Retreat from Rio

>> NGOs fear sustainable development is
at stake at the Johannesburg Summit

by EVE KRAKOW

Ten years ago, the world community gathered in Rio de Janeiro for the United Nations Conference on Environment, also known as the Earth Summit. It was a landmark event, putting environmental issues at the forefront of public debate and leading to groundbreaking agreements on environment and development, biodiversity, climate change and forests.

Now, from August 26 to September 4, 2002, the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) will take place in Johannesburg, South Africa. Informally known as Rio+10, the summit’s objective, according to the UN Web site, is “to reinvigorate political commitment to sustainable development.” It aims to be “a step forward, moving from concepts to action.” Yet many Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) are wary: political will has been feeble; corporate interests are gaining prominence. Says one participant, “The very notion of sustainable development is at stake.”

Alex Hill, environment project officer for Alternatives, a Montreal-based international development NGO, participated in a preparatory committee meeting in Bali, Indonesia, last May. It was on his return that he decided not to attend the summit. “The text that will be agreed on in South Africa is actually a significant step back from many of the other past agreements that have been signed,” he says.
Three things are expected from the summit: a statement from world leaders (or “Johannesburg Declaration”) reaffirming their commitment to sustainable development; a plan of action or implementation, also known as the Chairman’s paper; and partnerships between businesses, NGOs, governments and/or international UN agencies. In Bali, the final touches were to be put on the Chairman’s paper. However, after two weeks of tedious, line-by-line negotiation, more than 25 per cent of the text remains “bracketed”-meaning that at least one of the negotiating blocks objects to it. Yet this 25 per cent contains many of the major issues, targets and timelines.

Ten steps backward?

Hill says the U.S. delegation ruffled the most feathers. For example, they refused references to health services for fear of its link to abortion, and the right to food or water “because they were unsure who had to provide for that right, rather than looking at it from the point of view of, ‘Well, you’re not allowed to take away that right.’”

Canada has not exactly been a model player either. In a report to the Canadian Environment Network, Amelia Clarke, a Sierra Club of Canada board member, writes, “One of the most controversial targets for Canada is about renewable energy. Natural Resources Canada actively lobbied for this target to be removed from the text.”

Key notions that remain in brackets include almost all targets, all references to the precautionary principle (which, as defined by the Rio Declaration, states that a lack of full scientific evidence can’t be used as an excuse to put off effective measures to prevent environmental degradation), the strategic environmental impact assessment concept, the idea of the life-cycle approach and all references to human rights. Despite this bleak outlook, many groups are still hoping to make an impact at the summit-although they too have some major concerns.

Sylvie Paquerot, president of the Association québécoise pour un contrat mondial de l’eau, will be attending the summit as a representative of the International Federation for Human Rights. She hopes to get access to clean water recognized as a human right. At the first UN conference on water in 1977, she says, water was recognized as common property. This should have meant no privatization-yet privatization is being promoted, and has already had devastating effects on the poor in several African countries.

Enormous stakes

The symbolic stakes of the summit are enormous, says Paquerot. “Will we come out of this summit having scrapped sustainable development? That’s where we’re headed. In agreements like the Convention on Biodiversity, the Convention on Climate Change, all the elements are already there to transfer everything into merchandise.”

Paquerot notes that industry and business have become a huge lobby group. “At Kyoto, we witnessed a new phenomenon: the majority of the NGOs were representatives of the business sector. ‘Civil society’ means anyone not part of the government. And companies obviously have more money to travel to these summits, to hire lawyers to study the documents, etc.”

“There are some very scary things happening internationally,” agrees Nancy Burrows, international liaison for the World March of Women. She holds up the example of the International Conference on Financing for Development, held in March in Monterrey, Mexico, where NGOs and business representatives sat on the exact same level. “We believe there should be a privileged position for non-governmental organizations that represent people’s movements.”

The Monterrey conference was also the first time the UN was aligning itself so closely with the World Bank and the IMF, she says. “More and more, the UN is taking on a neo-liberal vocabulary. When it comes to development issues, there seems to be a very strong emphasis on [getting] countries of the global south to make themselves more enticing for international investment, as opposed to empowering communities.”

In Johannesburg, Burrows will be participating primarily in the Civil Society Global Forum, the parallel NGO summit that runs from August 19 to September 4. “Our strategy is to produce action plans for pushing forward an alternative vision of development.” She hopes they will emerge with a statement that can be presented to the official summit delegates.

Does she think leaders will listen? “If we’re going, it’s because we hope to have some impact. It’s hard to know the extent of that impact, but I think it’s crucial that it be done. It’s very important that grassroots and non-governmental organizations be there and make their voices heard.”

Lack of analysis

To Steven Guilbeault, director of Greenpeace Quebec and the climate change campaigner for Greenpeace Canada, the biggest concern is the lack of analysis on what’s been accomplished to date. “I find it difficult to accept that there isn’t going to be, at the meeting itself, some time devoted to looking back 10 years after Rio. What worked, and more specifically, what didn’t work and why.”
Greenpeace will be pushing for a commitment to provide energy and electricity to the world’s two billion people who don’t have access to energy, and for this energy to be provided through renewable sources. As a Canadian, says Guilbeault, he also intends to continue to push for Kyoto.

Indeed, several environmental groups had been hoping Canada would take advantage of the summit to announce its ratification of this agreement on reducing greenhouse gases. However, although Prime Minister Jean Chrétien has finally confirmed his participation in the summit, such an announcement appears unlikely.

Overall, the Johannesburg summit has generated little political interest. “For the Rio Summit, the federal government had put aside $200-million to prepare itself,” recalls Sydney Ribaux, general coordinator of Equiterre. For Johannesburg, he says, the government has set aside $20-million. Considering that Canada is a G7 member, “that sets the tone of the summit’s importance for these countries.”

Equiterre, founded in the wake of the Rio Summit, is one of several groups that have decided they can accomplish more by concentrating on their work here at home. “When we examined the question [of whether or not to attend the summit] about a year and a half ago, the impression that we had-and I think it was correct-was that Johannesburg will be a non-event, in the sense that not much will happen.” :