THE FOURTH AND LAST PREPCOMM IN BALI, INDONESIA
By Marc Berthold, Heinrich Boell Foundation Washington Office
The fourth Preparatory Committee
Meeting for the World Summit on Sustainable Development was
held in Bali, Indonesia from May 24 to June 6, 2002. It started
three days earlier than initially scheduled due to the limited outcome
of the previous PrepComm in New York. These three days were added
for informal consultations of the major negotiation groups, such
as the European Union and G77/China, and for informal negotiations
on the revised Chairman’s
Paper (Type-I-Outcome). The aim was to finish these negotiations
before the official start of the PrepComm in order to focus the
meeting on the Political Declaration and on further deliberations
on Partnerships (Type-II- Outcome).
The revised Chairman’s
Paper had different names during the Bali PrepComm. It was called
Plan for Action, the Bali Commitment, and is currently available
as Draft Plan for Implementation. It still includes the nine chapters
of the initial Chairman’s Paper, and was extended with one
additional chapter: the third PrepComm ’s discussion paper
“Sustainable Development Governance at the International,
Regional and National Levels” is now Chapter Ten - “Institutional
Framework for Sustainable Development” -, and thus part of
the negotiation document.
Negotiations continued in the format of the Working Groups I to
III; as at the previous PrepConm in New York: Working Group I covered
Chapters 1 to 4 (Introduction, Poverty Eradication, Changing Unsustainable
Patterns of Consumption and Production, Protecting and Managing
the Natural Resource Base of Economic and Social Development), Working
Group II negotiated Chapters 5 through 9 (Sustainable Development
in a Globalising World, Health and Sustainable Development, Sustainable
Development of Small Island Developing States, Sustainable Development
Initiatives for Africa, means of Implementation), and Working Group
III continued negotiating Chapter 10 (Institutional Framework for
Sustainable Development).
The first week (May 27 – May 31) encompassed the second Multi-Stakeholder
Dialogue (MSD) of the Johannesburg Process, further Working
Group meetings on the revised Chairman’s Paper, and contact
groups on specific contentious issues. The second week (June 3 –
June 7) - initially intended to focus on the preparations of the
Political Document - included informal plenary sessions on the revised
Chairman’s Paper, Contact groups, and hosted the second high-level
ministerial segment of the WSSD preparatory process (June 5 through
June 7). There were also two informal consultations on Type-II-Outcomes.
What happened? – An Overview
The PrepComm IV in Bali had three major goals:
- Agreement
to the Plan of Action (Type I)
- Drafting
the Political Declaration
- Further
Consultations on Partnerships (Type II)
The plain result of the Bali PrepComm shows as follows:
- 73%
Agreement to the Plan of Action
- No
Draft of the Political Declaration
- No
major progress on Framing Partnerships
The negotiations of the Plan of Action took the same direction
as during the previous PrepComm in New York. During the first week,
the Working Groups read the revised Chairman’s
Paper - which was hastily named “Bali Commitment”
- Chapter for Chapter adding new brackets and paragraphs to the
text. In the second week, informal plenary sessions negotiated these
brackets in order to clean up the text again.
This process went very slowly. On June 4, PrepComm Chair Emil
Salim established a “Friends of the Chair” group in
order to bridge the remaining gaps, but even after the high-level
ministerial segment, only 73% of the text was agreed, leaving 27%
open for Johannesburg, mainly in Chapters 9 and 10, dealing with
Trade and Finance issues, as well as the Institutional Framework.
Finalising the Plan for Action was so time consuming that hardly
any time could be dedicated to the Political Declaration. Only informal
consultations during the high-level ministerial segment roughly
discussed some elements, and the Chair was asked to present a Draft
of the Political Declaration by the end of June.
There were only two informal consultations on Type-II-Partnerships
during the second week of the PrepComm. Delegations continued exchanging
views on guiding principles for partnerships for sustainable development,
and informed each other about partnerships undertaken and envisoned
by governments. The Vice-Chairs, Jan Kara and Dianne Quarless, issued
a Summary on the Informal Meetings on Partnerships laying out some
guiding principles.
