Speech at the Opening of the 5th World
Parks Congress, 8 September 2003
Patrons of the Congress, President Nelson Mandela and
Her Royal Highness Queen Noor of Jordan;
His Majesty King Zwelithini;
Honourable Presidents;
Honourable Members of the Diplomatic Corps;
Honourable Ministers and MEC's;
President of the IUCN, Yolanda Kakabadse;
Director-General of IUCN, Achim Steiner;
Mayor of Durban, Mr Obed Mlaba;
Distinguished delegates and guests;
Members of the media;
Ladies and Gentlemen:
I am honoured to welcome you to Durban and South Africa
and to wish you a successful and productive stay in
this important port city of our country, Ethekwini.
I trust that you will find your working conditions conducive
to a fruitful interaction among yourselves as delegates
at this important 5th World Parks Congress.
Chairperson:
We must assume this to be true that throughout its
existence, humanity has continuously pursued the goal
of the maximum material and spiritual fulfilment of
the human being.
The specific and immediate goals that various societies
have set themselves have varied through the ages. In
many instances these have been governed by the balance
of power within each of these societies.
In this country, all our people are engaged in an unrelenting
struggle to decide what the national agenda is, and
who should set this agenda.
We must presume that a similar contest is taking place
within the global human society. Necessarily, the outcome
of this context will be determined within the paradigm
of the distribution of power in the world in which we
live.
We have convened here as the 5th World Parks Congress.
In this context, it might very well seem that we have
a very clear agenda to address.
In this context, our Minister of Environment and Tourism,
the Hon Mohamed Valli Moosa, has said I must say the
following:
"Over time, protected areas have become a universally
adopted way of conserving natural ecosystems. Today,
more than 20 000 protected areas, covering nearly 5
percent of the earth's land surface, have been established
in more than 130 countries.
"Such areas are meant to conserve the diversity
of species (both plant and animal) as well as the genetic
variation within them; maintain the productive capacities
of ecosystems; preserve historic and cultural features
of importance; secure landscapes and wildlife, which
enrich human experience through their beauty; provide
opportunities for community development, science, research,
education, training, recreation and tourism; and serve
as sources of national pride and human inspiration.
"Our natural resources and biodiversity are a
priceless heritage. They hold the keys to many of our
challenges on this earth: from pharmaceutical properties
to strengthening the gene base of our basic foodstuffs.
We cannot afford to lose these resources - that is why
this congress is crucial to people's well being. Yet
conservation management faces enormous constraints.
These include threats to biodiversity from land degradation,
climate change, human settlement and alien invasive
species. They include lack of funds, high levels of
poverty in and around protected areas, poaching and
plant theft, and threats from extractive industries."
I fully agree with all these sentiments and observations
advanced by Minister Valli Moosa. I agree also with
other things he suggested I should say, that:
"We are gathered here today in the land of birth
of King Shaka, one of Africa's great leaders, to celebrate
and rejoice the world's achievements in the conservation
and management of biodiversity. This vision constitutes
the bedrock of economic upliftment, especially for the
poor.
"Now more than ever, we require new knowledge,
new ideas, new perspectives and relationships. This
Congress is charged with generating these."
The Congress will have to define these new things within
the context of extant global thinking about the future
of our common world and human society as a whole. Of
course, the question that then arises is whether such
a global consensus on matters of major concern exists.
I would argue that it both does, and must be a matter
of interest to this important 5th World Parks Congress.
The first point to make in this regard relates to the
important issue of globalisation. There is universal
recognition of the fact that, among other things, globalisation
means the accelerated integration of human society within
an unequal set of relationships within and between countries.
This has given birth to such concepts as a global village
and a common neighbourhood.
The fact of such integration has been emphasised by
such phenomena as the East Asian financial and economic
crisis on 1997/98, the recent outbreak and spread of
SARS, and such matters as climate change and global
warming.
In this context, I would like to draw the attention
of the Congress to the unanimous position adopted by
the countries of the world as reflected in the UN Millennium
Declaration, which said:
"We believe that the central challenge we face
today is to ensure that globalisation becomes a positive
force for all the world's people. For while globalisation
offers great opportunities, at present its benefits
are very unevenly shared, while its costs are unevenly
distributed. We recognise that developing countries
and countries with economies in transition face special
difficulties in responding to this central challenge.
Thus, only through broad and sustained efforts to create
a shared future, based upon our common humanity in all
its diversity, can globalisation be made fully inclusive
and equitable. These efforts must include policies and
measures, at the global level, which correspond to the
needs of developing countries and economies in transition
and are formulated and implemented with their effective
participation."
And of direct relevance to this Congress, last year's
Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development
reaffirmed these conclusions. In its Political Declaration,
it said:
"From this Continent, the Cradle of Humanity,
we declare, through the Plan of Implementation and this
Declaration, our responsibility to one another, to the
greater community of life and to our children."
