National strategy helps chart the right course for development By Vladimir Hudek and Richard Muller Photo: MTA A PLAN TO KEEP CLEANER: Smog, seen in Kosice, Slovakia, may be reduced by the new sustainability strategy. While there are clear benefits to having a sustainable world, it is not necessarily clear how we can get there. In Slovakia it just got easier: As of April, the country has a road map to sustainability. The Slovak National Strategy of Sustainable Development was first considered 10 years ago in Rio and was created through a tree-year effort that involved the input of scores of experts, the government and the public. It is a blueprint for helping Slovakia become environmentally sustainable. It is also an undertaking that other countries of the region may want to emulate. Slovakia 's strategy defines sustainable development as a target-oriented, continual, comprehensive and synergetic process, affecting all aspects of life, including cultural, social, economic, environmental and institutional. The strategy can be viewed online in Slovak at: www.lifeenv.gov.sk/minis/index.html. The document was prepared during 1999-2001, with financial and technical support of the United Nations Development Programme. The project was implemented by the Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe, Country Office Slovakia, with the approval of the Slovak Republic's Ministry of the Environment. The need to develop the strategy was acknowledged in 1992, at the Earth Summit in Rio, when Slovakia agreed with accession to the Rio Declaration and Agenda 21. The preparation of the National Strategy of Sustainable Development was coordinated by a 29-member Steering Commission. This commission included representatives from a broad variety of stakeholder groups, so that the process was transparent and was created with a "bottom-up " approach that involved a cross-section of Slovak society. The preparation process involved numerous expert organisations from various sectors, such as government institutions, academic institutions, business and industry, municipal associations and nongovernmental organisations. The experts prepared a 1,810-page analytical portion of the report, which looked at Slovakia's natural resources, human resources, cultural aspects, economic aspects, institutional aspects and risk factors. The analytical portion of the document was evaluated in seminars in 1999 and 2000. Experts used comments from those seminars to create a draft of the strategy. The draft was the subject of public discussions at three venues. These meetings produced 150 pages of responses, which were included in review studies and were incorporated in the National Strategy of Sustainable Development. The full text of the National Strategy of Sustainable Development was then posted on the Internet and distributed to local authorities for citizens ' comments, and additional public hearings were held. After further discussion and comments from the Ministry of the Environment, the strategy was submitted to the Slovak Republic 's Government, which approved it on Oct. 10. It was adopted by the Parliament on April 3. Vladimir Hudek and Richard Muller work at the REC Country Office Slovakia.

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