Statement to the SPAC Caucus
- Jeffrey Barber, Co-Coordinator to the SPAC Caucus
Oct 21st 2003
Dear
SPAC Caucus friends,
1. October 31 input to Secretary General's paper
As you may already
know, 31 October is the deadline for input into the Secretary General's
"State of Implementation" report to CSD12 (19-30 April 2004, New
York). This will be the key discussion paper influencing that session.
If your organization is interested in giving direct input to the
Secretariat for the discussion paper, you should go to the CSD website
and use their major groups input form and get this to them before
the 31 October deadline. The Guidelines for Major Groups Participation
can be found at: http://www.un.org/esa/sustdev/mgroups/csd_12/major_groups_guidelines_2003.pdf
2. SPAC Caucus statement
We also ask for your input and participation in a response
from the SPAC Caucus.
In response to the 31 October input, we should also send them a
short collective statement from the SPAC Caucus. It is
important for the Secretariat to know that NGOs will continue to
work together to promote efforts towards sustainable production
and consumption -- what the World Summit on Sustainable Development
identified as one of the the "overarching objectives of sustainable
development."
At a minimum, this statement should contain common points (highlighted
within the CSD-12 context) that the Caucus has been raising over
the past years (e.g., the need for governments to develop national
policy frameworks/strategies on SPAC, using the Consumer Guidelines,
moving forward on the commitments they've made in the past, supporting
civil society participation in SPAC decision-maklng).
So please send your suggestions and thoughts on this, either to
the Caucus listserver at spaccaucus@icspac.net or directly to Veena
Ramani (she will be coordinating the drafting and approval process)
or to me. We have just two weeks so send your thoughts on this now!
I will try to have an initial draft ready by the end of next week
and use the final week to make sure we are all in agreement on the
language. So please reserve a few minutes of your time for this.
Best regards,
Jeffrey Barber