Facilitating joint ventures for sustainable development

Agenda 21 recommends developing, strengthening and forging new partnerships among national, regional and global capacities to promote the full and open exchange of scientific and technological data and information and to facilitate technical assistance related to environmentally sound and sustainable development. This should be done through developing mechanisms for sharing basic research, data and information, and through improving and developing international networks and centres, including regional linking with national scientific databases, for research, training and monitoring. Such mechanisms should be designed so as to enhance professional cooperation among scientists in all countries and to establish strong national and regional alliances between industry and research institutions.

This strategy features in the framework of Agenda 21 as formulated at UNCED (Rio de Janeiro, 1992), now coordinated by the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development and implemented through national and local authorities.

The rapid growth of the demand for environmentally sustainable technologies (ESTs), particularly in developing and the newly industrializing countries and countries with economies in transition, opens up new opportunities for EST cooperation and partnerships. Expansion of global operations of major firms, as they set up foreign operations to enter markets, and seek foreign partners to develop new technologies, may also advance the scope for EST cooperation and partnership arrangements.

External evaluations of the scientific and technological cooperation programmes with developing countries and countries with economies in transition launched by the European Community, have highlighted a number of lessons for future cooperation in research and technological development: (i) the importance of mutuality in the project planning and implementation phase; (ii) the need to base scientific cooperation on the priority needs identified in developing countries and economies in transition. Also, that without local/national support, investments in human capital and scientific infrastructure are not sustainable; (iii) a clear need to see research priorities in relation to other policy areas such as development cooperation with third countries; (iv) greater input from local scientists in developing and Central and East European countries was necessary from project formulation through to management; and (v) the economic and environmental problems of sustainable development required an interdisciplinary approach. Building on local knowledge was vital to make research and its results relevant.