Partnership Initiatives and Agenda 21

At Rio in 1992, new forms of participation were deemed to be an important precondition for success in achieving the goals of Agenda 21. The formation of Major Groups and the convening of Multistakeholder Dialogues were initial responses to this felt need. A key feature of the preparatory process for the WSSD in Johannesburg in 2002 was the decision of the CSD to give even greater emphasis to implementation processes involving stakeholder partnerships, with active participation of civil society. This led to a call for partnership initiatives to be developed as a primary instrument for implementing Agenda 21.

SARD-related partnerships facilitated by FAO

The SARD Initiative is a global platform that emerged in response to the call of CSD for more and stronger partnerships to implement Agenda 21. It is a civil society-led initiative, supported by governments and facilitated by FAO, that brings together stakeholders from all Major Groups with an interest in SARD to exchange experiences and plan and carry out joint action.

Another global platform for SARD concerns SARD in Mountain Regions. As a follow-up to the multistakeholder Adelboden International Conference on SARD in Mountain Regions (funded by Switzerland, June 2002) and the International Year of Mountains, the Adelboden Group was created in 2002.