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Corporate Farming
Little words, very little actions
Dr. Abid Qaiyum Suleri
WSSD was hijacked by free trade talks, a backward-looking, insular and ignorant US administration and its friends in Japan, Canada, Australia and OPEC, a confused EU, and the global corporations
The World Summit on Sustainable Development concluded last week in Johannesburg, South Africa. United Nations Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, was very enthusiastic about the outcomes of the summit and in a press conference stated, "This Summit will put us on a path that reduces poverty while protecting the environment, a path that works for all peoples, rich and poor, today and tomorrow."
Contrary to Mr Annan's beliefs, civil society groups never had high expectations from WSSD and the "political declaration" as well as the "plan of implementation" adopted in the summit, which proved that their concerns were genuine.
"More Words, Little Action" was the title of an article written at the conclusion of Doha WTO ministerial conference in November 2001. "A Fiasco And A Flop" was the lead story carried by South Asia Watch on Trade, Economics, and Environment (SAWTEE) magazine commenting on the final declaration of UN International Conference on 'Financing For Development', which was held in Mexico in March 2002. "Food deficit, political deficit" was the title of my earlier commentary on World Food Summit, Rome (five years later). Two months after the World Food Summit, I cannot help describing the WSSD as an exercise of little words, and very little action. The gathering at the summit was a reflection of the influence of corporate industries on our governments. During the summit, it seemed that official delegates of the developed nations were gathered on Johannesburg to protect the interests of their industries and had nothing to do with the masses.
The draft text of the political declaration described the response of the world leaders to the presentation made by the children of the world. Its Paragraphs 4 and 5 say, "As part of our response to these children, we assume a collective responsibility to advance and strengthen the interdependent and mutually reinforcing pillars of sustainable development--economic development, social development, and environmental protection--at local, national, regional, and global levels." However, this commitment is a "political" commitment and has no legal binding. Hence, in practice the powerful industrialist actors--in particular the United States--sabotaged all efforts to achieve a workable formula to Save The Earth. As Naomi Klein rightly reported in The Guardian of September 4th, "It was George W Bush who abandoned the only significant environmental regulations that came out of the Rio Conference: the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. It was Bush who decided not to come to Johannesburg, signalling that the issues being discussed here--from basic sanitation to clean energy--are low priorities for his administration. And the US delegation has blocked all proposals that involve either directly regulating multinational corporations or dedicating significant new funds to sustainable development".
Corporate sector has raised a huge fund for sponsoring the summit. However, this sponsorship was not a "free lunch" and the cost of this sponsorship was to let the corporate sector as it is. They did not want to be tied under any rules and regulations and wanted to comply with a voluntary code of conduct, without any legal bindings. The summit's chief sponsor was Eskom, South Africa's soon-to-be-privatised national energy company. The poor households of South Africa are being deprived of access to electricity as a result of this privatisation moot. The powerful industrialist lobby still believes in the old trickle-down formula of development, that developing countries would benefit from foreign investment by privatising the essential services, such as water, electricity, and healthcare. However, this is not a pro-poor approach, and the marginalised sections of the developing countries become more vulnerable and even more marginalised as a result of the privatisation of basic necessities of life. In the words of Klein, "Post-Enron, it is hard to believe that companies can be trusted to keep their own books, let alone save the world. And unlike a decade ago, the economic model of laissez-faire development is being rejected by popular movements around the world".
The corporate sector was dominating the summit, whereas the "stakeholders" were left on the street under the strict control of military. "Thank God, Bush decided not to attend the summit, otherwise they (South Africans) could have increased the security manifolds," said Khalid Hussain of Development Vision, who attended the summit and declared it an extreme disappointment. "We were asking for debt cancellation, an end to the privatisation of water and electricity, reparations for apartheid abuses, affordable housing, and land reform; whereas, they were teaching us the lessons of Government-Corporate Sector Partnership," he added.
The summit delegates were talking of poverty reduction while enjoying their finest whiskeys, and five star meals. Outside the gates, poor people were hidden away, assaulted and imprisoned for what has become the iconic act of resistance in an unsustainable world: refusing to disappear. "The WSSD was sadly hijacked by big businesses as usual. Can you believe that at the entrance to the summit there was a huge tent advertising BMW!" exclaimed Leah Garces of Compassion in World Farming Trust. "What nonsense! Sadly, I think the real work is left up to us at the grassroots level," she lamented.
