Director General of the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism Dr “Chippy” Olver was a key author of the Reconstruction and Development Programme. He spoke to Chris van der Merwe about the strategy underpinning the world summit
Chris van der Merwe: Is sustainable development about redistribution of wealth?
Chippy Olver: There have been three big shifts in the world environment debate. The pre-Rio debate was about putting green issues on the global agenda. Then it was about linking the environment and development. The Rio conference in 1992 was the embodiment of that linkage. What we’re building up to now is the third pillar of the debate which is poverty, the environment and development. You can’t talk about sustainable development without addressing the issues of poverty and inequality.
It’s not necessarily about taking from the rich and giving to the poor. It might be more about how we change the balance of power in the world trading system, about how we change the balance of power in the global capital market and the world financial system. It might be more focused on debt relief for Third World countries.
Will sustainable development underpin international policies and national priorities into the future?
We’re moving towards a global government system. Rio was the start of that, and subsequent to Rio you’ve seen this mushrooming of conventions. The recent agreement that we’ve reached in South Africa about persistent organic pollutants was one piece in the jigsaw of the global government system, which is linking into the global trade system.
We have concerns about the direction in which the emerging global government system is moving at the moment.
What are those concerns?
The nub is that the system that is emerging is so complex, multi-faceted and demanding that the developing world is unable to participate effectively in it. To the extent that it is able to participate effectively, it is required to rip resources from domestic environmental management to do that.
I’m seeing many of my colleagues almost full-time on conference circuits. They should be home managing their line departments.
The global government system is fairly easy for developed countries to participate in and drive effectively. But we are concerned that it should be structured to enable adequate developing world participation; 2002 has to look at this system.
How aware were you of Rio’s significance when it was happening back in 1992?
I was working full-time on the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) for the African National Congress. I would argue that the RDP was South Africa’s first sustainable development strategy. I was too involved at the time in the South African transition to have fully appreciated what the Rio conference was about.
Does the RDP owe anything to Rio?
The mood of the time influenced quite substantially the ANC’s own RDP strategy. People are saying today that we don’t have a national strategy for sustainable development. I’ve been saying we do. We’ve just moved several years on from it. We need to take an audit of where we are now. But the RDP was a first shot at a sustainable development strategy that pulled the environment into issues around economic restructuring and social development and poverty alleviation.
Fundamental to the understanding of sustainable development is that the economy is not separate from the environment in which we live.
That’s our policy. I think we’re doing quite a lot to get the country to recognise the value of the environment. The value that the country commonly attaches to environmental assets has changed.
There has been a marked shift in the past 10 years in the way in which we value the environment. Possibly not sufficiently, but it’s increasingly being seen as an economic factor.
Will World Summit 2002 change South Africa forever?
That’s part of why we went for this conference. It’s much about our own domestic agenda and putting sustainable development at a far higher level domestically. There is not one line department in the government that will be able to escape having to think about sustainable development far more deeply than they have to date.
Would you agree that there are still two different sets of priorities for the developed and the developing world?
Yes. The global government system has evolved around one basket of issues far more convincingly. Typically, developed nation priorities included climate change, pollution, acid rain, ozone depletion, population stagnation, crime, drug abuse and loss of biodiversity (in the developing South).
There is a convention on land degradation and desertification, but no developed country has put money into it. So it’s an empty convention quite frankly; it’s a convention of poverty. I just don’t think it is being taken seriously.
Let me say what’s going to make them wake up: when they realise that global poverty is as much a threat to their own economic growth and future as it is to ours, they’re going to start doing something about it.
Do South Africa’s priorities straddle both sets?
We are at the interface. We are able to understand issues on both the developed and developing world agendas. I would put our concerns far more firmly in the developing world. But we are a bridge. In a sense, we have two worlds wrapped up in one country. We have extremes of inequality in our own countr, and we have a very affluent minority that is very tuned in to the concerns of the developed world.
To make sustainable development work, there needs to be a tradeoff between the developed and the developing worlds.
The North followed a growth path, from Industrial Revolution times until today, which was probably the worst-case growth path you could follow with massive social dislocation and environmental degradation.
A lot of the arguments we’re having now about these international obligations are about them trying to get us to constrain our growth path to address their concerns now, many decades later on their industrial development path. The deal has got to be that they have to allow us to leap through development stages through technology transfer. They’ve got to give something and it’s far more than just giving aid. It’s more fundamental. It’s about them being seriously prepared to transfer some of their technological advantage to the developing world to enable us to implement sustainable development.
What will be the role of South African big business in the run-up to and at World Summit 2002?
All indications are that big business is taking it very seriously. Obviously, the corporate sector needs to do a lot more than its current level of commitment to the environment.
There is the example of Anglo-American and the appreciation of the full economic value of environmental assets. That appreciation must certainly deepen. Companies still take excessive risks with workers regarding environmental standards.
Rio ’92 actually comprised two summits the official one, and a rival alternative one, highly critical of the other.
The whole approach to these conferences has changed enormously. There are multi-stakeholder sessions and active recognition of the value of NGOs and business sectors in the environmental debate.
The way that we’re planning 2002 actively takes account of the need for those other sectors to be part of the process. There will be major NGO sessions. It won’t be an alternative session; it will be part of the process.
Do you think there’s scope for promoting the “African renaissance”?
We’re putting a lot of emphasis on the preparatory process in Southern Africa and Africa around this event. We see it as contributing in a major way to the “African renaissance” agenda.
As the host, have we done a respectable job getting our own house in order?
Pre-1994 “the environment” was something preserved for the wealthy. If you were poor and living in a township you didn’t have environmental rights. People in the townships lived with appalling air pollution, for instance.
What we’ve done since 1994 is establish the environment as a fundamental right. We put that into our Constitution. We have one of the world’s most progressive pieces of environmental legislation in place and a set of delivery programmes.
We’re in mid-leap in that process, but we’ve gone a very long way … fishing rights, marine and coastal management, cracking down on air pollution. This is not to say the system is perfect. We still have gross environmental problems, but the processes are under way that are going to crack those.