment summit in Johannesburg.

The 217 delegates, mainly aged between 18 and 25, approved the final declaration after a long afternoon of at times chaotic wrangling over its exact wording.

"It's disappointing that the process had to come to this," one Swedish delegate said, as the draft resolution was once more sent back for reworking. "What a waste of time," another commented, of the drawn-out arguments over minor phrasing.

The May 23-27 conference, in the summer resort of Borgholm on Oland island, provided a unique opportunity for the young people to network. "We learned that we are not alone in campaigning for a greener world," a Thai delegate said.

"This is the most convenient conference I've ever attended," another Asian delegate said.

The "Resolution for Change" covered subjects ranging from the scourge of AIDS in Africa to the role of the International Monetary Fund. The fiercest debate was over the role of multinational companies.

By a narrow 71-60 vote, a demand for the "dismantling of transnational corporations" was rejected as unrealistic and watered down to "regulating and monitoring " their activities to give greater local accountability.

Larsson welcomed this vote. "It is not because I love transnational corporations," he told delegates afterwards, "but the document has gained in credibility by choosing this way to phrase this aspiration."

On global warming, delegates called for the phasing out of both the use of fossil fuels and nuclear power in favor of "alternative sources of energy, such as solar and wind (power)".

Under demands for global justice, it demanded "the immediate cancellation of the external debt of the developing countries and recognition of the ecological debt of the rich".

Economic incentives for sustainable lifestyles should be provided by the use of ecotaxes to apply environmental costs, it said. The resolution also demanded an end to the production of and trade in weapons in all parts of the world and "an immediate end to the production, trial and sale of genetically engineered organisms".

SWEDISH ISLAND RESORT LOOKS TO TAKE CARE OF ITS WATER
By Anna Platonova

BORGHOLM, May 25 (GYRP) - One of the most impressive things about Oland's wastewater plant is that it powers itself.

"The methanol gas from the waste drives the plant", says manager Pehr Fredsson. So no fossil fuels are used as the facility turns human waste into clean water for pouring into the Baltic Sea.

The atmosphere produced by the methane gas is less impressive, at least to a visiting group of young environmentalists from all over the world.

"The smell just blew us away," says Anna from Belarus.

But unsavory odors aside, Fredsson's plant provides a crucial example of efficient environmental treatment of the sea, which surrounds this long, thin island off southeastern Sweden.

The water in two glasses shown to the group, one of them containing fresh drinking water and the other the cleaned up wastewater, looked exactly the same. Although Fredsson advised the tour guide not to drink from the latter, the water in it was clean enough to be discharged into the sea.

The Baltic Sea is a relatively shallow inland sea surrounded by the nine European countries. The exchange of water between the Baltic and the rest of the world's oceans occurs very slowly. Any foreign substance entering the seawaters remains there for over a quarter of a century, often long enough to have drastic effects.

The waste substances come in the form of municipal and industrial effluents, as well as leakage from farming and forestry, and discharges from shipping.

Many initiatives on water are being taken by the UN Environmental Programme, European Union and other European countries, aimed at radically improving the way water resources are used and managed across Europe, including the Baltic Sea region.

Oland, one of Sweden's main holiday resort areas, takes water seriously. As guide Seppo Eklund, who moved here 25 years ago to work with the environment, explains, the region is facing a drinking water shortage.

Oland has 3,000 inhabitants, but the number rises dramatically in summer when visitors flock there from other parts of Sweden to enjoy its fine beaches and cycle across its flowery heaths.

The island extracts its water from 16 wells, according to Stefan Jenssen, head of the Kopingsviks Vattenverk, the water supply plant. This is treated with chemicals and pumped through pipes for consumption.

During winter about 3,000 cubic meters of drinking water per day are enough for the community, he says. However in summer, when the tourists come, daily consumption increases to 7,000 cubic meters.

For some of the young environmentalists, who were attending the EU-sponsored Youth Conference on Sustainable Development and Environment held on May 23-27 in Oland's main town, Borgholm, the very sight of the Baltic was impressive.

"I have never seen the real sea before I came to Borgholm, only the Caspian one, which is actually a lake", said Giza, a 17-year-old chemistry student from Kazakhstan.

FAILURE TO ACHIEVE SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT NOT AN OPTION, YOUTH CONFERENCE TOLD
By Sopaporn Saeung (Yong)(Thailand), Aloysius Nwuzi (Nigeria) and Rob Johnson (Canada)

BORGHOLM, May 24 (GYRP) - Swedish Environment Minister Kjell Larsson called on the world's young people on Thursday to take up the challenge of sustainable development with a warning that the world could not afford failure.

"You are the first generation that absolutely must not fail," he told 250 delegates at a EU-sponsored youth conference in Sweden. "If you don't succeed, it will be a heavy blow to all future generations."

In a message delivered to the opening ceremony by Larsson, Prime Minister Goran Persson urged the young men and women from more than 100 countries to take home with them the message that the world could not go on developing in a way that jeopardized life on earth.

