The interrelationship between culture and sustainable development seems to be a matter of common sense. However, even though the UN system (and especially UNESCO) is pushing for recognition of it, the UN system has not in fact been very supportive. If we study the major global conferences of the 1990s—from Rio de Janeiro to Barbados, Cairo, Beijing, Copenhagen and Harare—their plans of action were concerned with sustainable development, but there was hardly a mention, even in despatches, of culture. The various Plans of Actions from Rio to the present have had very little to say about culture, but a lot about sustainable development. Even more tellingly for us in small developing island states, the plan of action approved at the Barbados conference—a conference designed to focus attention on the problems and needs of Small Island Developing States—culture was, I believe, mentioned only once as being an important aspect of sustainable development in the islands.

For those Pacific island countries which are members of the Commonwealth, the situation is just as confusing. Following the Barbados conference, Commonwealth leaders approved the establishment of a Ministerial Group and an Official Group to study and make recommendations to the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) on how best to meet the needs and solve the problems of Small Island Developing States in the Commonwealth. Culture was hardly mentioned at all in the reports of the 1996 CHOGM.

Sustainable development was certainly fashionable, but the reports of the various meetings and the programs which were adopted showed that it was not seen to be related to culture in any meaningful way. Development to the Commonwealth group concerned economic matters, crime, security, and human resource development, law and order, health and so on, but the cultural dimension was missing.

The question therefore arises as to whether UNESCO’s commitment to ‘culture as an integral part of development’ is due only to the fact that culture is part of UNESCO’s mandate. Even though I participated in many of these global conferences I cannot answer the question why culture was not considered one of the critical issues like environment, population, energy, women and so on. I can, however, answer for UNESCO’s concern. The Director-General’s commitment to the importance of culture and of culture in development is fully supported by the General Conference, Executive Board, Secretariat and the National Commissions. Furthermore, and thinking positively about a seemingly negative situation, I would like to believe that because so much of the concern of these conferences, of policymakers and decision-makers are matters of culture—as defined at the beginning—that in spite of a seeming lack of concern with culture, their plans of action take matters of culture into account in any case. At the end of the day, I do not believe that any individual or group can act in a vacuum. They can only act as who they are; what they are, and what they want to be.