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BACKGROUND Countries of the hemisphere of the Americas meet in SantaCruz de la Sierra, Bolivia — during the First Inter-AmericanMeeting of Ministers andHigh-Level Authorities onSustainable Development — in a time of unprecedentedchange. Since the first Summitof the Americas on SustainableDevelopment was held in1996, progress continues in integrating economic devel-opment, social equality andenvironmental protection underthe framework of sustainabledevelopment. Advances continue at the national andinternational levels in environ-mental law, environmental governance, supporting publicparticipation in decision-making, and forging public-private sector partnerships. The remarkable transformationsunderway in such information technologies as satellite sensing, remote sensing and geographic information systemsare reshaping sustainable development policies, to advanceour understanding of environmental change, to improveland-use planning, and to put in place early-warning systems for natural disasters.

Improvements in tracking the scale of economic, environ-mental and technological change also reveal the extent ofchallenges before the international community in buildingsustainable development. According to the MillenniumEcosystem Assessment (2005), as much as 60 percent of the planet's critical ecosystems are currently degraded or are being used unsustainably. As critical ecosystem servicesare undermined, the achievement of the MillenniumDevelopment Goals will become more difficult.

SUSTAINABLEDEVELOPMENTCHALLENGESIn the past decade, the conceptof sustainable development hasentered the policy vernacular.However, translating the prom-ise of sustainable developmentinto concrete, on-the-groundaction remains distant.

Today, over 75 million people inthe Americas lack access to cleanwater. More than 137 millionlack access to adequate sanita-tion. A growing number of communities are exposed to natural and man-made disasters.Agriculture is among the mostsignificant sources of livelihoodin the hemisphere. However,rural poverty and social exclu-sion remain major problems.While some progress has beenmade in supporting sustainableagriculture, sustainable forest

management and sustainable tourism, win-win marketsremain fledgling, and their benefits have not alleviated ruralpoverty. Over the past decade, the hemisphere recorded thehighest rate of forest loss of any region on the planet: approx-imately four million hectares of forest disappear on averageeach year, exacerbating a host of developmental, social andenvironmental problems, including the loss of productivetop-soils for agricultural production; increasing water-management problems related to sedimentation; increasingthe risks of flooding and mud-slides; and accelerating the loss of the region's rich endowment of biological diversity.

The human health implications of environmental degrada-tion are being understood more clearly by the scientific community. Pollution and environmental destruction areconsidered to be the “trigger” for one-quarter of all global

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Sustainable Development and theOrganization of American States

In the past decade, the concept of sustainable development hasentered the policy vernacular.

However, translating the promise of sustainable development intoconcrete, on-the-ground action

remains distant.

diseases that could be averted. For children, the situation is worse: theWorld Health Organization determinesthat environmental exposure causes one-third of all diseases of children underfive. Compounding existing environ-mental concerns, the human healtheffects of climate change are only nowbeginning to be understood. By alter-ing average temperatures and rainfallpatterns, extreme events — such asmore frequent and more powerful hurricanes and tropical storms, as wellas extreme drought — are expected toincrease in the coming years. Thesechanges are expected by many scientiststo increase the incidence of several environmental health problems, including malaria and other diseases.

Those most affected by environmentaldegradation are the more than 200 million people in the hemispheretrapped in poverty. The vicious cycle ofpoverty, income inequality and environ-mental degradation remains the majorchallenge to countries in translatingsustainable development into action.

Linking Environmental Degradationand Economics: A long-standing chal-lenge to sustainable development is to integrate environmentalconsiderations into economics and the developmental agenda.The consequences of environment-related human health problems cost billions per annum, measured in higher health-care expenditures, lost earnings and lower productivity.Water contamination alone leads to thousands of prematuredeaths each year: according to the Pan-American HealthOrganization, dirty water affects the health of 75 million people in the hemisphere.

Among the conclusions of the November 2006 Report to theUN Secretary General on UN reform regarding the sustainabledevelopment and environmental agendas is the need to main-stream economic considerations into policy-making, and tomake better-use of a range of environmental economic tools,including cost-benefit analysis, valuation and other well-established methodologies.

