I would like to recall the brief history of the coordination between the Council's Working Groups. The first meeting involving all of the Co-Chairs and "shadow ministers" was more or less a spontaneous event that took place after one of our lunches at the 2nd meeting of the Council. It was at that time that we realized how many commonalties there were between the groups and how they could learn from each other. We began with an overly ambitious 3-dimensional matrix illustrating all of the links between the Working Groups, and demonstrating the need for cooperation and coordination between them. I am happy to report that they quickly replaced the matrix. I am happy to report that much more down-to-earth discussions and plans for common action quickly replaced the matrix.
Last year we held a more formal meeting and two days ago we met for three (instead of the originally scheduled two) hours. The Co-Chairs of each of the Working Groups attended the meeting, by Charles de Haes, and by the Council members with shadow minister responsibilities for the Working Groups.
Each of the groups reported briefly on its major actions during the past year, its key recommendations for action and its plans for 1996. We had a chance to ask questions, to seek clarification and to make suggestions. This process has lead to what I believe was exemplary reporting from the Working Groups to the Council yesterday.
A number of characteristics about the Working Groups became clear at our coordinating meeting. First of all, we took note of the significant progress made in focusing the attention of the groups on the most pressing problems in China. We also noted that a number of themes were addressed by more than one of the groups, which we felt was not, if treated properly, negative. We also encouraged the groups, which had not already done so, to adopt demonstration projects as valuable instruments to carry out their work. Finally, the excellence of the work of all of the groups and the dedication of their members and "shadow ministers" became obvious to us on Sunday and this impression was reinforced at our session yesterday. With the involvement of so many Chinese and foreign experts, the Council has gone far beyond this room.
The coordinating meeting of the Working Groups has made a lot of suggestions for the future of the Working Groups which you heard yesterday throughout our discussions, which I will simply list again today. The Council is asked to recognize some of the topics recurring in several or all of the Working Groups as crosscutting themes, which should continue to receive attention, by each of the Groups. These are:
-- Increasing environmental awareness
-- Economics and pricing
-- Monitoring and data collection
-- Legislation and enforcement
-- Planning and management
Your will recognize that some of these correspond to Working Group titles and the awareness issue will also be treated separately, but the cross-cutting nature of these is also stressed and each of the Working Groups is asked to pay special attention on these in its work.
The question of creating new Working Groups of increasing emphasis on topics presently found in several of them was also raised. These are:
-- Integrated transportation planning policy
-- Sustainable agriculture
The idea of a Working Group on Ecological Damage Analysis was not put forth at t he coordination meeting. We ask the Bureau to decide on how best to approach the se suggestions for possible new Working Groups.
Finally, we are proposing some recommendation of a more administrative nature but aimed at helping to attain an even better coordination between the Groups:
-- Meeting next year: one day and half
-- Uniform presentation of Working Group reports to result in a recognizable CCI CED style (Secretariat)
-- Synthetic presentation of the reports and recommendations