If Monterrey in February 2002, achieved a new level of consensus based on mutual accountability and on a modern framework for development partnership between rich and poor countries, the Johannesburg outcome will allow the international community to put into practice a new approach to global issues that is directly linked to the interests of poor people around the world.

Now, implementation. The WSSD provided space for a broad discussion on long-term sustainability, global equity and justice, and on the centrality of poverty reduction to sustainable development. At times, such UN large meetings are criticized for their lack of "instant gratification." However, their lasting importance is often felt over the long term in strategic changes, new and emerging priorities, and new modalities of implementation. Summits can also contribute to defining the "big issues" and "big ideas" for a certain period of time. The WSSD needs to be analyzed within this logic.

Long-term thinking is now defined as essential to dealing with sustainability issues (economic change, ecological threats). A new consensus emerged about the need of moving towards a new development path, one that integrates growth with environmental responsibility and social equity. The World Bank has been advocating for this vision of Responsible Growth. The Summit reaffirmed the notion that poverty reduction is much more than a development aid issue but also an issue of peaceful co-existence and planetary survival.

UN Summits such the WSSD, are part of a process of consensus building, which generates the enabling environment for action. The framework has been agreed, the Millennium Development Goals and Targets reaffirmed. Now, it is time for action, for effective implementation.

The new plan of action defined at the Summit represents a broad enough platform to allow implementation at the national, regional, and global level, involving governments, civil society, the private sector, the UN, bilateral development agencies and the Bretton Woods institutions.

There is a critical mass of substantive commitments (fisheries, water and sanitation, energy in Africa, chemicals, biodiversity, etc), and no backtracking on a number of central cross cutting agreements already incorporated in the Doha Trade Round and in the Monterrey Consensus.

The era of fragmentation is over. The Summit demonstrated that interaction between governments, international organizations, civil society, and private sector is here to stay. New participatory modalities for implementation, with real-time monitoring and assessment, oriented towards achieving better results on the ground will need to be addressed. This is one of the key pragmatic challenges of global sustainable development governance. The message emerging from Johannesburg is clear: new "institutions"--supported by enlightened public policy, a responsible and accountable private sector, and proactive civil society organizations--are going to be needed in order to achieve the WSSD targets and the Millenium Development Goals in 2015.

The South African government, under the leadership of President Thabo Mbeki, played a key role at the WSSD in creating the environment for constructive and open dialogue among governments, civil society, private sector and international organizations. This spirit of cooperation and constructive engagement generated among all stakeholders in Johannesburg is a promising starting point. Now, it is up to us to make it happen.

(Ian Johnson is World Bank Vice President for Sustainable Development.)