COM+: Alliance of Communicators for Sustainable Development Moves Forward

“We fully support COM+, because it is indispensable to bringing the issues of sustainable development to the forefront of the development agenda,” said Carlos Manuel Rodriguez, the Environment Minister of Costa Rica, during a recent workshop for Latin American journalists held in San Jose.

The Com+: Alliance of Communicators for Sustainable Development, with the World Bank as one of its co-founders, brings together intergovernmental development institutions, non-governmental organizations, with a focus on conservation and rational use of resources, private global communications outlets, associations of journalists, global non-profit communications agencies, and associations of southern civil society working on environmental, social, and development issues.

During the recent UN Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD), COM+ undertook a variety of activities, including launching the World Bank's 'Little Green Data Book 2004' with Warren Evans, World Bank Acting Environment Department Director; Achim Steiner, Director General of IUCN; Carlos Manuel Rodriguez, Minister of Environment of Costa Rica; Esmeralda Brown of the Southern Caucus of NGOs for Sustainable Development; and Eric Swanson of the World Bank's Development Data Group.

COM+ aims at deconstructing sustainable development in such a way that communications reflect the issues that people around the world care about, especially in developing countries.

According to a recent public opinion survey from Globe Scan, a founding partner of COM+, “The majority of citizens in developing countries see a distressed world troubled by poverty, social imbalance, distrust, terror, and lack of confidence in governance systems and structures.”

The survey adds that air pollution and its impacts on human health are one of the top priorities of citizens of developing countries, making this particular environmental issue, as well as access to affordable water services, two key issues of the sustainable development agenda.

“To bring sustainable development closer to the people does not mean that we can’t have the science right," underlines Sergio Jellinek, World Bank Communications Advisor for Sustainable Development. "On the contrary, we need to have the support of the science, but to also explain the issues at the national and local levels. If you link natural disasters resulting from the negative effects of global warming and climate change the problem is understood in a very clear manner.”

“We need to decode sustainable development to these particular problems,” says Walberto Caballero, an environmental reporter from ABC-Color in Asuncion, Paraguay , and member of the International Federation of Environmental Journalists (IFEJ), “That’s the only way people will understand what experts are talking about. The COM+ Alliance could help with that in bridging the gap between experts, scientists, and the media.”

With a lean and flexible organizational design, COM+ functions as a virtual network of communications professionals, implementing initiatives that sum up to the partners’ own business plans and intervening only when a value added can be provided.

A Steering Committee of the partners and a Secretariat will coordinate implementation of the different actions in a way that preserves complementarities and multiplies impact by engaging other members of the Alliance and other institutions/organizations. Hosted by the IUCN Regional Office for Central America, based in San José, Costa Rica, the 2 staff Secretariat will coordinate the components of the COM+ work program.

For example, during the recent UN Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD), COM+ sponsored a Ministerial Roundtable debate on water services in developing countries, launched the Little Green Data Book 2004, ran feature articles focusing on sustainable development through Inter Press Service , and broadcast globally Earth Report’s “Not a Dirty Word 2” documentary before the high-level segment.

• The non-profit alliance is made up of:
• The Global Environmental Facility (GEF)
• Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR)
• IUCN – The World Conservation Union
• Conservation International (CI)
• Southern Caucus of NGOs for Sustainable Development
• World Business Council of Sustainable Development (WBCSD)
• International Federation of Environmental Journalists (IFEJ)
• Inter Press Service (IPS)
• Reuters Foundation
• Earth Report from Television Trust for the Environment (TVE)
• BBC World Trust Service
• Globe Scan
• The World Bank (WB)

• The COM+ Alliance aims to:
• Provide an effective and credible clearinghouse to ensure improved communications to the public and decision makers on the issues of sustainable development.
• Provide the opportunities for establishing a broader communications network among key stakeholders from the sustainable development community and to reach out to the communications community and opinion leaders as a way to reach wider audiences.
• Provide enhanced credibility to joint communication efforts by combining a vast network of diverse organizations with complementary expertise and resources that no one organization could have by itself. The multiplier platform of the Alliance has the potential to reach hundreds of millions around the world with a distributive network that has a constant message presence.
• Brings about a capacity to launch effective campaigns addressing the knowledge gap about advantages of sustainable approaches and their practical implementation, and the economic and social costs of non-compliance.
• Integrate knowledge generated by the research and development functions of some of its partners, with mainstream broadcast capabilities, thus enabling far-reaching innovative communications initiatives.