1994-2000 Sustainable Development Agreements

A succesful failure?

As a follow up to the 1987 Bruntland Report ‘Our Common Future’ and the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro that concluded that both rich and poor countries had to adjust their economic systems, experimental Sustainable Development Agreements were designed, focusing on equal, participatory and reciprocal partnerships between these countries and the Netherlands. In 1994 the partnership agreements were signed under the leadership of Jan Pronk. The aim was to stimulate innovations, especially in agriculture and forestry to prevent further destruction of ecosystems and loss of biodiversity.

Although these agreements did contribute towards relatively small scale collaborative efforts and discussions about shared responsibility for the environment and food security at the time there were no efforts to broaden the scope to firmly embed these types of partnerships in the broader approach to development cooperation. One of the projects between Bhutan and a farmer organization in the south of the Netherlands (Zeeland) was severely criticized by the Dutch parliament for using Dutch project funds to improve wheat breeding in The Netherlands. ^[1]

[1] See https://www.kit.nl/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/591_Bull-353.pdf https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Walter-Vermeulen-2/publication/227650730_The_'Successful_Failure'_of_the_sustainable_development_agreement_between_the_Netherlands_and_Bhutan/links/60d99683299bf1ea9ec7373a/The-Successful-Failure-of-the-sustainable-development-agreement-between-the-Netherlands-and-Bhutan.pdf