SEATINI BULLETIN
Volume 5, No. 17
Southern and Eastern African Trade,
Information and Negotiations Institute
Strengthening Africa in World Trade
IN THIS ISSUE!
- Empower ordinary people
Zwelinzima Vavi - WSSD plan for action has no action
Percy Makombe - Global Peoples Forum admits failure in implementing Agenda 21
Rangarirai Machemedze - WSSD in Johannesburg ends on uncertain note
Akwe Amosu - Beyond petroleum or principle?
George Monbiot - Director’s Comment: Jo’burg Summit a massive backslide from Rio
Empower ordinary people
Zwelinzima Vavi
South Africa’s hosting of the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg was a historic occasion. A similar meeting was held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1992 and an agenda was set for sustainable development. The blueprint drawn up in Rio was to be followed by all participating nations.
Though there have been a series of earth summits since 1972, it was only in Rio that issues of poverty and sustainable development became part of the agenda. The Rio earth summit became, not only a meeting on environmental change, but also brought the whole world together to fight for a more just society.
The inequalities at global and local levels are clearly recognised by the agenda, as well as the need to work together as inhabitants of this planet to bring about sustainable development and a more just world.
One of the fundamental prerequisites for the achievement of sustainable development is broad public participation in decision-making. Furthermore, in the more specific context of environment and development, new forms of participation have emerged.
This includes the need for individuals, communities and various organisations to participate in environmental impact assessment procedures and to know about and participate in decision making, particularly when these decisions have the potential of affecting the places in which they live and work. Individuals, communities and their organisations should have access to information relevant to the environment and development held by national authorities. This includes information on products and activities that have or are likely to have a significant impact on the environment protection measures.
It is in recognition of this that Agenda 21 identified women, children and the youth, indigenous people, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), local authorities, workers and trade unions, business and industry, the scientific and technological sector, and farmers as the major stakeholders.
At the Johannesburg summit, labour as a major group was coordinated by the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions and the Trade Union Advisory Committee, which represents over 155 million members in 148 countries and territories. At a global level the main issues for labour included:
- Focussing workers and workplace-based strategies for sustainable development;
- Attending to employment and fair transition programmes
- Recognising the close link between public and workplace concerns. The social dimension means ensuring that there is equality and solidarity among those living today and future generations.
This means poverty alleviation through:
- Redistributing resources (principle 5 of Agenda 21);
- Creating decent work;
- Social protection (access to basic services, water and sanitation, health, education, food, energy, shelter, transport); and
- Participatory democracy, protection of human rights including gender rights and core labour standards.
As the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) we have pushed for community services for the poor by ensuring that the provision of basic services such as water and sanitation and waste removal, among others, remain in public hands to ensure that even the poor have access. This also means that while we feel it is important to look at pollution and global warming and its effects, it is just as important to look at community pollution. Experience worldwide demonstrates that private service providers will not provide adequately for those who cannot pay.
The cost of improving the environment must be borne by those who can best afford it. This can be done through consultation before implementing environment friendly policies and retraining the affected, developing regulations to protect the interest of the workers.
Industrialised countries must contribute to the development of less polluting forms of production. The case of the recent plastic bag regulations gazetted by the South African government is a classic example of unjust transition. A scientific study overseen by the government, labour and business shows the devastating socio-economic implications of the regulations.
These include potential job losses of 70 000, a rise in the price of goods because of the increased cost of packaging, and deindustrialisation. At the same time the government has failed to provide evidence that the regulations will have a positive environmental impact. Other important issues for Cosatu are the access to international markets, which can be achieved through fair trade, the access to information and technology, corporate accountability and the ratification and implementation of International Labour Organisation core labour standards at a global level.
It is also crucial for the South that the resolution of Johannesburg 2002 be implemented, properly monitored and protected from the power games of global politics.
*Vavi is the general secretary of the Congress of South African Trade Unions. This article was first published in Sowetan on 23 August 2002 and it is reproduced with their kind permission.
Plan for action has no action
Percy Makombe
Cuba’s President, Fidel Castro, did not attend the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg (Jo’burg). In his place he sent Felipe Rogue, his Foreign minister, who said the same things that the Cuban leader had said in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 10 years ago. What Castro said then, which was repeated by Rogue now, is that the gap between the rich and the poor is widening alarmingly, and that the world’s riches continue to be in the hands of the North. If 10 years ago, no one listened to Castro, what are the chances that Rogue will be listened to?
