But clearly, whichever way you look at it, our performance in implementing what came out of the Rio Conference is inadequate. If we think in terms of our success in meeting needs‹surely we have not done that. Look at the persistence of poverty, hunger, disease and malnutrition. In terms of the second half of the standard definition‹our capacity and ability to meet such needs in the future‹we have not been able to halt the deterioration and loss of our natural resources or the accumulation of risks.

Johannesburg must reflect a sense of urgency, for the time available for us to change course is getting shorter. It must advance with practical steps‹bold measures with clear goals, timetables and commitments. These steps will have to be taken not just by governments, but by all stakeholders‹corporate leaders, trade unionists, farmers, local authorities, community organizations, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and activists. What we need is partnership. This will require a shared vision of how development should proceed. There is the vision embodied in the notion of the "Davos Man" that sees in a globalized world with open borders and a liberal market economy the route to prosperity. But even the "Davos Man" is uncertain and, in the latest gathering of the faithful in New York, the themes that dominated discussions were the issues of global poverty and global health, the evidence of alienation and social stress and the threats to order that emerge from these.

Another explicitly opposed vision of development was articulated in Porto Alegre at the gathering of social activists, protest movements and dissenting academics who are deeply skeptical of the benefits of the globalized market economy. Porto Alegre protesters give precedence to the local over the global and hence are not convinced that liberalization and the opening of borders is the route to prosperity for all. And they often argue that the world is getting globalized not because people have opted for it, but because effective power is in the hands of the few. But in Porto Alegre too, the move is from protest to dialogue.

What is the vision that we can seek to embody in the form of the Johannesburg person‹let us call that person the "Johannesburg activist?" The "Johannesburg activist" is enough of an economist to respect the need to compare costs and benefits and to recognize the potential of a properly managed market system to save us from the excesses and perversions of public control. The "Johannesburg activist" is also enough of an engineer or technologist to recognize that the right sort of development requires not just the tweaking of the market, but a systematic effort to promote alternative technologies of production and consumption that are less aggressive in their use of natural systems.

The "Johannesburg activist" is an ecologist who recognizes that the inputs and outputs that need to be looked at in cost/benefit or technological analysis are not just the immediately obvious ones, and that we need to judge every option after fully understanding the complex pathways through which it affects local, national and global ecosystems. The "Johannesburg activist" recognizes that development requires empowerment and that means decentralization and democracy.

In all of these, the "Johannesburg activist" is guided by the principle that the real test of development is what it does to the self-respect, dignity and well-being of the poorest person in society. This is the vision of sustainable development that has emerged in the discussions on sustainable development. It is a vision grounded in the large number of local projects, community initiatives that have successfully combined the social, economic and environmental imperatives into a coherent whole. It is a vision based on the potential of new technologies to promote decentralized developments that work with, rather than against, the local environment. It rests on an ethic of solidarity and responsibility to each other and to future generations. Johannesburg has to be a summit not just of the leaders of governments and international organizations, but for all who can make a difference to the ends and means of development‹for a community of concern that stretches from an NGO working in a remote village to the largest multinational enterprise.