The Johannesburg Earth Summit can still be a success for poor
people and the environment, though pessimism and disillusion hover
over its opening. The ECO-Equity coalition of NGOs (ANPED,
Consumers International, Danish 92 Group, Greenpeace, Oxfam
International, Friends of the Earth, WWF) says that it is much too
soon to write off the Johannesburg Earth summit off.
Concrete results are possible - and there's no question that
they're crucial. Floods in Europe and China, food crisis in
southern Africa, droughts in the United States, the "brown cloud"
over much of Asia, are timely reminders that natural and man-made
disasters can be hugely exacerbated by the failure of policy-makers
driven by the commercial interests of the rich world.
The Eco group believes that the European Union should put its
money and energy where its mouth is. If it would only live up to
its rhetoric on poverty and the environment and put its collective
energies into building a coalition of brave and visionary
countries, Johannesburg can be made more than a pre-ordained
"disaster". However, any coalition that delivers success at the
Summit must recognise and address the real downsides of economic
globalisation.
With EU leadership, there's a long list of potential partner
countries - beginning with Brazil, Japan, Indonesia and South
Africa - and the potential results cover a range of crucial issues
including renewable energy, cross-border river management, poverty
eradication, sustainable consumption and making the corporate world
take responsibility for its actions.
What genuine achievements could such a coalition help bring
about?
-- The US can be pressured to live up its obligations as the
world's richest nation (and the greatest polluter) and help bring
about real progress at this summit.
-- The EU has promised to fight for an agreement for
co-operative management of international rivers to promote peace
and security and adequate and clean water for people and nature.
They must ensure that these concepts and the tools to implement
them are in the final agreement from Johannesburg.
-- Brazil can resist the pressure to water down its progressive
renewable energy initiative - and other countries must step up and
support it.
-- All rich countries must look to the spectre of the13 million
people facing disaster just a few hundred kilometres away from
Johannesburg. They can agree to eliminate the absurd subsidies and
export dumping that denies long-term development opportunities for
previously self-sufficient peoples in southern Africa.
-- Bold developing country blocs could achieve agreement on the
part of rich countries to rectify the imbalances of the current
trade regime which negatively affect people and the
environment.
-- The US and EU can help the world's poorest two billion and
relieve the unsustainable pressure on the environment if they agree
to cooperate to reverse the long-term decline in price of primary
commodities.
-- The EU can stop blocking an international framework for
corporate accountability and ensure that Johannesburg is the place
where negotiations for global rules for business were finally
started.
The coalition believes that South Africa, as host, has a special
role. We look to it to lead by example in seeking results that are
good for the whole planet - and to help other vulnerable countries
resist the pressures of rich power blocs to form narrow alliances
based on self-interest.
These results are attainable. They need leadership, hard work
and a collective decision by just a few countries to put selfish
interest on the back shelf and reinvigorate the multi-lateral
system. The poor and disadvantaged people of the world and our
battered environment have high hopes for this event - we must not
let them down.
The agenda at Joburg is complex, the economic and political
vested interests make them so, but the answers are starkly
simple.
Signed Johannesburg 26 August 2002: Consumers International,
Danish 92 Group, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, Oxfam
International, Northern Alliance for Sustainability, WWF