Rio was supposed to be the defining moment. The United Nations mandate in organising the WSSD was to build on the goals agreed to in Rio. In fact it can be argued that the WSSD took place against a background of 10 years of sizeable failure to fulfill Agenda 21, which was the agenda of the Rio Summit. No explanations were forthcoming in Jo’burg on why the Rio commitments had not been implemented. We were just told that this time things would be different. Now, like then, we were told that Jo’burg was the defining moment.
The glaring failure of the Summit is the agreement on energy and climate change. Governments agreed on voluntary regional and national targets for access to renewable energy. The targets for using renewable energy which should be the cornerstone of any energy policy were removed from the agreement. Interestingly, the Ministerial Committee that came up with this agreement was chaired by Mohammed Moosa who is South Africa’s Minister of Environmental Affairs. Venezuela which articulated the G77 position was even more disappointing as it took sides with Japan, US and the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in resisting the setting of targets on renewables. Yet a few days earlier, Hugo Chavez the president of Venezuela was waxing lyrical about how "neo-liberalism is inhuman; it disintegrates life. It is guilty of all the disasters in the world…we do not pretend to fight fires by respecting those who light them."
Where were the government negotiators when this abominable agreement was crafted, and do they understand its implications? For USA, Japan and the oil producing countries, the energy agreement was a scoop because they were able to protect their business interests. A rise in renewable energy will impact negatively on their fossil fuel companies. The energy agreement can also be interpreted as payback time for US President George Bush whose campaign for presidency was partly funded by oil companies in the US. It is also an open secret that these oil companies crafted USA’s Energy Bill.
The Energy agreement also has passages that advocate for the boosting of nuclear power and fossil fuels that are known to cause global warming. Canada, China and Russia agreed that they would ratify the Kyoto Protocol on climate change while Australia has undertaken to reconsider its refusal to sign. The protocol is supposed to be a global pact to protect the environment and commits countries to reduce the emission of gasses responsible for global warming. It is no secret that the US is against the Kyoto Protocol, so USA’s intransigence was replaced by linguistic gymnastics which resulted in a vaguely worded agreement calling on other nations to ratify the protocol in a "timely manner". Not even the floods in Austria, Czech Republic and Germany could force the government negotiators to deal urgently and seriously with the matter.
By far the most outstanding achievement of the summit was the agreement to halve the proportion of people without safe drinking water and adequate sanitation by 2015. USA had initially opposed the commitment, but when it became clear that its allies including Canada and Japan as well as big business would support this commitment, the USA had no choice but to give in. This is an important agreement because clean, safe drinking water is essential for life. The World Health Organisation estimates that about 80% of all sicknesses and diseases are due to inadequate water and sanitation. Much as the agreement on water and sanitation is welcome, its weakness is its failure to deal with the privatisation of water that has placed the cost of this most basic right beyond the reach of ordinary people. The privatisation of water will continue to be a sticking point as it will be difficult to police companies that offer this service. Big business has interests that are inimical to those of the poor people. The big scandals that have rocked the US have proved beyond any reasonable doubt that corporations like WorldCom and Enron are not accountable, not even to their auditors. What more to the ordinary people?
Like in Rio, the overall aim of this summit was to reduce the gap between the world’s richest and poorest and at the same time protect the environment.
The blueprint to save the Earth which resulted from this summit also made a commitment to halve the number of people living on less than $1 a day by 2015 and significantly improve the lives of 100 million slum dwellers by 2020. The goal to halve poverty by 2015 is not really a new goal as it was articulated in the Millennium Goals in the Millennium Summit held two years ago. If this is to be achieved, the time to match the rhetoric with action can no longer be postponed.
Civil society was worried at what they perceive to be the takeover of what was essentially a United Nations-organised summit by big business. This shift by the UN towards public-private partnerships must be reviewed. There is need for the UN to come up with more partnerships with civil society and less partnerships with the corporate sector.
