Over 21,000 delegates, including 108 heads of state, attended the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg from 26 August to 4 September 2002. Delegates agreed a 54-page Plan of Implementation and a Political Declaration, and governments and stakeholders made numerous announcements of new partnerships and resources that will attempt to carry forward sustainable development implementation into the future.

The major outcome document, the Plan of Implementation , contains targets and timetables to spur action on a wide range of issues, including halving the proportion of people who lack access to clean water or proper sanitation by 2015, restoring depleted fisheries and preserving biodiversity by 2015, and, by 2020, using and producing chemicals in ways that do not harm human health and the environment. In addition, countries adopted, for the first time, commitments toward increasing the use of renewable energy "with a sense of urgency", although no target date was set for this.

Partnerships and initiatives worth several billion dollars were announced by and between governments, citizen groups and businesses. Over 220 partnerships representing $235 million in resources had been identified prior to the Summit. Around 60 partnerships were announced during the Summit and included major initiatives by countries such as the US, Japan, UK, Germany, France, and the EU.

A great deal is hoped for from these partnership initiatives; thus, the United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan lauded the phenomenon of "the UN, governments, business and civil society coming together to increase the pool of resources to tackle global problems on a global scale." Of course, the true test of what the Johannesburg Summit will have achieved, Mr. Annan said, are the actions that are taken afterwards. "We have to go out and take action. This is not the end. It's the