Where We Are Now and The Road Ahead

Also today and tomorrow we will be talking about our Water for the Poor Partnership and a very exiting conservation initiative in Central Africa in the Congo Basin. So a lot of partnership activity is going on and just as a reflection on how committed we are to this -- I know he would not talk about it personally -- but our Deputy Secretary for Agriculture and any many of his people yesterday went to one of the poorest neighborhoods in Johannesburg without the press, without any ceremony and spent the day improving a really impoverished neighborhood. I think it is on an old garbage dump, planting trees, helping with the community garden, raising money among themselves to buy seed for the coming year and I believe they are committed now to go raise some money privately to try to do an overall restoration for a very poor neighborhood here.

A lot of attention appropriately continues to look at the negotiations. Essentially the plan of action is done. I am sure they are looking at the final wording and whether there are technical fixes that have to take place. I think in summary it is an excellent framework, a very positive statement, a message of hope for the impoverished areas of the world, especially for developing, it provides a framework for a journey, a long term journey of making commitments, and as you heard us say in the past, the United States came here to prepare to commit to being a leading player along this journey. So there we have committed ourselves to many partnerships to meet critical needs and if you remind me before we leave, I have done a rough summary of what the total dollars are for some of these commitments, but it is significant.

If we go back to Monterrey and look at the commitments here, it is probably in excess of some $10 billion. Certainly one of the most impressive packages we are trying to raise, reduce poverty and start to build the path of sustainability our President has committed us to.

Just briefly on the Plan of Action. It is a wonderful, collective consensus around probably a thousand issues, but I think a reaffirmation of the Doha conference because obviously trade has to be a key component of any successful strategy of sustainability. The United States alone provides a market of $450 billion a year buying goods and services from the impoverished world. How can we all build on that commerce to lift the lives of people? It was a reaffirmation of the Monterrey framework, which I think is a new look, a new paradigm of how we increase the total flow of resources to the developing part of the world. One thing that I think was a significant accomplishment, a real breakthrough, was a consensus of the world family on the need to improve, and create an enabling environment in countries, in communities to fight violence, to fight corruption, to bring about democratic rule and the inclusion of the public in the decision making process; more transparency to the press and the public, fairer standards that are predictable, rule of law, honoring of contractual law, property rights, all the underpinning we need, whether you care about fighting about HIV/AIDS, whether you are going to increase vegetation, whether you are going to increase food production or whether you are going to protect tropical forests or restore watersheds. I think that is a significant commitment for the United States, and President Bush. That is an area the United States wants to be partner in, investing in that infrastructure, building that enabling framework to capture a lot more financing.

I know you probably all are interested, because yesterday a great deal of time was consumed on the energy package. I am pleased to have Grif Thompson here on the end and he was a great player in that and he can talk about the particulars of that, but I think we came out with an appropriate look at the overall challenge of access to energy. Energy has got to underpin any efforts to raise the hopes and dreams of people in impoverished parts of the world. But not only providing access but make all of this collectively work on making it a cleaner, more efficient use of energy. It also addresses the very serious issue of climate change.

So focus on renewables. The United States has been and will continue to be a world leader in the transfer and the providing of renewables both at home in the United States and around the world. But how can we help those developing nations that came out very strongly in the debate. They all have a different mix of how they are going to provide energy for their people and how they are going to be more efficient, more environmentally responsible. So trying to meet that, each nation in their sovereign interest is going to make different decisions recognizes that, especially in the developing world. We have a country like Brazil able and ready to move ahead on renewables, we’ve got a country like South Africa that said wait a minute, our fuel sources our approach has got to be different. So I think that language was a very positive statement on behalf of energy and we can certainly get Grif’s comments on more of the specifics if you are interested.

With that, those are a few comments on how we see some of the things going on right now. We look forward to your questions.

Emmy Simmons: Thank you. I would actually like to ask if Deputy Secretary Moseley has a few opening remarks he would like to make.

James Moseley: Well John, went into yesterday morning a little bit -- let me just give you a little bit greater detail on it. We took a group of about 30 people and we went to the poorest of the poor out here, close to Johannesburg. It was to Tutukani clinic, it is in the Ivory Park Township, Midrand and we drove past numerous shacks, very poor, impoverished conditions, and we finally arrived at this place that was kind of an oasis. And it was provided by social services here in South Africa. It is a clinic, it is a HIV/AIDS clinic and when we pulled in we begin to see smiling faces. It truly was an oasis amongst so much despair and they provided us with song and dance and happiness and joy, because we were there and they wanted to that make sure that we were welcome.