The UN as an institution, is an international experimentation with democracy. It is setting a model for governments to respect or disrespect civil society. It was therefore disappointing to see that there was lack of access for the civil society to most of the "official" sessions which were taking place at the Sandton Convention Centre. This is more worrying particularly putting into consideration that this was not a trade summit, it was a summit on sustainable development. The UN needs to remember that when it is under threat, it is the NGOs and the civil society who will defend it. The UN should continue to promote human values above the corporate agenda of the World Trade Organisation. Indeed if the UN is to remain a credible option at intergovernmental level for articulating, preserving and defending the rights of the people, then it should review its partnerships with global corporations. After all the UN charter begins with the words "We the peoples…"
The World Trade Organisation must also be taken out of any future Earth Summits, not least because the WTO is dominated by powerful governments pushed by their corporations. Those who insist on the WTO playing a part in WSSD argue that trade is an instrument of economic growth which leads to sustainable development. What they do not mention is that economic growth can also come with job losses and depletion of the environment.
Whatever amount of bravado we are able to muster, we should not fool ourselves into believing that the summit was about saving the Earth. On the contrary, it was a summit about saving ourselves, because when push comes to shove, the Earth can take care of itself. It is humankind that risks extinction. If dinosaurs were still there, they would testify to this fact. The time for rhetoric is over, this is time for action, yet there does not seem to be much action from the WSSD plan of action.
* Makombe is a Programme Officer with SEATINI and also the Editorial Assistant of the bulletin.
Global Peoples Forum admits failure in implementing Agenda 21
Rangarirai Machemedze
The Global Peoples Forum (GPF), which is a grouping of major civic organisations, including labour, women, youth, indigenous people, farmers and NGOs strongly believes that there has not been much progress in implementing suggestions arising from the 1992 Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
In its declaration at the just ended World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg, South Africa, the Forum noted that after ten years of the Rio Summit, "there is visible lack of progress in the implementation processes from all of us and in particular our governments. This can be exemplified by the growing gap between the North and the South, and the ever-growing social-economic disparity between the rich and the poor, with particular impact on the people with colour."
The major groups participating at the WSSD have however cited their marginalisation by the United Nations and the governments as one of the causes for their failure to effectively implement Agenda 21, a programme of action agreed to and adopted by the world at the 1992 Earth Summit. Civil society has, on a number of occasions, been left out of negotiations by governments on several key issues on growth and development. And this has led them to play a more subdued role even at the process of the WSSD itself. They even threatened to walk out of Sandton Convention Centre the venue for the official process of the WSSD. Only the intervention of the UN and the South African government saved the situation.
To address the situation, the GPF has declared that partnerships would provide the key to achieving the ideals for sustainable development. And that those partnerships need to be entered into on the basis of clearly defined human needs and related goals, objectives and actions for the elimination of poverty and the enhancement of the physical, social and spiritual environment. Partnerships for sustainable development are those entered into on the basis of mutual respect, transparency, joint decision-making and accountability.
In advocating for renewal of action towards the attainment of the ideals of sustainable development, the GPF declared that there was a need to act with speed and urgency to reverse the magnitude of the problems that were confronting humanity and nature.
"The period of empty promises and lack of seriousness should be challenged side by side with actions and campaigns to ensure the full involvement of civil society in the implementation of Agenda 21 and the Programme of Action of Rio and all the other UN Conventions, including Johannesburg," read the declaration.
Among the issues that formed the core of the declaration, economic issues dominated, as they were central to achieving sustainable development at the same time attempting to reduce the gap between the North and the South and eradicating poverty. Such issues include:
- Fair trade , that fair trade should reaffirm the principle of common but Differentiated Responsibility and must also reinforce and support the right of developing countries to protect their own industries and natural resources against outside externalities such as those imposed by the World Trade Organisation and other global institutions
- Redistribution,
- Corporate accountability,
- Debt eradication,
- Anti-privatisation, that the resources of the world can still be and should be shared among all the people of the planet without creating pockets of wealth amidst seas of poverty and hunger. that legally binding global rules and obligations to regulate corporations must be developed and implemented, especially in critical areas of economic, social and environmental concerns that multinationals and governments who have benefited from the exploitation of the human and natural resources in under-developed and developing countries are morally bound to repay the economic, social and ecological debt that has been accumulated as a result. In addition the current debt servicing and repayment arrangements remain major impediments to sustainable development in many countries of the South. The GPF insisted on debt cancellation, reparations and the revision of existing conditionalities associated with current and future debt obligations, to reflect the principles and guidelines of Agenda 21. that natural resources and basic services must be held in the public domain for the common good of all people. These include the provision of water and sanitation, health care, education and housing. These should not be privatised or commodified.
