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World leaders gather to find solutions to achieve sustainable development

Despite the unprecedented material development achieved in the last few centuries, human kind is confronted with serious and growing threats to its well-being. An estimated 1.2 billion people around the world live on an income of less than $1 a day. About half humanity lives on less than $2 a day. Use of fossil fuels is rising rapidly, while patterns of production and consumption continue to eat up natural resources faster than they can be replenished.

Three quarters of the world's fisheries are fished to their sustainable limits or beyond. Mountain glaciers are slowly melting away. The world's forests have shrunk in the last decade by an area larger than Venezuela, states a United Nations Information Centre press release.

World leaders will gather at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa from August 26 to September 4 to design ways and means to save the earth's vital life supporting eco systems while addressing other related issues. The overall objective of the Summit is to pool and strengthen efforts aimed at achieving sustainable development.

These trends can be reversed but decisive action is needed says the United Nations which is organizing the Summit.

"We have seen the results when leaders speak publicly about an issue and put the full weight and resources of their administrations behind it. Johannesburg Summit can and must revive political commitment to sustainable development, especially at the highest levels", points out Kofi Annan, Secretary-General of the United Nations.

The Johannesburg Summit takes place ten years after the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, where countries adopted "Agenda 21", the blue print for sustainable development. However, it is not just a sequel to the Rio meeting. It builds upon the achievements since then and also seeks to implement the goals agreed at many world conferences including the Millennium Summit in 2000. The Summit will be the largest ever international meeting on Sustainability and will bring together thousands of participants including Heads of State and Government, business leaders and representatives of civil society organizations. It will also address other related issues such as over consumption, unsustainable life styles, growing scarcity of water, health problems including HIV AIDS and climate change.

The Summit will result in an implementation plan, detailing the priorities and actions that countries will pursue after Johannesburg, as well as a political declaration, to be agreed by world leaders, that will provide the political impetus for actions. In addition, the Summit will serve as a platform for the launch of new partnership initiatives, by and between governments, non-governmental organizations and businesses, to tackle specific problems and achieve measurable results.

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