Participants discussed intersessional meetings and other preparations for the May 2011 session of the Commission on Sustainable Development.
16 November 2010: The second meeting of the Bureau of the 19th session of the Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD 19) took place on 16 November 2010, at UN Headquarters in New York, US.
Meeting participants reported on recent events they had attended related to the CSD 19 agenda, including: the fifth Intergovernmental Forum on Mining (IGF), which took place in Geneva, Switzerland, from 24-26 October; the Senior Expert Group Meeting on Sustainable Development of Lithium Resources in Latin America: Emerging Issues and Opportunities, which convened from 10-11 November, in Santiago, Chile; and the fifth Meeting of the Regional EST (Environmentally Sustainable Transport) Forum in Asia, which met from 23-25 August, in Bangkok, Thailand. Two additional intersessional meetings are planned, one on waste management in Rabat, Morocco from 25-26 November 2010, and one in Japan in mid-February 2011, with exact dates to be confirmed.
Participants were informed that advance, unedited versions of the Secretary-General’s reports will be available on the CSD 19 website at the end of December 2010 or the first week of January 2011. On the organization of work for the Intergovernmental Preparatory Meeting (IPM), participants were informed that an additional multistakeholder dialogue on “expectations from CSD 19 within the context of Rio+20” had been added, given the linkages between the themes of the CSD 18-19 cycle and “green economy,” one of the themes for the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD, also known as Rio+20).
In reference to the January 2011 High-level intersessional meeting on sustainable consumption and production (SCP) in Panama, participants were informed that the Division for Sustainable Development, Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DSD/DESA), in cooperation with the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), is preparing two background documents for the meeting. These documents, which are expected by mid-December, will: examine the six potential institutional arrangements for the 10-year framework of programmes on SCP (10YFP) against a pre-established criterion; and compile programmes with potential for scaling up. [CSD 19 Bureau Meeting minutes]