The World Summit on Sustainable Development, to be held in Johannesburg this year, is an important landmark in the global imperative of sustainable development. Coming a decade after the historic United Nations Conference on Environment and Development at Rio de Janeiro, it will take a look at the road travelled so far, assess our successes and many shortcomings, and proclaim again our collective commitment to sustainability, without which "development" is meaningless.

I am glad that the Ministry of Environment and Forests has brought out a detailed  study – Empowering People for Sustainable Development – which persuasively  presents India's perspectives on sustainable development. The principles of the Rio Declaration, which govern Agenda 21, as well as other major agreements on environment and development adopted at Rio in 1992, resonate with core Indian cultural values that also find reflection in our Constitution. This accounts for the enthusiasm and commitment with which India has engaged in the implementation of Agenda 21, which is integrated into our national development plans.

Our democratic governance, comprising cooperative federalism, commitment to decentralization, an independent judiciary, a vigilant media, and an engaged civil society, provide the enabling framework to attain the objectives of sustainable development. Yet the dynamics of having a population of one billion people being sustained on a comparatively low natural resource base poses an enormous challenge. Sustained efforts in addressing this challenge have shaped our strategy that is specific to our social and economic context but is, at the same time, consistent with global concerns and initiatives. This report outlines the broad contours of our strategy.

Combating poverty and empowering people is one part of our strategy of implementing Agenda 21. Using innovative programmes and by committing required resources, we aim to reduce the number of people below the poverty line by more than half - to just about 10 percent - by the year 2012. In this task of improving and sustaining the livelihoods of millions of poor we have sought to empower people to manage and sustainably use natural resources to improve their well-being. By decentralizing governance we have entrusted the environmental resources of more than half a million Indian villages to more than 3.4 million elected representatives. They include 1.12 million women representatives in what has been a revolutionary initiative for women's empowerment, an initiative which we wish to further strengthen in the coming years.

Using our appreciable scientific and technological capabilities and setting specific environmental standards for different sectors, supported by robust institutions and legislations, constitute the other part of our strategy in implementing Agenda 21. We are applying science and technology to solve problems of safe drinking water, sanitation, agriculture productivity, forest conservation, vehicular emissions, cleaner energy and atmosphere monitoring. Strict, but attainable environmental standards have been set across different sectors that are being monitored by empowered institutions. A judicious mix of economic incentives and international co-operation supports the efforts at achieving these standards.

International co-operation constitutes the heart of Agenda 21. This, however, has been a principal area of its weakness. The expectations of necessary external assistance to supplement the own resources of developing countries for implementation of Agenda 21 have been comprehensively belied. Further, the continued presence of tariff and non-tariff barriers to trade, particularly in agriculture, affecting developing countries, and road blocks that prevent transfer of environmentally sound technologies to developing countries remain some of the concerns that put question mark on the compact between developing and the developed countries evolved at Rio ten years ago. I strongly hope that WSSD will help remove such impediments to sustainability.

I hope that this document would serve as a useful input into the pursuit of sustainable development in India - and be of some use to other countries as well                                                                    

(A.B. Vajpayee)