Other issues concerned the sovereignty of nations, transparency in transactions and agreements affecting human lives, equality of all people, the observance of human rights, participation of people at all levels, environmental sustainability and a genetic engineering-free environment.
*Machemedze is a Programme Officer with SEATINI in charge of popular education.
WSSD in Johannesburg ends on uncertain note
Akwe Amosu
"Everywhere I go, I'm asked to explain and justify the US position," an American journalist in Johannesburg for the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) told me.
Addressing a packed plenary session on the summit's final day, US secretary of State Colin Powell encountered for himself the intense feeling that the US stance has provoked here.
When Powell lauded the summit's goals - many of which the US is seen as watering down or opposing during intense negotiations over the final text - the crowds seated on the spectators' benches at the back of the hall got to their feet, shouting and shaking their fists.
The tide of heckling rose as the speech proceeded, reaching a peak when Powell said: "The United States is taking action to meet environmental challenges, including global climate change."
Secretary Powell, clearly exasperated at being drowned out on several occasions by the protesters, told them at one point, "I have heard you, now will you hear me?" Session chair, South African Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, called several times for order, describing the protestors' action as 'completely unacceptable'.
The refusal of the United States, as the largest emitter of greenhouse gases, to adhere to the Kyoto climate protocol is widely seen here as evidence that the Bush administration is not serious about offsetting the consequences of its massive use of fossil fuels.
Echoing earlier American criticism of the summit as being long on verbiage and declarations and short on action, Powell told his audience that his comments were not "just rhetoric".
"We are committed to a multi-billion dollar programme to develop and deploy advanced technologies to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions," he said.
Promises here at the summit by China, Canada, Japan, and others that they will ratify the Kyoto Protocol by the end of the year have ensured that the protocol will come into force, leaving the US further isolated on this issue.
Although development and environmentalist groups clearly had decided to attend the plenary en masse to make their feelings known, some members of national delegations joined the jeering on environmental issues.
Official delegates also weighed in on the issue of Zimbabwe. There were spontaneous catcalls from what appeared to be several dozen delegations when, some six paragraphs into his speech, Powell charged that the Zimbabwe government's lack of respect for human rights and rule of law had brought millions of people to the brink of starvation.
Several African delegates are known to be angry at the way that the World Trade Organisation's Doha agreements have dominated much of the discussion, and particularly at attempts to give the WTO resolutions primacy over the WSSD's own agreed positions. Africans also blame rich countries for the failure to make progress on the ending of agricultural subsidies to their own producers, seen as restricting developing countries' access to markets.
US announcements earlier in the summit of major projects to preserve African forests and support health, water and other projects with bilateral funding won only a lukewarm response, with journalists demanding to know how much "new money" was involved, and to whom those implementing the projects would be accountable.
At the start of the summit, entry to the plenaries was only by ticket, with acquisition involving a time-consuming wait in line.
Although new security arrangements were installed at the start of the week to coincide with the arrival of the heads of state, the rules on attending plenaries seem to have been relaxed.
Some hours after the Powell speech, the US delegate told the closing plenary that his country was very satisfied with the final implementation plan - with some caveats. His comments drew further catcalls, although much muted by comparison with the action of the morning.
The plenary protests bring into focus a widening gap between government and civil society on issues relating to development and the environment. NGOs present at the meeting have widely criticised the lack of concrete progress at the summit, blaming a number of governments, not only the United States, for spoiling action.
At an NGO press conference during the final session, speakers said "unenlightened self-interest" had dominated in negotiations and that a meeting that was supposed to be about sustainability had turned into a trade negotiation.
But critics singled out Norway, Ethiopia, Germany and New Zealand as countries who had done much to maintain key 'pro-poor and pro-environment' provisions.
Canada, too, was praised by NGOs for standing firm on the inclusion, in a section of the action plan on women's reproductive health, of a clause ensuring that women's human rights should be respected -- UN 'code' (in this context) for guaranteeing the right to abortion a position which the US strongly opposed.
Following the press conference, members of NGOs from the United States pinned a large US flag to the wall outside the briefing room, On it they had written: "Thank you, President Bush, for making the US so hated."
Despite disappointment among many official and non-official delegates about the lack of concrete guarantees for action, the summit has broken new ground in setting timetables and targets to restore the world's fish stocks and extend sanitation facilities to the poor.
