Delegates will bring many conflicting agendas to the World Summit, write Drew Forrest and Fiona Macleod
‘The trouble with the World Summit on Sustainable Development is that sustainable development means whatever you want it to mean,” comments a South African-based diplomat.
With the summit six months away, and a ministerial “prepcom” (preparatory committee) meeting due to refine the agenda in Jakarta in June, its concrete business and possible fruits remain vague.
But key participants are already seeing the 10-day gathering, starting in Johannesburg on August 26, in different ways. No one predicts the sort of conflict that almost sabotaged last year’s conference on racism in Durban, and most are hopeful of a positive outcome.
But all foresee “difficulties”. South Africa’s Minister of Water Affairs and Forestry, Ronnie Kasrils, said in Parliament recently that every effort was being made to prevent a Durban-style bunfight.
Everyone agrees or at least pays lip-service to the idea that the summit must redress the widening gulf between rich and poor nations. There is a sense that while the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro critically reshaped the world environmental regime, through such instruments as the Kyoto protocol on climate change, its call to arms on poverty and under-development had little effect.
Views on what should be done are heavily coloured by the interests and ideological culture of nations and groups of nations, however. The principal fissure is between the rich north and the poor south but these blocs are far from monolithic.
The South Africans are adamant that the summit must focus on development, not the environment, and this is the message the host country is sending out to environmental NGOs.
Kasrils complained that the local media tended to assign environmental journalists to the August 26 gathering, and the Cabinet is apparently irked that its inter-state contacts on the summit are mainly with environment ministers. The relevant Cabinet subcommittee embraces virtually every portfolio.
Details are sparse, but the South Africans are pressing for heads of state to seal a global economic deal between north and south, embodied in a “Johannesburg programme of action”. They are said to be determined that the summit should not be an empty vessel, like the racism conference.
The blueprint is the New Economic Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad), which emphasises the mobilisation of private capital for development and envisages a trade-off involving increased “northern” development assistance and improved trade access in exchange for “southern” government reform.
Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel is expected to advance this position in a conference on development financing in Monterrey, Mexico, in March, which is seen as a crucial element in the build-up to August 26.
South Africa has a foot in both northern and southern camps. But many members of the “G77” developing nation lobby appear to have a cruder view, seeing the summit as a means of extracting more aid the magic figure is 0,7% of Gross National Product and more, and less onerous, assistance from multilateral agencies such as the World Bank.
There is little sympathy among certain developed states and particularly a United States under Republican rule for what they brand the “diplomacy of the begging bowl”.
The US is to press for improved governance in key poverty-relieving areas such as energy, water, fisheries and forests. It has little interest in the “artificial” 0,7% figure, arguing that if the poor are the target there is no sense in lining the pockets of self-serving elites.
In general, the US favours private sector-driven development and is allergic to regulatory regimes that hobble private business. It is this that underlies its refusal to endorse Kyoto, and preference for private sector self-regulation through “emissions trading” between companies.
Coupled with the aid issue is another potential summit flashpoint globalisation, construed in some circles as a force for under-development.
The South is by no means unanimous on this. President Thabo Mbeki has pledged an open economy, and many Far Eastern states have benefited handsomely from increased trade and capital flows.
Whatever else happens, the South Africans clearly intend using the summit as a launching pad for Nepad, an initiative which enjoys strong support from European countries with a post-colonial conscience. But the Third World is not unanimously behind them.
Latin America is concerned that Nepad may divert aid flows to Africa. Another potentially competing interest is that of small island economies, whose cause is championed by Australia and the US.
The general perception is that environmental issues are highest on the agenda of Europe, with its environmentally conscious citizens and tough regulatory regimes. The Europeans are expected to push hard on matters such as renewable energy and marine conservation.
But there is a suspicion that this is partly a veil for restricting trade access and, in particular, shielding Europe’s farmers, subsidised to the tune of $1-billion a day. The fear which cuts across the north-south divide is that the Europen Union may use the summit to counter-balance its pledge at the recent World Trade Organisation pow-wow in Doha to dismantle non-tariff barriers to trade.
“The Europeans may try to extend the Rio Declaration’s support for ‘the precautionary approach’ restricting environmentally risky imports without hard scientific evidence to issues of human health,” said one diplomatic source.
One target could be genetically modified agricultural imports, on which Europe is deeply cautious. The bulk of US grain exports are genetically modified, and both the US and South Africa see genetic engineering as a potential motor of development.
The Europeans would prefer multilateral environmental accords like Kyoto to take precedence over the World Trade Organisation, which insists on scientific proof of harm to the environment or health as a condition for trade blackouts.
Veiled protectionism may influence the view of certain European summit delegates on G77 demands for more official aid, say observers. Remarks one: “There is talk that cheque books will be waved around at the summit, to soften demands for access to European markets.”
For environmentalists, the biggest worry is that the accent on August 26 will be on economic development to the detriment of sustainability two ideas that do not necessarily complement each other.
It is said that 500 years ago, a squirrel could cross Britain without touching the ground. The nemesis of indigenous woodlands was the ship-building trade, the root of British mercantile power.
Likewise, the destruction of rain forests may serve the immediate development needs of Brazil, Malaysia and, perhaps down the road, the Democratic Republic of Congo. Arguing that Europe’s present affluence was built on massive environmental damage, rapidly industrialising countries such as China and India ask why they should limit “greenhouse” and other harmful emissions.
The Johannesburg summit will have to transcend the narrow economic interests of national governments whose first obligation is to their own citizens.
But delegates and particularly the South Africans will also have to accept that environmental protection is not the faddish concern of a well-heeled minority. The immediate material interests of the world’s poor will have to be squared with the interests of generations to come.