Over Labor Day weekend 2002, while Americans focused on the prospect of war with Iraq, the first anniversary of September 11, and the last days of their summer vacations, thousands of government officials, non-governmental advocates, and business executives gathered in Johannesburg, South Africa for the third global summit on the environment. With the world?s attention elsewhere, the World Summit on Sustainable Development was an anticlimactic conclusion to three decades of global environmental activism. What did emerge from Johannesburg was a new debate. Many governments -- most notably the United States-and some non-governmental organizations (NGOs) argued that voluntary partnerships between business, governments, and NGOs were the best way to make concrete progress on sustainable development. More than 60 such partnerships were announced at the Summit. Other NGOs condemned this approach as an abdication of governments' responsibilities to solve problems and to hold global corporations accountable for their behavior. In the words of Greenpeace, "big business and polluting governments like the U.S. have joined forces in Johannesburg once again to... undermine any attempts to make corporations accountable for the devastation they bring."

Is this a realistic method of achieving sustainable development or a ploy for government to wash its hands of environmental responsibility? Please join us as Glenn Prickett investigates this debate.