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Welcome to the first issue of this year and we would like to wish you a belated happy new year. We saw a lot of challenges last year such as chronic starvation, pollution, drought, genetic modified food aid, rising AIDS/HIV, rising poverty to name a few. Major events have also taken place both locally and globally, notably the Government and Civil Society preparations for the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) held in Johannesburg between August and September 2002. Also worth noting is the response to famine and the debate on genetic modified organism and food aid.

Instead of poverty eradication, poverty is on the rise worldwide. The resurgence of diseases of poverty like TB, and the HIV/AIDS pandemic, are sucking more and more people into the spiral of poverty. 

Instead of reducing disparities in living standards, we see an ever-widening gap in incomes and living standards. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. It has been argued that about 10% of Swaziland’s population occupies and controls 60% of the country’s natural resources. This means that 90% of the population share among themselves 40% of the resources.

At Johannesburg, governments and civil society alike reaffirmed their commitment to work towards achieving sustainable development. It is now almost six months after the populous summit and we must be asking ourselves what we have done or are doing to pursue the goals of sustainable development. Nations committed themselves to among others halving the proportion of people who lack access to clean water or proper sanitation by 2015, restoring depleted fisheries to the preserving biodiversity by 2015, and phasing out toxic chemicals by 2005.  Let us be reminded of this commitment and avoid waiting to bandwagon when another global summit comes around. 

Swaziland has seen a remarkable number of development projects coming into the country and also high pollution incidences reported. Let us be reminded that in as much as we would like development, this development must not be at the expense of people and the environment. This is one of the biggest challenges that Swaziland is confronted with. As Swazi citizens we have a responsibility to ensure that we are not victims of social and environmental injustices as a result of bad practices by industries.  During this year, we would like to see citizens taking an active participation in Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Scoping processes that are called for before a new development project takes place. Already there have been a number of EIA Scoping meetings that have taken place. What role did you play to ensure that the development that came into your area would not be harmful to you and to the environment? 

In this newsletter we highlight what you can do to ensure that you are not victim of bad social and environmental injustice by polluting industries. 

So read on!!