NGOs bring sustainability message to Johannesburg

Taiwan's efforts to promote environmental protection and ensure sustainable development are on display in Johannesburg, representatives of Taiwanese non-governmental organizations (NGOs) said yesterday.

The UN's World Summit on Sustainable Development, which begins today and runs until Sept. 4, is being held on the 10th anniversary of the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, at which the international community adopted Agenda 21, an unprecedented global plan of action for achieving sustainable development.

Aware of the diplomatic difficulties, both NGOs and the government are groping for a way into one of its parallel events -- the Civil Society Global Forum.

At the forum, four booths established by representatives of Taiwan Action NGOs (TANGOs), an integrated group composed of dozens of organizations with a variety of missions, caught other participates' eyes.

"Each day we highlight a single issue to reveal our effort to our counterparts from other countries," said TANGOs spokeswoman Mary Chen (陳曼麗), who is also board chairperson of the Homemakers' Union and Foundation (主婦聯盟).

TANGOs' strategies to explain Taiwan's efforts in sustainable development seemed to be paying off.

Saturday's topic of chemical and toxic pollution caught the attention of anti-incinerator groups from Norway. Kurt Oddekalv, head of the environmental group Norges Milj?vernforbund, expressed his interest the accumulation of toxic chemicals in Taiwan.

"In Johannesburg we can built connections which will be further strengthened," Herlin Hsieh (謝和霖) of Taiwan Watch Institute (看守台灣協會) told the Taipei Times.

Hsieh said that environmental groups in Norway had different ways of promoting sustainable development than those in Taiwan.

"Groups with more advanced ideas even help the government on promoting diverse environmental concepts, such as garbage classification and recycling," Hsieh said.

TANGOs delegates linked environmental and gender issues, highlighting women's aggressive participation in the environmental movement.

Juju Wang (王俊秀), the group's leader, said yesterday that TANGOs' members also seized opportunities to participate in hearings held by major groups from other countries to connect Taiwan to the world.

Wang said that discussions with NGOs from China was a productive way to promote global sustainable development. He said that communication had been made with Chinese environmental activists over the past two days.

Compared with Taiwan, the environmental movement in China is still in its infancy. Until 1994, when Liang Congjie (梁從誡) established the Friends of Nature (自然之友) in Beijing, China lacked an NGO to promote sustainable development.