General Tendencies in Government Positions
The outcome of the Bali PrepComm is evaluated both as success and
as failure. The United Nations and most governments see the results
as a success. The United States,
the European Union countries,
and G77/China are satisfied
to have agreed upon 73 percent of the Plan of Action, and to have
found a general consensus on the value of partnerships for sustainable
development.
Host Indonesia is glad that the Bali PrepComm delivered most of
the Plan of Action, it expressed, however, concern about the lack
of political will of basically all governments to proceed with higher
speed and in a more courageous manner. South Africa, hosting the
World Summit, also stated satisfaction, since Bali left enough substance
and flexibility for negotiations in August and September.
The United States went to Bali intending to focus on further progress
with Type-II-Agreements instead of working on beefing up the Plan
of Action. The U.S. delegation argued that the history of international
agreements has proven how little effect they have, and that the
United States is in favor of real action through partnerships with
business and civil society organisations. Their position was strongly
supported by Australia, Canada, and Japan, who all happened to sit
next to each other in the Working Group negotiations, and during
the informal plenary sessions, which helped their consistent collaboration.
Hence, the U.S., who had not sent
any high-level government official to the ministerial segment, kept
on blocking any formal commitments, targets and trimeframes that
would bind the U.S. government internationally. In accordance with
its argumentation during PrepComm III, they avoided clarification
in the Plan of Action concerning the definition of “Sustainable
Development”, the notion of “Common but Differentiated
Responsibility” (Rio Principle 7) as well as of the “Precautionary
Principle” (Rio Principle 15). It objected to any financial
commitments, and emphasised the role of national governments. In
addition, the U.S. insisted on linking any financial development
aid with “Good Governance”-measures in developing countries.
The European Union, on the other
hand, was in favor of an international document in Johannesburg,
and mainly put forward its agenda on the environment: Almost alone,
the EU tried to proceed with the environmentally relevant Chapters
in the Plan of Action, mostly opposed by the G77/China. Efforts
to bridge gaps and build a coalition between the EU und G77/China
were not successful, since the EU did not make any offers in the
areas of trade, finance, and subsidies.
G77/China continued its efforts
to re-negotiate the outcome of the WTO Ministerial in Doha as well
as the results of the Financing for Development Conference in Monterrey.
Developing countries aim for an increase in international financial
support, and stress the responsibility of industrialised countries
in assisting developing countries to overcome the burden of poverty
and to develop their economies in a sustainable way. G77/China was
the strongest opponent of the United States’ push for good
governance and establishment of public access to information within
the Plan of Action.
Draft Plan of Implementation - A Plan of Action?
What will be called Plan of Action in Johannesburg was only temporarily
named the “Bali Commitment” until the delegations realised
that any commitment by the end of PrepComm 4 was only wishful thinking.
For the time being, the same document is now called Draft Plan of
Implementation. It now encompasses 64 pages. Newsletter III already
described large parts of the content of the previous document, the
Chairman’s Paper, thus this edition refrains from repeating
each Chapter in detail. A detailed analysis of the current Draft
Plan of Implementation can, however, be found in the Earth Negotiations
Bulletin.
According to the United Nations WSSD Secreteriat, 73% of the Draft
Plan is agreed, and only 27% remains open and will be finalised
in Johannesburg. Reading the document, it becomes apparent that
the most of these 27% contentious issues are found in Chapters 9
and 10: Means of Implementation and Instituional Framework for Sustainable
Development. All other Chapters are mainly finished and ready for
the World Summit.
Contentious issues, all through the text, are mainly references
to Agenda 21, concrete time frames, globalisation issues, such as
corporate accountability and good governance, matters of finance
and trade, as well as the institutional framework. These are the
areas where the United States, Australia, Canada and Japan on the
one hand, and G77/China on the other hand clash, and where up to
this point no consensus is in sight.