The Department of Sustainable Development is working with member States and key partners from civil society and the private financial services sector to improve understanding of the links between economic development and the environment.It seeks to disseminate information and best practices that haveoriginated within the region in innovative financing arrange-ments, such as Payment for Ecological Services (PES). An on-line database of recent PES projects and transactions,

including lessons from Costa Rica,Colombia, Brazil and others, was createdto identify tangible, concrete policies that deliver win-win developmental andenvironmental benefits.

Regional Cooperation and Leadership:Advances in Payment for EcologicalServices is one of many examples inwhich countries of the Americas haveadopted innovative policies to addresssustainable development challenges.Countries of the hemisphere are leadersin a range of sustainable developmentactions, notably forging cooperation tomanage transboundary water resources.Some of the oldest water cooperationtreaties in the world originate in theAmericas. Examples include cooperationbetween Nicaragua and Costa Rica insupporting the sustainable managementof the San Juan River Basin; the eight-country Amazon Cooperation Treaty -which marks its 25th anniversary in2006; the five-country La Plata BasinTreaty among many others.

For more than thirty years, the OASDepartment of Sustainable Developmenthas worked with countries in supportingtheir efforts to strengthen cooperation

in integrated water resource management. In the past decade, it has worked with member countries through the GlobalEnvironment Facility (GEF) and partner organizations of theUnited Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and theWorld Bank on a number of GEF-supported internationalwaters projects and programs.

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The Department of Sustainable Development currentlyexecutes over 50 multi-country programs and projects with a combined (co-financing) value of approximately$80 million, or approximately $10 million per annum.Given limited financial resources to address numerousproblems, the thematic areas of action comprise:

■ Sustainable management of freshwater resources;

■ Improving risk reduction for natural disasters;

■ Advancing renewable energy and energy efficiency;

■ Supporting the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity;

■ Promoting the sound management of chemicals; and

■ Environmental Law and Policy.

Environmental Governance: One lesson of recent years inbuilding sustainable development is the indispensable rolethat good governance plays. Good environmental governancecovers a range of issues, including supporting participation and accountable decision-making, ensuring open access to environmental information, the political process and the judicial system. The OAS member States have made a strongcommitment to basic notions of good governance, includingthe adoption of the Inter-American Strategy for thePromotion of Public Participationin Decision-Making forSustainable Development (ISP) in 2000 and the Inter-AmericanDemocratic Charter in 2001.Building upon these commitments,the Department of SustainableDevelopment works with membercountries in five inter-related areas of good governance.

Information for Decision-Making: A prerequisite of effective policy-making is that it be guided by timely andaccurate information. A key activity of the GEF-portfolio of international waters activities executed by the OAS is toconduct a scientific diagnostic of some of the most importantwider water basins on the planet. For example, scientificassessments formed the basis of projects in the wider SanJuan basin-which includes the largest freshwater lake inCentral America; the wider Amazon River Basin-the largestand most important hydrological system on the planet; thewider La Plata Basin; the Pantanal-the largest wetland area in the hemisphere; and the Guarani-the largest groundwateraquifer under co-management in the world.

These scientific studies are helping countries identify existingand emerging risks critical to policy planning. For example,both the GEF-supported Amazon and Plata projects are identifying the possible impacts of climate change on thosefreshwater basins. This information will become critical ascountries examine the regional impacts of climate change onhydrological cycles, and the upstream and downstream effects

on development, including energy, agriculture and ruraldevelopment, and transportation.

In the area of natural disasters, the Department ofSustainable Development focuses on bridging increasinglysophisticated early warning systems, based on satelliteimagery, GIS systems and other sensing devices, with localcommunity and planning needs. Examples include work inthe Caribbean in mapping communities and infrastructure

vulnerable to climate change, andproviding assistance in practical risk-reduction activities that improvethe resilience of communities,homes and public buildings,through appropriate building codes and standards, and linkingland-title data with land zoning.

In the area of biodiversity conserva-tion, the Department of Sustainable Development worksthrough the Inter-American Biodiversity InformationNetwork (IABIN) to facilitate on-going partnerships amongscientific institutions, national parks, and non-governmentalorganizations in improving the quality and accessibility ofinformation related to biodiversity.

