No penguins waddle around the Antarctica ”Ice Station”, the first of hundreds of exhibits to open for the Earth Summit here, but a bewildering maze built of rusted metal and an art display crafted from waste demand as much attention.
The Group Mission Antarctica is one of some 7 000 organisations promoting a vast array of causes through exhibitions and meetings ahead of and alongside the UN World Summit on Sustainable Development, to be held from August 26 to September 4 in Johannesburg.
The Civil Society Global People’s Forum, which is expecting some 40 000 delegates, starts a week ahead of the 10-day summit at the Nasrec exhibition centre, southwest of the city.
”We will be hosting around 90 events a day and 350 exhibitors have confirmed,” said Desmond Lesejane, the chief executive officer of the Civil Society secretariat, five days ahead of its opening.
Civil Society events range from the predictable ? like sustainable agriculture and trade, alternative energy, eco-tourism, recycling by municipalities and poverty eradication — to creative events like an African dress festival and a glass exhibition.
Fringe activities like a healing circle for the Earth and a ”Rainbow Maker”, which aims to create 600-metre natural rainbows in the sky, are also on the agenda.
The groups hope to emerge with a common ”Platform 21” to present to negotiators, despite their diverse causes and more militant groups contesting their legitimacy.
Land activists, for example, are among the anti-globalisation groups which have broken away from the Nasrec programme to host a ”Landless People’s Camp” (LPC), where they expect up to 5 000 supporters.
”The LPC is separate from the civil society forum and the government movement,” said National Land Committee representative Andile Mngxitma.
”Since Stockholm (where the first environmental commitments were made in 1972) we have had 30 years of broken promises,” he said, casting doubt on whether the summit would contribute to development and the planet’s future.
But Lesejane downplayed divisions between groups, saying instead that all of them would be represented during a march on August 31 to the elite northern suburb of Sandton, where the UN conference will be held, and where Platform 21 will be handed over to world leaders.
”One memorandum might be presented but there are many other messages,” he said.
The Civil Society programme kicks off with pre-summits by organised sectors, like women and indigenous people, according to Lesejane.
Their opening ceremony, at which South African President Thabo Mbeki is expected to preside, followed by a three-hour international concert, takes place on August 23 at the Johannesburg stadium.
During the next week delegates will work on developing Platform 21, through meetings focused on issues like human security and science and technology, and ”cross-cutting” issues like poverty eradication.
Demonstrations are also planned around the summit, with some four permits granted — out of seven applications by Friday ? by the Johannesburg city council.
The Basic Income Grant Coalition (BIG), for example, intends to create a human chain of thousands of people from near the overcrowded township of Alexandra to Sandton on September 3, symbolically linking the poor to the summit’s decisions. BIG has demanded access to a basic income grant of R100 ($10/euros per month) for around half of South Africa’s 43-million people.
From September 1-4, Civil Society delegates will concentrate on building alliances to implement their decisions, Lesejane said.
”This will inform what Civil Society does in the future, so that the summit is not simply a talkshop.”
At the Ubuntu village near Sandton — to be the service and recreational hub for the summit — the world’s largest tent, Tensile 1, has 11 000 square metres of exhibition space.
Everywhere the words ”sustainable” and ”partnership” are blazed across banners.
Even delivery trucks at the Ubuntu Village reflected the ”sustainable development” theme. A ”PikiTup” truck, responsible for eco-friendly waste disposal, and a Hare Krishna van, supplying vegetarian food, were stationed at the entrance to the village. – Sapa-AFP