If you are interested in making suggestions for the final version, please
contact Frances Spivy-Weber at the address below.
------------------
Gabriel A. Hegyes
Sustainable Agriculture Network
ghegyes@nalusda.gov
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, 2 Apr 1994 04:44:30 -0800
From: Frances Spivy-Weber <francesmike@igc.apc.org>
To: ghegyes@nalusda.gov
Subject: draft letter
DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT
LETTER TO President Clinton and Vice President Gore copies to
Katie McGinty, David Buzzelli, Jonathan Lash and Molly Olson
Comment deadline: 4/11; Final draft on Econet 4/12-15; Sign-on
deadline 4/16.
Purpose of letter: To thank the Administration and the
President's Council for their work on sustainable
development issues; to suggest a focus for the national
sustainable development action strategy that the Council
is to produce by July, 1995, and to explore ideas for
follow-up after the 2-year appointment of this first
President's Council ends.
The following draft letter, after appropriate changes are
made from your comments, will be put on plain letterhead
and delivered to the White House and to the meeting of the
President's Council April 18, 1994 in Washington, D.C.
Organizations or individuals who wish to recommend changes
in the letter, please let Fran Spivy-Weber know by email
by 4/11: francesmike@igc.apc.org or fax (202)-546-7939.
Please send your own comments to PCSD as well. If you
wish to sign onto the letter by 4/16, let Fran know. She
will upload the final copy for reveiw 4/12. If you do not
have fax or cannot access Econet, please contact Fran @
1308 South Carolina SE, Washington, D.C. 20003-2326.
DRAFT LETTER DRAFT LETTER DRAFT LETTER 3/30/94
Dear Mr. President and Mr. Vice President:
Thank you for taking leadership on the issue of
sustainable development. Many of your initiatives,
including health care reform, reinventing government, and
the information highway, should make important
contributions to creating a sustainability strategy for
the United States. We also appreciate your establishing
the President's Council on Sustainable Development and
encouraging your Cabinet officers to devote time to this
collaborative effort between government and the community.
The national sustainable development action strategy,
which you have charged the President's Council to produce
by July, 1995, is an extremely challenging assignment. As
stakeholders in the issue of sustainability, the
undersigned organizations encourage you and the Council to
make the strategy document a brief, readable document of
actions the Administration can take quickly and cost
effectively to advance sustainable policies and activities
both here in the United States and abroad. In addition,
we urge that you use the principles developed by the
President's Council and the Rio Declaration of the United
Nations Conference on Environment and Development for
useful guidance.
While we recognize that many groups must take action to
achieve sustainabilty, we have developed these four action
recommendations specifically because we think the
President and the Administration can do them in the short
term, and they will reinforce the actions of those in
other sectors.
Our first action recommendation is that all federal
Departments review their policies and activities through
the lens of sustainability and initiate appropriate
reforms. In some Departments this is already happening
through the reinventing government initiative. For
example, we know that the Department of Interior is
reexaming its policies and subsidies for logging, grazing,
and mining activities. But what about the Department of
Defense, Commerce, State, Energy, Transportation, and
Agriculture? Each Department should have a short-term and
long-term plan for how it is going to meet the challenge
of ecologically sustainable stewardship. To ensure a
healthy critique of the plans, the President's Council
could serve as the secretariat for a public debate and
promote participation in the dialogue.
The second recommendation is for a short term Task Force
from government and nongovernmental organizations to
prepare a proposal on incentives for communities and
businesses to pursue sustainability policies. Like the
Health Care Task Force, the product of the Incentives Task
Force could stimulate legislation and considerable private
sector activity and debate. Current members of the
President's Council and others should be on this Task
Force. The Council staff could provide the secretariat
services for the Task Force.
A third recommendation is that the public debate of the
various issues associated with creating a sustainable
future be made a high priorty by the Administration. For
example, you could hold a number of public debates on
issues such as Energy Efficient Transportation enlisting
the participation of Cabinet officers, other
Administration representatives, states, businesses, and
other affected groups. Like the Forest Summit and the
Economic Summit, divergent points of view should be part
of the dialogue, and the best or at least the most
feasible ideas from these dialogues could be acted on by
the appropriate Agencies and programs.
Finally, the Administration can challenge individual
Americans to take the leadership to build a more
sustainable life. Forging a sustainable path for the
future of this nation will be done mostly by people
personally, in their homes, communities, businesses,
schools, churches, and civic organizations. Those most
active in the pioneer work on sustainability--community
leaders; state and local governments; Congress; small and
large businesses; grassroots, regional, national, and
international nongovernmental organizations--should become
the pool from which you draw new advisors to work with
Cabinet officers in each phase of your sustainable
development initiative.
Thank you, again, for your commitment to sustainable
development. We look forward to your working even more
closely with us in the future.
Sincerely,