| The
activists attending the World Summit on Sustainable
Development in Johannesburg couldn't wait for it
to end before denouncing it as a failure and a
sham. At its conclusion, United Nations Secretary
General
Kofi A. Annan, ever the realist, ever the voice
of moderation, conceded that "we didn't get everything
we wanted," and warned that, "We have to
be careful not to expect conferences like this to
produce miracles." The good news about the summit,
Annan said, is that "sustainable development
is firmly back on the agenda."
But
Annan also noted that the summit's success
or failure would be determined not by what
was put into or left out of its "Plan
of Implementation" but rather by what
happens afterward "on the ground." It
was an unmistakable reference to the legacy
of bitterness and recrimination left by the "Earth
Summit" that was held 10 years ago in
Rio de Janeiro. That summit, officially called
the United Nations Conference on Environment
and Development, was what put "sustainable
development" at the top of the international
agenda. At it more than 100 leaders of the
world's nations acknowledged that those nations
bore the responsibility for ensuring the planet's
survival. And they accepted the principle of "common
but differentiated responsibility" of
the rich and poor nations toward that end.
That is, the poor nations agreed that they
would seek to develop in a "sustainable" way
(without repeating the environmental mistakes
made in the past by the rich nations), while
the rich nations agreed to make that possible
by raising the level of their development assistance.
Unfortunately,
1992 also brought a severe economic
downturn in most of the donor
countries, and so instead of raising
their flows of development assistance,
most of the rich countries lowered them.
The poor countries, disgusted by what
they saw as a double-cross by the donors,
promptly ignored their part of the bargain
as well. So, by the time preparations
began for the Johannesburg summit, "sustainable
development" was so tainted by bitter
feelings, on both sides of the development
gap, that it seemed to have hardly any
life left in it.
To their
credit, the organizers of the Johannesburg
summit managed to avoid
trying to breathe life back into the
discredited concept. The version of "sustainable
development" that emerged from this
summit is very different from the concept
that was trumpeted--albeit so hollowly--at
Rio. Indeed, one could argue that it
is so different that it deserves to have
a brand-new name. At any rate, it attaches
an entirely different meaning go the
term "sustainable" and, even
more so, to "development."
The '92
model of "sustainability" was
focused almost exclusively on governments'
responsibility to be mindful of the environmental.
Now, though, as the Johannesburg summit
made clear, the governments of developing
countries must also demonstrate "good
governance" and the rule of law,
show respect for human rights, be moving
toward greater democracy, be moving their
economies toward greater openness-and
they must also be able to demonstrate
that they are taking effective steps
to improve the lives of their poorest
residents.
In '92
it was assumed that "development
assistance" was, in essence, something
that rich countries bestowed on poor
countries to build up their capacity
for economic growth. And, although many
also assumed that "development" was
a synonym for "industrialization," there
was virtually no role in the process
for the engine of industry in the rich
countries-the private sector. That too
has changed. The Johannesburg summit
has put its official seal of approval
on an important trend that has emerged
since the Rio summit: thinking of official
development assistance (ODA) as only
one of several mechanisms for helping
poor countries achieve economic growth-and
by no means the most important. The other
mechanisms include trade and direct foreign
investment-and those clearly require
the participation of the business community.
At his
final press conference in Johannesburg,
Annan was challenged to "justify
the presence" of business representatives
at the summit. He responded: "Those
who caused the pollution have to be here
to be part of the solution. We have to
engage" with the private sector,
he added, to get results. "The UN
agencies cannot do it alone." And
when he was asked whether the rules of
the World Trade Organization (WTO) might
override environmental agreements, Annan
replied mildly, "I would hope not." He
added: "WTO rules are part of the
reality we live with."
The WTO didn't even exist in 1992, and
economic globalization was not an issue
at the Rio summit. Ten years later, even
though many nongovernmental organizations
(NGOs) are strongly opposed to the WTO
and globalization (they see it as exploiting
rather than enriching the poor countries),
they won no victories at Johannesburg.
It is clear that if the poor countries
are to have any hope of getting a fairer
deal from the global trading system,
that deal will have to emerge from the
new Doha Round of trade talks, not from
a UN summit.
It's
true that the summit did approve some
new global targets for improving
people's access to sanitation, but it
also rejected any new target for the
growth of renewable energy. It stimulated
the formation of a large number of "partnerships" for
sustainability between governments, NGOs,
UN agencies and the private sector-but
critics complained because few of the
partnerships seemed adequately funded.
Perhaps the summit's greatest victory,
in the opinion of many who attended it,
was its rejection of the effort, led
by the United States, to strip the principle
of "common but differentiated responsibility" from
the final document. Several other so-called "Rio
principles" were watered down or
otherwise weakened, but they too survived.
Still,
whatever the pluses or minuses on the
summit's scorecard, the issue
of the summit's cost cannot be ignored.
Not just the expense of bringing all
those thousands of people to Johannesburg
from all over the globe-huge as that
is--but also the sense that so much of
the summit was a huge waste of everybody's
time. In his latest proposal for reforming
the UN, Annan warns that "summit
fatigue" has now become a serious
problem, not just among governments but
among the general public as well. This
could well be the last big summit meeting
for quite some time.
It's
also worth noting that the Rio summit
was convened in a world that was
just getting used to living under a "new
world order"-after the collapse
of the Soviet Union and the Communist
bloc, along with the emergence of the
US as the only global superpower. The
Johannesburg summit came along during
another watershed change in global realpolitik,
the emergence of counter-terrorism as
the highest priority of nations--or at
least of the US.
And that
created distortions as well. Perhaps
the most significant moment of
the summit--certainly the most interesting--came
when, during the negotiation of the document
text, the US delegation found itself
allied with Cuba in an effort to delete
a reference to the need for "democracy."
Sustainability? It may never be the
same.
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