In a first UN briefing of WSSD Chair Salim, the U.S. and G77/China
admitted that there are major conceptual differences between these
blocks. No negotiation of language will be successful until these
conceptual misunderstandings are resolved. The differences encompass
the understanding of the current and a future development paradigm:
While the United States emphasises the role of national governments
and civil society in development, and stresses the need for anti-corruption
measures, accountability, and further trade liberalisation in developing
countries, G77/China point out the historical responsibility of
industrialised countries as former colonial powers, and demand further
financial assistance without constraints in order to develop adequately.
Hence the roles of the WTO and of the Monterrey Consensus remain
contentious.
Partnerships
An overall assessment makes clear that the World Summit on Sustainable
Development will be a conference on Partnerships. The so-called
Type-II-Agreements kept on being the center focus of many governments
in the hallways, although only two informal consultations on partnerships
took place. Particularly, the United States emphasised their importance,
and stressed that they preferred the establishment of voluntary
partnerships to an intergovernmental commitment. All northern governments
are determined to give partnerships a major role in future sustainable
development. The U.S. government is already speaking of a change
in the culture of international politics and negotiations: Decrying
the failure of large intergovernmental negotiations, the U.S. paints
a picture of great development through business involvement in cooperation
with governments and civil society. Only a few developing countries
attended the informal sessions, since the negotiations on the Plan
of Action continued at the same time. While G77/China also see opportunities
in partnerships, they are, however, concerned that they could impose
negative conditionalities defined by donor governments, and lead
to new dependencies on the part of developing countries. The Co-Chairs
of the informal consultations, Kara and Quarless, warned that such
partnerships needed to be linked to intergovernmental agreements
(Type-I-Agreements), that they should follow internationally agreed
guidelines, and must be monitored by an international body. These
linkages could not be made during the informal consultations, and
are not mentioned in the Draft Plan of Implementation due to the
strict opposition of the EU, the U.S., and Japan. Vice-Chairs handed
out an explanatory note with guiding principles for partnerships,
which includes the input of the two informal consultations, and
which will be further discussed during the World Summit on Sustainable
Development. The UN also announced its WEHAB agenda of potential
partnerships for Johannesburg and beyond: Such partnerships are
to be built in the areas of: Water, Energy, Health, Agricultural
Productivity and Biodiversity (WEHAB).
Accordingly, the U.S. announced seven areas of involvement for
partnerships, which the Bush administration will work on and look
for partners in the business sector. These sectors are Energy; Water;
Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development; Forests; Oceans and
Fisheries; Health; and Education. The U.S. government also determined
Points of Contact in various U.S. agencies to be in charge of these
partnerships. The list is available through the U.S. State Department,
and also serves as useful points of lobbying for NGOs.
Civil Society Criticism
Civil Society organisations
arrived in Bali with a high motivation and hopes to put the Johannesburg
Process back on track. They had an optimistic view that the poor
outcome of the third PrepComm could be reversed in Bali, but already
during the first few days of the Bali Meeting, reality proved them
wrong.
Many NGOs decried the failure of the PrepComm in the beginning
of the second week, when they realised that the Plan of Action could
not be finished, and would only be extremely weak in comparison
to Agenda 21 and to the civil society expectations for the World
Summit on Sustainable Development. Thus, NGOs do not share the assessment
of the governments that 73% of agreed text is a success.
NGOs increased pressure on the government to tackle the challenges
and to return to the spirit of Rio. They expressed their frustration
in caucus meetings, press conferences and silent demonstrations
within and outside the Bali International Conference Center (BICC).Greenpeace
brought its Rainbow Warrior to the coast of Bali, and the Youth
Caucus held a silent mini-rally in front of the conference halls
within the BICC.