Also new is a commitment to renewable energy for the first time, although the United States and oil-producing countries' opposition prevented delegates from setting any timetables or targets on this front. A push from the European Union to raise the target for global use of renewables by one percentage point over the next decade - from 14% to 15 % - was scuttled, when the US government refused to abandon its opposition.
For many, the main benefit of the summit will have been the opportunity to network and discuss collaboration across thematic and national boundaries.
There will almost certainly be a post-mortem on the way the summit was conducted. There is widespread unease about the way the meeting was dominated by line-by-line negotiation of the text of the draft plan of implementation.
A representative from the Youth Caucus a group of youth organisations working on sustainable development - told the closing plenary: "You have failed us."
"We are sick and tired of the empty promises and political posturing that we've witnessed time and time again over the past ten years. We are fed up with your bracketing and debating the placement of commas in the plan of action".
UN special envoy to the summit, Jan Pronk, told the BBC that the meeting had come "close to collapse" and implied that delegates had only managed to maintain the status quo, rather than advancing the summit's real objectives. "They were working till last night on reinforcing advances made in the past," he said. That left very little time for talking about implementation."
* Amosu is part of a team of journalists at allAfrica.com. This article is reproduced with their kind permission.
Beyond petroleum or principle?
George Monbiot
Corporate promises made at the World Summit are made to be broken.
When the cleaners move into the Sandton Convention Centre in Johannesburg, the United Nations will claim that something has been rescued from the wreckage of the World Summit.
Governments may not have delivered, but big business has. The world's biggest corporations, with the UN's blessing, have negotiated a series of "partnership agreements" -- voluntary commitments obliging those companies to respect the environment and defend human rights -- which will be recorded as official outcomes of the summit.
These, they claim, will show that international law is not required to force corporations to respect human rights and the environment. Governments appear to agree, which may be one reason why they have seemed so relaxed about the survival of the planet: why legislate if the world can be saved by promises?
But just as the chief executives congratulate each other, a new report suggests that the partnership agreements are worthless. The company most clearly associated with "corporate social responsibility", which has launched one of the new partnerships and sponsored some of the key events at the summit, appears to be saying one thing and doing just the opposite.
In a survey conducted by the London Financial Times, oil giant BP was named as the firm that commands the most public respect for its environmental record. The energy company claims to run its operations according to a set of strict "business policies", which have enabled it to become "a power for good in the world". BP, the policies state, will "respect the rule of law", defend "basic human rights and fundamental freedoms", "be held accountable for our actions" and "will not choose business partners to do things on our behalf that contravene these commitments". As an example of good practice, the company cites, in its statement on environmental and social reporting, the "major stakeholder consultation exercises" carried out in preparation for the Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline project.
In late August this year, an international coalition of environmental and human rights groups published the results of their fact-finding missions along the route of this pipeline. Their report suggests that, far from being a model of good practice, BP's showcase project breaks both the commitments BP has published and the promises business leaders have made in Johannesburg.
Their findings imply that those who imagine we can rely on trust to save the world are deceiving themselves.
The pipeline, the construction of which is due to begin in December, runs from the Caspian Sea, through Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey to the Mediterranean. It will carry one million barrels of crude oil a day. One of most important energy projects on Earth, it will reinforce Turkey's position as a key strategic ally of the West. The 1 000km of pipeline running through Turkey will be built by the Turkish company Botas, on behalf of a consortium of oil firms led by BP.
Botas, which is responsible for the "major stakeholder consultation exercises" of which BP has boasted, claims to have distributed information "to all stakeholders" in the project, and to have consulted most of the villages along the route of the pipeline and nearly everyone else who might be affected by its construction. These assertions, the fact-finding mission to Turkey suggests, are untrue.
The mission visited eight of the villages Botas claims to have consulted. Four of them, it discovered, had not been contacted at all. In the mission's report there is a photograph of the village of Hacibayram, which Botas says it "consulted by telephone". The houses are little more than piles of rubble: the entire village was deserted years ago. It has no telephones.
The consultations that did take place appear to have been designed to manufacture consent. The people Botas visited were asked what they felt the benefits of the pipeline might be, but were not questioned about the potential costs. Botas brought in "university professors", who told the villagers, incorrectly, that there were no safety or environmental risks associated with the pipeline. The questionnaire noted that the pipeline is a Turkish government project "of high economic and strategic importance" to the country. The people who live along the route (some of whom are Kurds) are likely to have interpreted this as a coded warning that they speak out at their peril. Even the fact-finding mission was stopped and questioned by police.