We planted about 50 trees or so, it took about an hour. We actually went out and dug the holes and planted the trees. And I planted the first tree. I spoke to about 15 young people there and they were from ranging in ages from about 7-11, and we had a great time. We have taken a little bit of peanut butter with us and we gave that away as a gift and those kids were just absolutely thrilled in having peanut butter. And I talked to them about trees and how trees are life and how my grandfather had helped me understand that when I was a kid by planting trees. I said that now I was going to entrust those trees to their care and they all nodded their heads and smiled and said they would care of our trees for us.

As we walked around the compound I ran into some folks, and this is how partnerships come about. You know, you go out and you meet people and you start talking and all of a sudden you find our possibilities. A group called food and trees for Africa. It is an NGO that is headquartered here in Johannesburg and they kind of helped set up and they did yesterday. A lady mentioned to me the area, the gardens that they had there on the grounds, and they take the gardens and the food from that garden and they prepare it and they take it down into village and give it to those people who can not prepare food for themselves, because they are suffering from HIV/AIDS. And then she took me around behind the building and she said (and she showed me all this land) I am a farmer, and so when she started showing me land, I have ideas, and she said we are going to develop some additional area here and I saw the possibilities and so to make a long story short, before we got done, the group, the 30 some people that were there took a donation out of their own pockets and we provided the seeds for this year for the garden and that clinic. But we did more than that. We made commitment that the land that lied behind we would do what we needed to do, somehow. We will come up with the money. Private sector, personal, I do not know how but we will improve that land and develop it so that their gardens enlarged because the issue of HIV/AIDS is of course, very serious, and there has got to be a lot more people have got a need to be fed.

I am a farmer and so I was starting to look around the land in the area. Realizing that land can produce and what we really need to do is teach them how to grow those crops. So the real target for the long term of our initiative here really just came up yesterday. This was something that just happened, which is to try to put together a learning, teaching center that the people in the township there can learn how to grow their food. It is possible for them to do better and to do more than what they are doing for themselves right now. And we can help them and that was a commitment that we promised them before we left there yesterday. But that is how partnerships happen.

John Turner: It is great. Questions?

Susan Povenmire: We are into questions.  I would ask please, before you ask your question you tell us who you are and who you represent. There is a question on the second row.

Question: Yes, Kaarina Jarventus. Helsinki, Helsingin Sanomat Newspaper. I would like to ask about the energy. I have heard that after yesterday after the decision was made there were African nations that were kind of congratulating themselves because now they can build these big dams that are so controversial under our NGOs who oppose them. So do you think that including big hydro in these paradises really integrates well with the environmental and social needs of poor countries?

Answer: Griffin Thompson: Thank you for the question. First of all, you are quite right in that the hydro was included but it does not define whether it is big hydro or small hydro. An inclusion of that word brings to the focus the fundamental principal upon which this whole text was arrived at. And that is through the democratic principal of self-determination. How we went through this text, was through a consensus process that reflected the needs and the desires of the individual countries and it is only they that can best determine what is the best technology mix or the best policy mix to address the fundamental need of increased access to energy services to alleviate poverty, to bring health education, and income generation through to their countries. So we should not be so presumptuous from here on to start dictating the types of technologies or policies that individual countries need so they can grow out of their cycle of poverty.

Question: Adam Roberts, The Economist: Could you clarify the U.S. position on paragraph 47 on women’s reproductive rights or reproductive health, whether you’re supporting the inclusion of the phrase that suggests, it must all be done in accordance with International Human Rights standards?

Answer: John Turner: Well that particular paragraph certainly generated a lot of interest but the focus was not on the real issue. There was not a controversy over the language of human rights. In fact, the document in several places embraces the idea of human rights and certainly the role of women. The United States, is certainly one of the world champions in human rights, and we endorsed the language. The issue was a procedural one of whether or not we reopened text that many of the community remembers as being closed in Bali. So trying to expedite the package, trying to deal with the issues still before us, the chair from South Africa ruled on two separate occasions that although he had sympathy with the proponents and the language was fine, that we had tried to set a precedent when we came, all of us together, in Johannesburg, that we would not reopen text and so that was the issue and although all the ballpark lights went on and everybody thought that it was a substances issue, but it was not, it was a procedural issue.