In the area of environmental law and policy, the Departmentof Sustainable Development serves as a regional forum fordialogue and exchange among OAS member States regardingdevelopments in legal institutional frameworks, enhancingthe capacity of countries to meet challenges related to thelink between economic development and environmental protection.

More recently, the Department of Sustainable Developmenthas responded to requests from countries in helping them inthe sound management of chemicals, including identifyingsub-regional cooperation options in managing priority chemicals such as PCBs, furans and other persistent organicpollutants covered under the Stockholm Convention onPersistent Organic Pollutants.

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The Department of Sustainable Development is working with member States to improve understanding of the links between

economic development and the environment.

One lesson of recent years in building sustainable

development is the indispensable role that good

governance plays.

Access to EnvironmentalInformation: A closely related component of good governanceis to ensure that information isaccessible to the key actors inthe public and private sectors.The Department of SustainableDevelopment helps countriessupport improvements in theaccessibility of information,through various hemispheric networks.

Other examples include sup-porting virtual forums to trackprogress in the implementationof commitments adopted bythe ministers of health andenvironment at the Health andEnvironment Ministers of theAmericas (HEMA) meeting,held in Mar del Plata,Argentina, in June 2005.

Technical Capacity Building:All the projects and programsof the Department ofSustainable Development comprise technical capacity-building, intended to respondto requests from member countries. For example, the major focus of natural disaster riskreduction is to work with national and municipal authorities in“bridging” early warning information with local community needs,as well as increasing the resilience of communities to natural disas-ters, through such efforts as improving the enforcement of buildingcodes and standards, linking land zoning and land title efforts withdisaster mitigation efforts, and providing information to communi-ties regarding climate vulnerability in the Caribbean region.

In renewable energy, the Department of Sustainable Developmentprovides technical information to countries including practicalmeasures regarding pre-financing to expand its deployment. Inenvironmental law and policy, the Department works with membercountries in improving environmental assessments of developmentoptions, as well as providing training to strengthen legal and insti-tutional frameworks for environmental management, in the contextof increasing developing challenges.

In integrated water resource management, capacity buildingactions support the developmentof water management policies,laws and regulations at thenational, regional and local levels;the establishment of improvedinstitutional frameworks; theassessment of environmental conditions and changes; buildingof capacity of local communities,including indigenous groups, insustainable land management;and disseminating best practicesand facilitating technology transfer, among others.

Public Participation: A cross-cutting feature of all programs andprojects of the OAS is to supportproactively public participation. Inthe process of developing policiesat the hemispheric level, a stan-dard practice of the Department is to solicit civil society input,through regional consultationsand virtual on-line forums.Moreover, the implementation of participatory and decentralizedprojects for the integrated man-agement of water resources in the

transboundary river basins are models used elsewhere. For example,during the preparation of the Sao Francisco and Upper Paraguay/Pantanal projects, thousands of individuals in local communities,including municipal authorities have been directly engaged in con-sultations towards the formulation of policies and partnerships.

For more information on the work of the DSD, please seehttp://www.oas.org/dsd/

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INFORMATION AND CAPACITY-BUILDING NETWORKS

AND VIRTUAL FORUMSOne lesson of sustainable development is the role thatgood governance plays in supporting national and regionalaction. The Department of Sustainable Developmentworks closely with representatives of national govern-ments, as well as civil society and international partnerssuch as UNEP, the World Bank, IICA, PAHO and IDB, insupporting various Inter-American networks for sus-tainable development. These networks share commoncharacteristics of sharing technical information for capaci-ty-building and best practices as well as lessons in whatdid not work and why. The current system of hemispher-ic networks includes:

■ The Inter-American Water Resource Network(IWRN);

■ The Renewable Energy in the Americas Initiative(REIA);

■ The Renewable Energy and Energy EfficiencyPartnership (REEEP);

■ The Inter-American Biodiversity Information Network(IABIN);

■ The Inter-American Network for Disaster Mitigation(INDM); and

■ The Inter-American Forum on Environmental Law(FIDA).