Though the construction of the pipeline will destroy homes, fields and roads and damage many people's livelihoods, only a minority of those it affects are likely to receive compensation. Most of the land along the route is either not officially registered, or is held in the name of dead people.
BP's partner has told the villagers that it will compensate only those whose names are on the official register. No compensation at all has been offered to the fishing communities who will be affected by the construction of the tanker port at the end of the line.
Violations of this kind have been common practice in the oil industry for years, but what is new and astonishing about BP's project is the contract struck between the oil companies and the government of Turkey, a copy of which the fact-finding mission has obtained. The contract suggests that, far from being a model project led by an "accountable" corporation, the Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan pipeline sets new standards for corporate impunity and domination. The pipeline's "host government agreement" effectively grants the corporations executive power over the government.
The contract overrides all Turkish laws except the Constitution. It insulates the oil companies from any change in either Turkish law or international law: if, for example, new taxes or new environmental or health and safety rules are introduced, the agreement takes priority. In effect, it forces Turkey to flout international law in order to protect the consortium. BP appears to be legally exempt from paying compensation to anyone affected by oil spills or other impacts of the pipeline project.
Turkey has promised that its security forces will defend the consortium from "civil disturbances", but neither the government nor the companies are obliged by the agreement to respect human rights. BP may terminate the contract at any time. Turkey may not.
What BP and its partners have done, in other words, is to negotiate a contract that has the same effect as the multilateral agreement on investment, the charter for corporate rights drawn up in secret by governments and corporations five years ago, but dropped when it caused an international outcry.
The company that has promoted itself in Johannesburg as the exemplar of corporate responsibility, which has promised to respect the rule of law and "be held accountable" for its actions, has exempted itself from effective democratic control.
If BP -- by common consent the most environmentally and socially responsible of all big companies -- is prepared to play by these rules, it is hard to see why we should believe any of the promises made by big business in Johannesburg.
Corporations will take what they can: when there is a conflict between profitability and the environment or human rights, the profits come first. Voluntary agreements, this case suggests, simply do not work. Big business will protect human rights and the environment only if it is forced to do so.
*Produced with the kind permission of Guardian Newspapers 2002
Director’s Comment: Jo’burg Summit a massive backslide from Rio
This issue focuses on the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) that just ended in Johannesburg. What do we make of it?
The host country, South Africa, might judge the Summit as a success. Before the event, there were fears that the WSSD might go the way the World Conference against Racism went in Durban in September 2001 – that is, in chaos and confusion. The host government was also worried that the Summit might be taken as an occasion to denounce the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD). In the event, NEPAD was indeed denounced by a large segment of the NGOs, but it did not feature in the official deliberations, and the media remained generally quiet on the issue. Also, and certainly by comparison to the Anti-Racism Conference, the WSSD did not degenerate into chaos. The Conference even managed to issue a Political Declaration (however nebulous), something that the Rio+5 conference that was held in New York in 1997 had failed to do.
But this is an odd way of assessing the worth of a conference. It is essentially a negative way of looking at it. The "success" of a Conference is measured not in terms of what it actually achieved, but in terms of how it managed to avert disaster, not in terms of what happened but in terms of what did not happen. Indeed, when the ruling governments of the world cannot explain to the world’s people why the condition of the poor is worsening, when they have actually back-pedalled from the commitments they had made at Rio ten years ago (see below), when trade and the market ideology become the main force in international relations, and when global civil society is getting restless at the lack of action by the world’s leaders (see article by Percy Makombe in this issue), then the governments should indeed congratulate themselves that the Summit did not break down into chaos, like what happened at Durban, or at the third Conference of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) at Seattle in December, 1999.
In actual fact, there is massive backslide from Rio. At Rio the experts had worked out a figure of $600 billion for implementing Agenda 21. In the event only a quarter of that money (i.e. $125 billion) were pledged. Nothing came of that too. Even the pledge of putting aside 0.7 per cent of GDPs of the rich countries as ODAs was honoured by only five small countries (Finland, the Netherlands, Norway, Denmark and Sweden). At the Rio+5 conference in New York, the USA, backed by some European governments, took the position that if governments wanted money to save the environment, they should go to the market. The industrialised countries reneged on their promises, and shifted their responsibility over to the abstraction called "the market". In the Preparatory Meetings leading to the WSSD in Johannesburg, it was clear that finance for sustainable development would be a sticking point. In the event, the issue was shifted from the WSSD agenda to the Monterry Conference agenda. After Monterry, all that the world’s leaders had to do at the WSSD was to endorse the so-called "Monterry consensus." This shift underlined the Financial Irresponsibility of the WSSD. The spirit of goodwill and optimism that, despite some problems, characterised the Rio Summit in 1972, was given an indecent, hasty, burial at Johannesburg.