Question: John Sullivan, BNA Daily Environment: Mr. Thompson, why was the issue of energy so difficult throughout the week or two weeks, and how are subsidies being dealt with?

Answer: Griffin Thompson: Energy is a difficult issue to negotiate because of its local specificity. Energy again, and this I think is a very good document. It builds on the successes we had at the Commission for Sustainable Development night session which focuses on energy. And what it really gives us, is something that strikes and elegant balance between the moral and the material, the compassionate and the commercial. It looks at the fundamental need of energy to satisfy the conditions of sustainable development. It looks at how energy services can address the needs of gender equity, education, other things I’d mentioned earlier, but it recognizes also the need to bring critical energy development assistance in alignment with commercial practices of private investment. So we have talked about enabling environments, policy and regulatory structures and so when you start looking at things that are as fundamental to human society as energy, infrastructures, and energy service delivery of course it is going to be controversial, where there is a plurality of technologies and there are diversity of economics, social and political conditions in the world and when you try to bring those all together in one consensus document you are of course going to have a very very difficult time to agree. However, I think that the hard work of all the negotiators all the countries, everybody giving up a little bit we came up with something that will clearly lead us in a direction where energy can spearhead and provide catalytic services that it needs to provide economic, political and social development. So no one country has everything they want in this document, clearly. But I think that every country has a little bit of what they need. And it points us in the direction of public private partnerships, which is where the real implementation and action takes place. So this document sets a series of recommendations and critical elements that need to be integrated into every public-private partnership that we form, and I think it is a foundation for real success and a contribution to the goals of sustainable development which again is the reason we all came to Johannesburg.

Answer: John Turner: Regarding subsidies it does make a statement on subsidies asking for the phase-out of energy subsidies that hurt the environment or hurt sustainability and that is hard to craft because quite candidly the United States is focused on providing economic incentives for renewable energy and cleaner use of technology. So when you talk about subsidies, at least our congress and to encourage new technology and renewables provides economic incentives. Call it what you wish.

(Comment from audience -- inaudible)

It is a difficult issue because when you say we are going to do away with subsidies do you mean the economic incentives that we are providing to switch to renewable or use fuel cells or solar panels in your home. That is a subsidy.

Question: Ida, Kyodo News, Japan: I have a question about cleaner, affordable energy technology. Is it your understanding that nukes are included in this document?

Answer: Griffin Thompson: Absolutely, again getting back to the fundamental principle that there is no single model, no single technology, no single program that can address the diversities that we see on this planet. And again it is the decision, that the autonomy of each individual country to decide for them, their own economic path, their own economic and energy economy. We weren’t pushing any one technology. What we were advocating through a consensus document is a menu of technologies, and a menu of policies. Again it is only through this pluralistic approach that we have any hope at all to address the two billion people currently without modern energy services.

Question: Owen Lean, Online and freelance: You are saying that every country should find a source of energy which is sort of the right way for it to go both economically and socially. But what about countries that can afford nothing more than wood and dung burning, which kills more than two million people a year. Would countries which, we all admire so much like the United States, therefore be able to provide the money and the means by which they can get clean renewable energy by which no so many deaths would happen or do you see that more as a threat to oil, which many people were afraid the U.S. delegation fought on last night?

Answer: Griffin Thompson: The question is absolutely we provide assistance. I mean I am very proud to direct the Office of Energy within the U.S. Agency for International Development that has for years spent millions and millions of dollars on clean renewable energy and energy efficiency. We work tremendously hard through a variety of missions around the world, along with other bilateral donor agencies, World Bank, UNDP, to provide renewable energy technologies to address those very concerns that you pointed out. Absolutely right, it is a visibly vast situation when we have deaths occurring because of cooking and heating fuels and that is part of the energy deliverable of the United States Government. USAID, along with the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency are working on a series of deliverables and a series of pathways of energy to address the issues of indoor air pollution, to address the issue of children who are suffering for respiratory reasons because of that issue of cook stoves and charcoal burning. So we are working in a partnership as Deputy Secretary Moseley pointed out with other donor agencies, private industry, financial communities to address that very issue.

