(FinalCall.com) -- You probably wouldn’t know it by what you read in the papers or see on television, but once again people from around the world —50,000 of them, including 100 heads of state— are gathering in South Africa to talk about an issue which impacts the lives of us all. Last year this time, it was for the United Nations World Conference Against Racism and now it’s for another UN-sponsored conference, the World Summit on Sustainable Development.

This enormous and enormously important meeting may be the best-kept secret of the year because the U.S. press has deemed it non-news and is giving it very little attention.

So, what is this "sustainable development" which these world and community leaders will be talking about? It’s how to raise living standards around the world while limiting environmental disruption. In the words of Secretary of State Colin Powell, who heads the official U.S. delegation since President Bush has decided not to go, "Sustainable development is a compelling moral and humanitarian issue. But sustainable development is also a security imperative. Poverty, destruction of the environment and despair are destroyers of people, of societies, of nations, a cause of instability as an unholy trinity that can destabilize countries and destabilize entire regions."

The concept of sustainable development—that we can develop without destroying the people and the creation—is really a foundational 21st century idea. Many countries in the world realized its importance more than a decade ago and in 1992 the first summit on sustainable development was held in Brazil, where all the UN member nations, including the U.S., made a commitment to implement Agenda 21 which is a comprehensive action plan related to ending poverty, ensuring food and safe drinking water for all people; guaranteeing human rights, including rights of indigenous peoples around the world; providing environmentally sound renewable energy, instituting environmentally sound public transportation, and invoking a polluter pay principle for the environment. What a vision for a 21st century world!

This year’s summit in Johannesburg, then, is to review that agreed upon Agenda 21 and is a part of a larger number of international meetings held over the past decade by the United Nations, including the World Conference on Human Rights (1993), the International Conference on Social Development (1993), the International Conference on Population and Development (1994), the UN Conference on Women (1995), the UN Conference on Human Settlements-Habitat II (1996) and the UN Conference on Racism last year.

As in all UN-sponsored international meetings, there are two meetings–the governmental one and the non-governmental organizations (NGO’s) meetings. Likewise, there have been a number of preparatory meetings held in advance of the actual conference, where much of the official document is crafted. There are many NGOs that are disturbed at the content of the official document going to Johannesburg because they felt it undermines rather than implements the previous agreements.

While the original Agenda 21 did not refer itself to reductions in military spending around the world to pay the costs of sustainable development, since such wording was blocked by the U.S. government, much talk at the 1992 summit was devoted to this issue.

With a global military budget of $900 billion and many Americans wondering what happened to our so-called "peace dividend" while tiny poor countries in Africa and around the world struggle to deal with the AIDS pandemic and to feed their people but instead funnel funds into the military, it becomes clear that the world must make different choices if we are serious about survival. Yet, there is little hope that such conversations will occur at the conference, as the U.S. focuses on the battle against terrorism as the basis for our military cost increases.

Secretary Powell has said the U.S. focus at the meeting will be on the need for sound public policies and good governance in the world’s nations and for partnerships between civil society and the private sector.

While many in the world will agree with those principles, they will also question unbridled trade and corporate-public partnerships where the peoples of the world have little say in how development has happened. They will question how to avoid corrupt government-corporate alliances. All too often in the past, that has resulted in the economic nightmares which many people around the world live in every day.

As you watch the news over the next few weeks, look to see if there is any significant coverage of this important international meeting. And call or e-mail the television networks, radio and your local newspaper and ask why they are not covering the World Summit on Sustainable Development. It should be a priority for us all.