The Directory seeks to identify institutional mechanisms created at the national level for the implementation of Agenda 21 and other sustainable development programmes. These mechanisms take different forms. Some are multi-stakeholder bodies including representatives from government agencies, non-governmental organizations, academic and research institutions, the productive sector and others. In some countries, they are primarily governmental initiatives, which may include partial participation of NGOs and other civil society groups. In several instances, a network of non-governmental organizations has been established for the purpose of advising the government on the development of national sustainable development strategies. The largest category in this Directory is made up of countries which have so far established a contact office for environmental or Rio follow-up initiatives. There is still a number of countries on which information is pending or unavailable.
Three sources of information allowed the Earth Council to produce this second edition of the Directory. First, we received letters throughout the year from many of the contacts, notifying us of changes in address, mission or composition. Letters and faxes were sent to all of these contacts in January 1995, requesting them to verify or update the information we had. A second source of information was the Inter-American Meeting of National Councils for Sustainable Development sponsored by the Earth Council in Costa Rica in October 1994, and the Conference of Courchevel organized by the French Government in January 1995 with the European National Councils. A third source was the information kindly provided by the United Nations Department of Policy Coordination and Sustainable Development from the National Reports compiled for the April 1995 meeting of the U.N. Commission on Sustainable Development.
In the Composition section that appears in individual country entries, we have classified the members of the National Councils into five broad groups: governmental, non-governmental, academic/research, business/productive and other. In the business/productive sector we included representatives of workers' unions and organizations as well as companies and enterprises. Some countries provided information already in this format; for those which did not, we used our own judgement. We hope we have accurately portrayed the composition of each organization, and welcome corrections if we have not.