Answer: John Turner: Let me just mention one partnership that I visited with a company yesterday was Shell Oil and the chairman of Shell Oil. A partnership where they are committed to provide a million homes with solar panels. The two largest solar companies in the world now I think are BP and Shell. That will be a partnership. A partnership between Shell, the Global Environmental Facility (GEF), to which the United States is a major contributor -- we pledged $500 million in the next 4 years. It will be partnerships like that with the private sector. They are operating here in South Africa and I think they have already equipped 60,000 homes. I visited with a company from Maryland, a very small company that is providing solar panels to rural villages in Viet Nam. Their primary partners are women groups in Vietnam that have put this together in the villages so private sector, government, local people working together. Great opportunities. I just returned from the Tibetan plateau in China where you witness terrible environmental degradation from fuel use, overgrazing. China wants our help in energy transfers and new availability.

Question: Dina Kraft, Associated Press: Why is the U.S. not committing itself on the health language specifically, why is it not committing itself against the commitment that female genital mutilation and other issues such as honor killings are unacceptable?

Answer: John Turner: I do not understand the question, or the language. I do not recall the language.

Question: Dina Kraft: The language is part of this health paragraph. Paragraph 47 I think it is called, it is still up for debate, and Canada is threatening to walk out over it.

Answer: John Turner: I believe I answered that earlier. Reproductive health issue and it is a procedural question. And it has been ruled twice that procedurally it is out of place. We have no problem with the substance or the language and we endorsed it. We have done it publicly and negotiating meeting.

Question: Radio America: President Bush has predicated increases in development assistance based on improvements in democracy rule of law and good governance, yet Robert Mugabe yesterday said it is used as a cover by the rich countries to prevent their monies from going to their countries. How do we get the money to the poor. Half his country is starving without it going to the hands of the tyrants?

Answer: John Turner: I’m very excited about how the President’s commitment in the largest increase in development assistance in U.S. history, some 50% to $5 billion. We are going to use a new approach, and it is not where we go in and wrangle the agencies and say 17% goes to health and 11% goes to renewable energy and we are going to feed people and we chop it all up and ship it out around the world. This is going to be a partnership with impoverished countries where we mutually go in and meet that countries needs according to their perceptions. So a country that is willing to invest in its people in health and education, that is willing to improve their governance and rule of law and fight corruption and fight the kind of things we see in Zimbabwe, recognition of the rule of law, public participation, full transparency. Countries that are interested in investing that, will get significant unprecedented amount of money to build what they see they need, health care, maybe it is education, maybe fresh water, protection of forest. That country to their aspiration hopes and need will define the parameters of this new money. It is going to be a whole new compact with the some of the poorest parts of the world. And I’m excited about it. I think it is going to make a real difference in some impoverished areas of the world. It is a significant amount of money and I think a strategy that is going to be an effective one.

Emmy Simmons: May I add a comment on that. John was talking about the new Millennium Challenge Account as responding to partnership with those countries, which we feel are ready to partner and be effective partners in providing aid. That does not quite address the issue that you asked about the countries that are not in that position and does that mean that the U.S. is simply going to abandon all the people in those countries? That is not true. The U.S. manages and provides the largest contribution of humanitarian systems of any country in the world. We provide this assistance generally not through governments but through international organizations such as the World Food Program and through a whole range of NGOs with whom we have partnered for many, many years. The issue that is going to come in Zimbabwe or has already arisen in Zimbabwe, is the issue of the government actively preventing the partners who are willing to work and to meet directly with people in order to meet their needs, from doing their work. And so clearly this is going to be a political discussion. There has clearly been some political discussion already. I do not think it is over yet, but I think that the American people will not sit by while millions of children, millions of kids, millions of parents starve just because a despot, or a political leader refuses to allow that kind of response. It may be the case that we are unable to combat it and to overcome this resistance on behalf of the government on the other hand, our track record would indicate that we will certainly try.

Answer: John Turner: It is ironic to think that the United States is leading the effort to treat famine in Zimbabwe. Five hundred thousand tons of food supplies have already arrived to help Zimbabwe and to help people.

I want to thank you very much for coming. The gentlemen there if we could talk afterwards and I’ll try and get an answer for you. I just wanted to bring your attention to the U.S. press kit. If you have not got a copy of it. There are fact sheets on many of the issues we have discussed here. There is a lot of information. There are copies here on the front. Thank you very much.