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"A decision was made to report only on a selection of issues, since the purpose is only to give a preview or glimpse into the national implementation of Agenda 21 for which information is sufficiently available; namely:
Decision-Making refers to a) Coordinating Body; and b) Participation of Major Groups in decision-making. Major Groups participation may comprise all 9 of them or, when specific major groups appear to be crucial to the decision-making process, they have been highlighted accordingly.
Programmes and Projects reflect those mentioned in the specific chapter of Agenda 21 (with paragraph references) and on which information was provided. Education aspect focuses on public awaress-raising, training and the inclusion of the sustainable development concept in curricula.
Information aspect focuses on management of data on sustainable development ranging from comprehensive information systems to ways to collect and manage information such as inventories, surveys and databases.
Financing relates to domestic financing, e.g. subsidies, taxes, incentives and "polluter pays" principle.
Technology relates to issues such as forecasting (e.g. disas-ter forecasting), genetic resource conservation, biodiversity research and alternative energy sources.
Cooperation focuses on aspects of international coopera-tion not considered in international agreements (which are presented in Annex I) such as: forms of cooperation within states or sharing information systems at the regional level.
The analysis of the status of national implementation is qualitative in nature; it shows that a particular activity is either: a) implemented; b) in progress; or c) information is not applicable. The analysis was conducted as follows: First, at the National level (Table Form) to establish the status of implementation on a country-by-country basis.
Second,at the Regional level (Bar Chart) where countries were grouped into regions and the information summarized in terms of the percentage of countries in a region which have either: a) implemented a particular activity; or b) that activity is in progress. Third, the Global level (Pie Chart), where activities both implemented and in progress by a particular region have been grouped by category (e.g. Education).These are represented by pie charts where the share of a pie for each region under each issue represents the percentage of activities in that region that are implemented and/or in progress for that element or category of implementation. This report provides an analysis of the national implementation status for two of the cross-sectoral issues: combating poverty, and health at national, regional and global levels. A further seven issues, agriculture, decision-making, education, energy, freshwater, information and oceans are presented at the most aggregated, global level. The web version of the full National Implementation Report will provide all three layers of analysis of information. Issues (or groups of issues) not included in this current report are: atmosphere, biodiversity, changing consumption patterns (consumers), demographics, desertification, forests, hazardous/solid/radioactive wastes, human settlements, industry, international cooperation, land management, mountains, sustain-able tourism, toxic chemicals, trade and transport. Every effort has been made to reflect, as accurately as possible, the information submitted by each country. However, occasional ambiguities and voids in the texts submitted by countries may have required that some interpretation be applied. For example, a country may have named a Coordinating Body for a specific issue in 90% of the cases. However, in 10% of the cases, no specific name is mentioned despite there being evidence of the body’s existence from the content of the text. In this and other similar cases, despite this "lack of a specific name", the interpretation that has been applied is that the country indeed has a specific activity in place. A second example relates to Sustainable Development Strategies. Many countries reported having such strategies, despite the fact that only one dimension of sustainable development (e.g. the environmental aspect) was highlighted. In these cases, the National Programmes for Environment and Development, or National Environmental Action Plans that are nationally considered Sustainable Development Strategies have been reflected in this Report as such.
The English translations for the 2002 Country Profiles submitted by Russian Federation and Tajikistan are not yet available. Some reporting countries have provided updated information on a few chapters thus, their other chapters may not be up-to-date. National Assessments versus Country Profiles: It should be noted that the purpose, approach, format and nature of the National Assessments, prepared by countries for the Johannesburg Summit, are distinctively different from those of the Country Profiles which formed the basis of this National Implementation of Agenda 21 report. The former exercise was intended to provide findings of the ten-year review and assessment of national implementation, often conducted through multi-stakeholders dialogues or national forums. It was focused on identifying major achievements, challenges and priorities for the future. The Country Profiles, on the other hand, provide chapter-by-chapter or issue-by-issue overview of the latest state of affairs or information.The latter uses a very standardized format."