A second backslide was on the principle of "Common and Differentiated Responsibilities". This principle recognised that the environment was a common responsibility of mankind, but that some countries were worse polluters of the environment than others, and they also happened to be those that have greater resources to put things right, and therefore carried a higher degree of responsibility to do so. This principle was torn into pieces by the United States, just as it had torn the hard won Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change. Clearly, the Rio process was pedalling backwards.
Thirdly, the Rio process had acknowledged that the gap between the North and the South was increasing, and must be narrowed down. At least, those processes that led to the widening of the gap must be reversed, or at least controlled. The score on this is also negative. Not only nothing was done to reduce the gap, but also during the intervening years between Rio and Johannesburg, the gap widened even further. As WSSD’s chairman, President Thabo Mbeki, said in his opening address: "…we have not made much progress … the tragic result of this is the avoidable increase in human misery and ecological degradation, including the growing gap between North and South. It is as if we are determined to regress to the most primitive condition of existence in the animal world, of the survival of the fittest." Indeed, in the intervening period between Rio and Johannesburg, the market ideology acquired hegemony in international discourse, and the WTO came into its own. The WTO put trade in the centre of things, and subjected both the environment and development (and much else) to the whim of the market. It is this trend that finally culminated at Johannesburg, where the trade agenda of the WTO set out at its fourth Ministerial in Doha became a leading force in the negotiations on the Implementation Plan of the WSSD.
The WSSD process and products (The Implementation Plan and the Political Declaration) are applauded by governments because the anger of the people did not spill onto the street in a manner that could have disrupted the meeting, as at Seattle. People were indeed angry, and they did take the matter to the streets, but they were not ready to lose their case by resort to violence that had characterised other international gatherings before the WSSD. But, as stated earlier, this is a negative way of measuring the "success" of the WSSD. Equally negative is the judgement by members of civil society and the NGOs that argue that at least their actions (aided by some governments) managed to control damage that the WSSD could have caused if governments were left to themselves. This was clearly the case, for example, in the contentious issue of paragraph 91 of the Implementation Plan. This paragraph would have wanted the environment and development agenda to be subservient to the WTO. This was firmly resisted by the NGOs, and certain governments, such as those of Ethiopia, Venezuela and Norway. And at least on this matter the offending phrase "while ensuring WTO consistency" was finally dropped from paragraph 91.
It is a sad commentary on international conferences that their "success", such as it is, is measured by the criteria of "disaster aversion" (from governments’ point of view) and "damage control" (from civil society point of view). The world’s leaders are reneging on their responsibilities. Indeed, left to themselves, they are likely to leave things to the "forces of the market", and thus worsen the condition of the poor of the world. And so the major task of the NGOs and civil society is to control the damage that their governments might cause. Both the governments and the NGOs are backsliding in the very measures they must apply to assess the value of international conferences of this nature. And this devaluation of the currency they call "success".
The WSSD was a backsliding from yet another angle. The environment and development are regarded as "costs", and the language of "how to pay for these costs" dominate discussions. They are seen as burden, not as assets. This is reverse of what they actually are. The environment and social institutions are not "burdens" or "costs"; they are assets. There is certain recognition of this fact by a new generation of social and political economists. But these thinkers are still in the margins of intellectual discourse. Their thinking has not permeated the minds of those (mainly in governments) who meet at jamborees such as the WSSD at Johannesburg. Eco-systems and social systems are still treated as they are "management problems". They are not. They are part and parcel of human society. There is thus a need to change not only the content of negotiable issues at Summits such as the WSSD, but also the very mindset of those who come to negotiate. It is a long road.
Yash Tandon
Director, SEATINI
Produced by the International South Group Network (ISGN) Director and Editor: Y. Tandon; Advisor on SEATINI: B. L. Das
Editorial Assistance: Helene Bank, Rosalina Muroyi, Percy F. Makombe and Raj Patel
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