Accordingly, I believe that in its deliberations the
World Parks Congress should focus on the issue of "a
shared future, based upon our common humanity in all
its diversity", and "our responsibility to
one another, to the greater community of life and to
our children." This calls for a special focus on
the matter of national parks in Africa and the rest
of the developing world, which we should treat as part
of a common human heritage, deserving of protection
and expansion for the benefit of all humanity.
This brings us to the second matter we believe constitutes
one of the central issues of the common global agenda.
This is the issue of poverty and underdevelopment.
In this regard, the Millennium Declaration said:
"We will spare no effort to free our fellow men,
women and children from the abject and dehumanising
conditions of extreme poverty, to which more than a
billion of them are currently subjected. We are committed
to making the right to development a reality for everyone
and to freeing the entire human race from want."
The Declaration of the World Summit on Sustainable
Development also addressed this matter when it said:
"The deep fault line that divides human society
between the rich and the poor and the ever-increasing
gap between the developed and developing worlds pose
a major threat to global prosperity, security and stability."
The commitment made in the Millennium Declaration was
informed by the reality that human society has the financial,
technological and human capital to achieve the objective
of freeing the entire human race from want, of effectively
addressing the deep fault line that divides human society
between the rich and the poor.
The reality we face is that poverty and underdevelopment
constitute an important obstacle to the achievement
of the goals we spoke of earlier, which this Congress
must seek to reinforce.
These include the conservation of the diversity of
species (both plant and animal) as well as the genetic
variation within them; maintaining the productive capacities
of ecosystems; preserving historic and cultural features
of importance; securing landscapes and wildlife, which
enrich human experience through their beauty, and so
on.
The mere search for food among poor people, who have
limited access to the various means to sustain life
available to people in the developed world, has put
pressure and will continue to put pressure on the national
parks in poor countries.
Mere exhortations to poor people to value and respect
the ecosystems contained within national parks will
not succeed. It is critically important that alternative
means of livelihood be found for the poor of the world,
so that they are not forced to act in a manner that
undermines the global effort to protect these ecosystems,
driven by hunger and underdevelopment.
Similarly, we must work to ensure proper accountability
on the part of the corporations of the developed and
other countries, so that they undertake their economic
activities, fully taking into account the imperatives
of sustainable development, which includes the protection
of the national parks.
If this World Congress is convinced that "our
natural resources and biodiversity are a priceless heritage
(and
that) they hold the keys to many of our challenges on
this earth", as I am certain it is, it must then
act on these matters in a way that ensures us success.
In this regard, I return to the statement we made earlier,
that human society disposes of all the necessary means
we need to ensure that we achieve the goal stated in
the Millennium Declaration, to make the right to development
a reality for everyone and to free the entire human
race from want.
As the distinguished delegates are aware, our continent,
Africa, has decided on the New Partnership for Africa's
Development, NEPAD. The protection of the African environment
is one of the priority areas of focus of the New Partnership.
It would therefore be the wish and hope of the governments
and peoples of our continent that this World Parks Congress
will join in this Partnership, to reinforce Africa's
efforts to address the very same challenges this Congress
will address.
As an expression of the African resolve to address
the environmental challenges we face, an African Ministerial
Conference on the Environment held earlier this year
decided on the African Areas Protected Initiative.
This Initiative seeks to develop, for all African countries,
a well-managed system of protected areas that will meet
with the environmental and social needs of each country.
It is based on the environment component of the NEPAD
programme.
Accordingly, it is perhaps appropriate that the 5th
World Parks Congress should take place in Africa. Nevertheless,
our continent is humbled by the confidence and trust
that the people of the world have bestowed on us through
the "IUCN - World Conservation Union", by
agreeing that Africa should host the 5th World Parks
Congress.
In the decade ahead, conservation will face many thorny
issues from approaches to the commercialisation of national
parks, finding the middle ground in the co-management
of parks with communities and peoples, to the creation
of effective transfrontier protected areas that facilitate
regional peace, growth and development. Undoubtedly,
one of the most important challenges that we will face
is to formulate a productive and inclusive working relationship
with controversial land use industries such as the mines
and other extractive industries.
Our own freedom has made possible new ways of working
together and the restoration of land to communities
forcibly removed from their lands, some of which are
today protected areas. This gives this Congress a special
meaning for us as South Africans.
In as much as we can learn from others experiences,
our own experience in the first decade of freedom has
valuable lessons, as do our achievements in giving communities
a stake in the development of protected areas.
The theme of the 5th World Parks Congress is "Benefits
beyond Boundaries". We, together with the rest
of the peoples of the world do indeed expect that this
important Congress will help to bring benefits to all,
recognising the reality that the existence of boundaries
should not be a fetter on human fulfilment.
I wish you a successful World Parks Congress.
Thank you.
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