"Without a sustainable development, everything we do in other fields will be in vain," Persson said.

Larsson said that the Youth Conference on Sustainable Development and Environment, held on May 23-27 in the summer resort town of Borgholm in south-east Sweden, would help him draw up recommendations for next year's world environment summit in Johannesburg.

The delegates, mainly aged between 18 and 25, are discussing issues such as economic globalization, conservation, cooperation between multinational and national organizations, youth empowerment and preparations for the Johannesburg meeting, known as Rio+10.

Tore Brevik, spokesperson for the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), told the opening ceremony that the world had moved on from "economic interdependence to ecological interdependence".

"Human survival should be hinged on ethical considerations, people empowerment, poverty elimination and participatory development as the basis for pursuing a sustainable development agenda globally," he said.

Brevik said UNEP's governing council had mandated the organization to strengthen youth involvement in its programmes.

Yoke Ling Chee, Environment Coordinator of the NGO Third World Network, told delegates that the high hopes raised at the first world environment summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 had been disappointed.

The much-expected economic growth and sound environmental management had not been achieved, she said. Rather, economic and ecological crises had persisted.

Promises made to developing nations had not been met. Rather, the disparity between developing and developed nations was widening. Globalization and internationalization had been employed by powerful nations to legitimize the exploitation of the poor and weak nations, Chee said.

"Since Rio we not only haven't achieved the goals or targets, but we have lost the spirit of hope," she said.

While calling on youth to challenge this trend, she maintained that globalization could be corrected to make it functional and beneficial to all nations.

Martin Rocholl, the director of Friends of the Earth Europe, also emphasized increasing environmental action from young people.

He said conserving the environment was important not just for the rich North but also for the poor South, and called for the elimination of political corruption and for better and more transparent policy implementation in developing countries.

The conference is structured around three working sessions: thematic, regional and project planning. Organizers aim to set up new networks and plans for cooperation and action, to start a process of youth mobilization in advance of Rio+10.

The Swedish government, which holds the presidency of the European Union until June 30, plans to use the concluding Borgholm Resolution for Change in its input for the EU delegation to Johannesburg.

NO CHANCE FOR KYOTO COMPROMISE NOW, SWEDISH MINISTER SAYS
By Narine Berikashvili (Georgia) and Anna Platonova (Latvia)

BORGHOLM, May 24 (GYRP) - Swedish Environment Minister Kjell Larsson said on Thursday he doubted the United States could be persuaded to sign the Kyoto Protocol but promised to press on with the controversial climate change treaty anyhow.

"I do not think it is possible now to see a chance of reaching a compromise with the United States," he said in an interview during a youth environment conference in Sweden.

The Bush administration has made clear it rejects the 1997 agreement, aimed at tackling greenhouse gases and global warming, arguing that it should apply to developing countries as well as the industrialized states and would harm the U.S. economy.

Larsson said it had taken 10 years to get to this point and to start now from the beginning and develop some other kind of global compromise would mean wasting a lot of time. No single country should be allowed to prevent other countries going ahead, he said.

"We think it's very important to continue working with the Kyoto protocol because that's the instrument we have, that's the only game in town," he said.

Larsson, whose government holds the rotating presidency of the European Union until June 30, is in the southeast Swedish resort of Borgholm for the four-day Youth Conference on Environment and Sustainable Development.

He said it should be possible to ratify the protocol before next year's world environment summit in Johannesburg.

The protocol, which commits industrialized countries to cut their emissions of carbon dioxide by 5 percent of 1990 levels by 2010, will come into force if states responsible for more than 55 percent of the climate-changing gases ratify it.

The United States is responsible for at least 25 percent of greenhouse gases.

"Japan might be a key country for the Kyoto process", Larsson said. "If Japan wants to go along with Europe and Russia, it will be possible to apply the protocol, if they don't do that, I don't think it will be possible."

He expressed the hope that after a discussion and a policy review, the U.S. authorities would come to the conclusion that world governments had to act together to solve the problems for the future of the planet.

"I really think that it is possible for us to work on the basis of the Kyoto protocol, …and to be able to ratify it before the Johannesburg summit", Larsson said. The process that led to the Kyoto Protocol was initiated at the first world environmental summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992.

Discussing the costs of the implementation of the protocol for national economies, the minister said it should be seen more as a great opportunity and the driving force to find clean technologies and new solutions.

The minister said it had been calculated it would cost the United States no more than one percentage point of its gross national product. In other words a certain level of economic production would be reached 4-5 months later than it would otherwise have been done, he said. Countries had to be able to afford it in the face of the future global problems such as climate change.

Commenting on the negative reaction the U.S. stance on Kyoto had provoked worldwide, the Swedish minister was reluctant to discuss any government or political boycott from the European Union. But he said that as private consumers people could choose what petrol and what products they bought.

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