Allow me, on behalf of the Commission of Sustainable Development 10, acting as a Preparatory Committee for the World Summit on Sustainable Development, to give participants a brief report on our preparation for the World Summit.

 The task is to review the achievements made since Rio,  10 years ago, to draw the lessons that need to be learned and to draw up a plan for the future. Our approach is based on deliberations starting at the bottom and moving up, beginning with deliberations at the sub-regional level and moving to the regional, European, North American, West Asian, Asia and the Pacific, African, Latin America and Caribbean levels.

The second Preparatory Committee meeting was held last April. All these deliberations were then merged into a proposal for a programme of action that covers major points, such as poverty eradication, changing the unsustainable pattern of consumption and production, protecting and managing the natural-resource base for economic and social development, sustainable development in a globalizing world; health and sustainable development; sustainable development in small Island developing States, sustainable development initiatives for Africa and the means of implementation. These are the focus of our programme for the next World Summit.

This programme will then be translated into public private partnership arrangements that we hope can be agreed at the next Preparatory Committee meeting, which begins next week on 25 March and concludes on 4 April. We hope that the programme will be backed up with a plan of action, as reflected in the public private partnership programme.

 At the third Preparatory Committee meeting, to be held from 26 March to 4 April, we hope that we can discuss sustainable development governance and begin to establish the day-to-day ingredients for negotiation of the implementation programme and to collect ideas for the political document.

 As participants can see, our discussion next week will be based on the achievements of the Doha trade deliberations, as well as the current Monterrey finance deliberations. So our efforts for the World Summit on Sustainable Development are based on both Doha and Monterrey. We hope that the fourth Preparatory Committee meeting will be held from 27 May to 7 June in Bali. We hope to finalize the major outcomes of that Summit. First is the negotiated implementation programme, backed by a public private partnership arrangement and supported by political will, as reflected in the negotiated political document that will be discussed at the Bali ministerial meeting to be held from 27 May to 7 June.

 Those are the outcomes of the coming World Summit on which we hope to reach consensus, in order to present it in September in Johannesburg. These are the major ingredients that we hope will give substance to the outcome of the World Summit on Sustainable Development to be held in Johannesburg from 26 August to 4 September.

 We have come a long way, starting in September 2000 with the Millennium Declaration, moving to Doha, drafting the development agenda of trade and now the development agenda for finance at Monterrey, and bringing them to the World Summit. We hope, therefore, that the development agenda will become a sustainable development, covering environmental, social and economic sustainability. With this, we hope that, starting with Johannesburg, we can rebuild the world, making it economically, socially and environmentally sustainable.

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