The World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) will be a gathering of world governments, concerned citizens, United Nations agencies, multilateral financial institutions and other major actors from August 24 - September 4, 2002, in Johannesburg South Africa. The main purpose of this convention is to assess main policies, which emerged from the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), in 1992. In Johannesburg the world will take a critical look back at UNCED, the processes that emerged form UNCED and the implementation status of recommendations from UNCED with an aim to review the past and step into the future. The Government of Pakistan (GoP), Ministry of Environment (MoE), is also gearing up to participate in WSSD in accordance with the guidelines provided by the Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD). The GoP's efforts are mainly focused on preparation of Country Assessment Report (CAR), primarily based on findings of NCS Mid Term Review and secondary research studies on Pakistan's progress on Rio Conventions. For this purpose the Ministry is in the process of hiring a consultant. In order to support the WSSD preparatory process at MoE, IUCN has committed to hold public consultations in collaboration with UNDP. The goal of Pakistan's participation in Rio+10 is: "Enhancing local and global understanding of the Pakistan's problems, potentials, achievements and future vision as to sustainable development within the country and elsewhere with a view to raise support for its environment agenda by its own people and by the world community at large " Moreover, the WSSD Consultative Process in Pakistan will attempt to generate a broad base consensus for preparation of an overall Strategic Framework for sustainable development in Pakistan, for the next 20-25 years, drawing on the NCS MTR, as well as the Poverty Reduction Strategy, National Environmental Action Plan, the emerging Water Policy, other such initiatives and ongoing deliberations upon pressing environmental issues. This will essentially represent the evolution of NCS from an environmentally focussed strategy into a more inclusive sustainable development strategy. To carry out the consultative process, a total of ten workshops were organised, each of which focused on a particular theme. The selected theme corresponds to; International Development Targets identified in Millennium 2000; regional goals and priorities identified through WSSD regional preparatory process; and Pakistan's national priorities. During the consultative process, discussions were focused upon analysing the relative achievements and failures of the thematic area/sector incurred by Pakistan in the past decade regarding sustainable development. The recommendations for the future for attainment of sustainable development in each sector were also highlighted. The main parameters used within the discussion sections to measure achievement and failures were as follows: * Policy reforms * Capacity building * Enabling informed decision making * Technology transfer * Stakeholders' participation * Gender equality The geographical location for the consultations varied according to the relevance of the thematic area. Finally, discussions on Pakistan's progress towards adopting and implementing UNFCC, CBD and UNCCD also took place. This would contribute to Pakistan's Country Assessment Report being prepared at Ministry of Environment.

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