However, there is not much the civil society groups can do at the grassroots levels to change the state of the world and to bring sustainability requires a political will, resources, and strong commitment towards poor. Unfortunately, it lacks in real terms and the northern nations are expecting the southern counterparts to pay for their (northern) mess. In reality, environment is a long-term issue, which has always suffered from the short-term imperatives of the vicious political cycle. It has been treated, by governments all over the world, as a problem which can be endlessly deferred to the next administration. The UN is helpless in this situation. The major actors among the UN system have converted environment into an issue that can be deferred to the next generations.
There are two kinds of "outcome" from the summit: "Type I" and "Type II". Type I outcomes are the agreements brokered by governments. These negotiations, like those at all the previous earth summits, have so far been dominated by the EU and US. While poorer nations have called for the rich countries to recognise their ecological debt to the rest of the world, to cough up the money they promised and were failed to deliver ten years ago and to find ways of holding big businesses to account. The rich world has insisted instead, that the interests of the poor and the environment are secondary to free trade.
On the other hand Type II outcomes are even worst. The UN has permitted big businesses to hijack not just the results of the negotiations, but also the negotiating process itself. The corporations are moving into the vacuum left by the heads of State, and asserting their claim to global governance. In principle, Type II outcomes are voluntary agreements, negotiated by governments, businesses and people's organisations. In practice, the corporations, being better funded and more powerful than the people's groups, are running the show. They propose to regulate themselves, through "voluntary codes of practice", which in reality amount to little more than re-branding of destructive activities as beneficial ones.
These agreements, in other words, rephrased some of the world's most destructive corporations, as the officially sanctioned saviours of the environment. They will sow confusion among the people with whom these corporations engage, and undermine effective regulation. In the wake of the Enron and WorldCom scandals, the UN is helping companies to argue, that voluntary self-auditing is an effective substitute for democratic control.
It is a tragic situation--the UN is now acting like the World Trade Organisation. They should see what a bad sign it is to need this level of security at a summit. It was not always the case, but is a result of the UN and the private sector working on the same lines. "Kofi Annan has convinced himself of the value of partnership," observed an African delegate. "He pioneered the Global Compact. I cannot believe he is not feeling betrayed by the companies, who posed with him for photo opportunities and have failed to deliver. They have used him and they have used the UN."
In this scenario, it was not surprising that during the summit people talked about corporations rather than politicians, because their politicians have been bought. There is no better example than the US. Its government represents an absolute and complete merger between the corporate sector and the State machinery. Dozens of CEOs of various corporations are in the Bush administration. They are shuttling back and forth between those two worlds--and are writing policies for each other. The idea of a public/private partnership is Dick Cheney meeting with his old friend Ken Lay, and writing an energy policy.
All we could achieve from WSSD, are two new and specific targets: (1) To halve by 2015 the proportion of people who do not have access to basic sanitation: and (2) Elimination of destructive fishing practices and establishment of marine protected areas by 2012. On energy, no target for increasing renewable energy use and a programme of action could be agreed, supporting the provision of energy services to the 2bn people currently without access to these services. Instead, the promotion of "clean" fossil fuels, betrayal of the Kyoto Protocol to combat climate change was agreed (although the announcement of ratification by both Canada and Russia this week is a welcome step). Other targets of access to drinking water, biodiversity, chemicals and official development assistance are simply reaffirmed, watered down, or trashed altogether
Commenting on the output of WSSD, Alexandra Wandel of Friends of the Earth Europe said: "Friends of the Earth International has strongly supported the Earth Summit. We desperately need binding international agreements. However, governments have missed a historic opportunity in Johannesburg by failing to set the necessary social and ecological limits to economic globalisation."
The summit was hijacked by free trade talks, by a backward-looking, insular and ignorant US administration and its friends in Japan, Canada, Australia and OPEC, by a confused EU, and by the global corporations. It was a betrayal of the millions of people around the world who looked to this summit for real action, and particularly of poor people and vulnerable communities in the South.
Three flop international summits (WTO Ministerial Conference, World Food Summit fyl, and WSSD) over a period of less than 10 months is highly disgusting and a sheer betrayal of the marginalised section. This trend ought to change, or the UN should stop convening summits. It should simply convey what "Her masters" want the world to look like. It would save time and resources of thousands of potential delegates who have to attend meetings in future.
Courtesy The News
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Pakissan.com;
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