So, the event that the French call Le Sommet Mondial Developpement Durable, or the World Summit on Sustainable Development, has come and gone, leaving in its wake what this newspaper calls “a dubious legacy”. Yet some enduring propositions resonated through its proceedings.
Perhaps the most significant is one noted by the filmmaker Philip Brooks: the only way to change the world is to link the fears of the rich with the needs of the poor. Brooks uses as an example the world’s response to the Aids epidemic. He notes how, in the first five years after its discovery, Aids caused hysteria and panic spawning myths fed by ignorance and prejudice. The mid-1980s became a time to pause and reflect as countries like Australia and the United Kingdom mounted grim ad campaigns to warn of the disease, its causes and effects.
But, in 1990, a CIA report noted that, by the end of that decade, 60% of infections would be in sub-Saharan Africa. The rich world promptly went to sleep. It awoke only towards the end of the last century when the epidemic was raging through the continent, manifesting itself in a death statistic that inspired Brooks’s documentary: 6 000 a Day.
As an issue, immigration also links fears and needs. The fear of being overwhelmed by poor, strange-looking people should induce the rich to help ensure that the downtrodden have less of a reason to want to move from the poor parts of the globe to the rich. But this is seldom the case. Geography may sometimes conspire, as if on behalf of the rich, to help prevent mass migration from the world’s poorer parts. For example, heat and the sheer distance to the shores of the Mediterranean dissuade many desperate North Africans from crossing illegally to France; and they kill many who try regardless. The same factors also serve to contain the numbers of South and Central Americans, mostly Mexicans, who make it across to the United States as illegal aliens. But, as for immigration laws, they are drawn up merely to prevent flooding of the richer countries; there is little concerted attempt at a preventive approach that might use economic development in poorer countries to help convince their citizens that it is better to remain at home.
The group that most loudly purports to work for the poor is the NGOs. They remain a fastidious lot. Though powered by ideals, they seldom, however, have the cash to realise them. According to the American Association of Fundraising Counsel Trust for Philanthropy (that must be an NGO), donations to US environmental groups in 2001 increased by 50% to $6,4-billion. Yet, as journalist Andrew Goldstein notes, “[the environmentalists] have prospered, the Earth has not”.
Part of the problem is that NGOs bash without giving credit. The number of hectares destroyed every year in the Amazon has decreased from 12-million a year at Rio in 1992 to 1,5-million a year at present. Has anyone been given credit for that decline?
Moreover, those who chop down trees do so for logging and to be able to foster cattle ranching. It does not help to keep demanding a total halt to chopping down trees without suggesting an alternative means by which those doing so can earn a living.
Another NGO weakness is their taste for corporate bashing. The world needs corporations. They have the resources to produce the products and technologies responsible for massive improvements in the conditions of life of ordinary people. NGOs also need corporations as a source of funding. It is, moreover, a fact that the big, profitable corporates invariably lead in the areas of good corporate governance and international best practice on sustainability reporting — the triple bottom line. The NGOs might do far better in their relations with corporations and governments to focus on spreading among them the business of enlightened self-interest in their dealings with the poor and poorer countries.
The idea that corporate-led globalisation is a heartless beast has some merit but it is only part of the picture. It usually leads to the proposition that globalisation should be presided over by a triumvirate of governments, corporates and NGOs. If that were to happen, however, I believe little would be achieved.
The only kind of global revolution I can see NGOs leading is one in which no, or very little, wealth is created — though there would still be an attempt to distribute what little there was equally. Everyone would look at the next person and sheepishly lament, “at least everyone has as much” — while each chewed his peanut and licked salt off his palms. The world would be a fairer, but scarcely a better, place.
But there does need to be a new kind of dialogue — intelligent, humane and realistic — between the needy, the rich and the caring. Without it, we are likely heading for extinction, with war over basics like water and famine the milestones en route. That probability captures the sum of our fears and our most pressing needs.
Archive: Previous columns by Thebe Mabanga