The international development secretary, Clare Short, has attacked African ministers for spending most of their time away from their homes attending conferences, and not focusing on problems in their own countries.
In the same speech Ms Short criticised some environmental groups for trying to protect the great apes. She called them ”morally disgusting” because they appeared to care more about animals than people.
Speaking without a prepared text at a conference on biodiversity and development in London aimed at helping the poor and also preventing the extinction of many of the world’s endangered species, she said that conferences often failed to achieve anything.
This conference, jointly hosted by the British government, the UN and environmental groups, would only be significant if it produced concrete results, she said.
”What is the point of bothering with all these conferences if we are not going to start implementing things in the real world?” she asked.
”On any day of any week of any year, most African ministers are not in Africa. They are at a conference in the northern hemisphere talking about what to do about development.”
In an exchange with charities trying to prevent the killing of apes for human consumption and the import of their meat into Britain, she said: ”People who care for nature and biodiversity have to care for humanity, and focusing on the animals without the people is morally disgusting.
”The bush-meat campaign, forgive me if I offend anyone, is a bit like that. The human beings don’t figure.”
Tony Juniper, director of Friends of the Earth, said: ”Whilst groups around the world work together to solve the twin crises of environment and development, we wonder which planet Clare Short lives on. It has been accepted in these circles for more than a decade that human and environment welfare go hand in hand … That fact seems to have escaped her.
”The reason African ministers have to travel so much is that the decisions which affect development in their countries are made in London, Paris, New York and Tokyo, and often create the problems they face at home — issues like the power of transnational corporations, world trade, unacceptable agricultural subsidies and unpayable debts.
”The prime minister seems to understand these issues; he should get his cabinet to toe the line.”
Tom Wakefield, for the International Institute for Environment and Development, said: ”It is a mystery to me how Clare Short, who claims to be on the side of the poor, jets round the world and yet the African ministers who surely could be said to represent them are criticised for trying to make their voice heard.”
He said his organisation had attempted to get groups of poor farmers from India to meet Ms Short but had failed. She refused to talk to them, despite a month’s notice, and had boycotted events they attended in the UK.
Charles McNeill from the UN Development Programme, one of the organisers of this week’s conference, said: ”These were aberrant comments which unfortunately did not reflect the full tenor of Short’s remarks, which were generally helpful andencouraging.”
A representative for Short said her remarks were not an attack on Africans, but an attack on the number of conferences. ”Her view is that we have development goals as a result of [the earth summit in] Johannesburg: the time for conferences is over and we need to get on with it.” – Guardian Unlimited Â