Geneva, Palais des Nations - May 3-6, 2000
CITIES OF THE SOUTH:
SUSTAINABLE FOR WHOM?
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ESF/N-AERUS International Workshop Geneva, Palais des Nations - May 3-6, 2000
CITIES OF THE SOUTH:
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| WORKSHOP: HOME PAGE - INDEX OF PAPERS |
Sherif El Diwany
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Sustainable development is a widely discussed topic and is by its nature complex, controversial and subtle. National policy makers, international development agencies, leaders and experts, and people debate this topic; some emotionally, some technically and some politically. In fact in the literature and in the media one can see that it means many things for different people. Most debates of sustainable development center around the extent to which humanity can, given the resources of its planet, feed itself, produce economic value for itself and govern itself justly. The challenges emerge with the disagreement on how to handle and share the produce of our ecosystems and economic activity. On the national level this is fundamentally the choice of the people who have the vested right to decide on the "how". But ecosystems do not stop at the borders of nations, and that is why another level of complication is encountered. Economic activity is also now very quickly crossing national borders. While on a national scale resolving conflicting interests and making just choices depends to a large degree on the quality of national governance, on an international scale the issue is not quite simple. At best one could assume that human knowledge on national governance exceeds by far, its knowledge of international governance. The fact is, from the "southern perspective" the international community does not have a credible and inclusive governance system as of yet.
N-AERUS: Network-Association of European Researchers on Urbanisation in the South
http://www.naerus.net