The Indonesian People’s
Forum, which took place in the Nusa Dua Amphitheater ten minutes
from the BICC, and in the Grand Hyatt Conference Complex, served
as an important venue for critical voices. A series of workshops
and rallies were held in order to pressure governments. The People’s
Forum was at times a brave venue for demonstrations under the observance
of various Indonesian Security Forces.
In a common statement, Consumers International, Danish 92 Group,
Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, Oxfam, The World Wildlife Fund
for Nature, and ANPED criticised the lack of political will in developed
countries to make progress. They decry that the World Summit will
be a step back from Rio, and that northern governments let down
both the South as well as civil society.
While NGOs see responsibility for the failure with all governments,
they, particularly, accuse the United States, Canada, Australia
and Japan for blocking any international commitment and for derailing
the entire Johannesburg process. While the U.S. tried to undermine
any international agreement through shifting responsibility on the
national level, the EU did not offer enough to developing countries
in order to win them for progress on the environmental agenda.
They take a critical stand on the role of globalisation, of the
World Trade organisation, and on the subtle re-definition of “Sustainable
Development”- away from environmental protection towards trade
liberalisation. Hence, they are skeptical whether Type-II-Partnerships
- not linked to and framed by intergovernmental agreements - are
a useful tool to implement and endorse sustainable development.
Civil Society organisations rather see them as a mask of governments
for their failure to act meaningfully.
They identify the current design of Type-II-Partnerships as unacceptable,
since they are only voluntary, cannot be endorsed by the United
Nations, will not be monitored by any international institution,
and because no evaluation of impact and performance is foreseen.
In light of globalisation, NGOs pressure governments to commit to
a Convention on Corporate Accountability in order to control corporations
in the free market economy and in Type-II-Partnerships.
As a singular success in the Plan of Action, the Energy Caucus
highlighted the Energy Chapter in the Plan of Action, which includes
detailed timeframes and targets, as well as the reduction of environmentally
harmful subsidies.
NGOs led a serious debate whether or not to abandon the World
Summit on Sustainable Development, or to keep on struggling for
a success story in Johannesburg. Despite the outstanding disappointment
about the government’s performance, nearly all accredited
NGOs called for the continuation of the civil society involvement
in the Summit “We are not giving up!” says the common
statement. NGOs know that it is not the United Nations nor the Summit
but governments along with the business sector which are challenging
the future of sustainable development.
In light of the weak content of the current Draft Plan for Implementation,
Friends of the Earth International welcomes the break up of the
negotiations in Bali. Thus, there is still hope for some progress
during the World Summit itself. Their optimism is, however, limited,
for the United States won’t change their positions until the
end of August, and also the tentative coalition building between
the EU and G77/China won’t lead to a strong power on the last
few miles to Johannesburg.
A coalition of U.S. NGOs is preparing itself already for the Post-Johannesburg
process: realising that Johannesburg won’t be another Rio
Conference with milestone international agreements but rather the
launch of a new kind of global cooperation, they are planning on
how to be involved, and how to monitor partnerships for sustainable
development.
Gimme me Hope Joanna – What now, World Summit?
There are lots of challenges left for the World Summit itself:
The Plan for Action needs to be finished, the Political Declaration
will have to be negotiated, and a Framework for Partnership will
be high on the agenda. All these tasks require strong efforts by
the governments on the national as well as on the international
level, and by the United Nations WSSD Secreteriat.
The Indonesian as well as the South African governments decided
to join forces and to share responsibilties on the last few miles
to Johannesburg. While the main tasks lie with South Africa, Indonesia
will be an advisor and facilitator in order to have a productive
start of the World Summit in Johannesburg.
World Summit Chair Emil Salim decided to have weekly briefings
and discussions on the progress of the preparations – nationally
and internationally. There will be no intersessional meetings or
negotiations on the Draft Plan for Implementation before Johannesburg,
but the earlier stated conceptual differences are to be resolved
in the meantime.
Additionally, international meetings - such as the G8 in Canada
as well as the passing on of the Rio-Torch in Brazil at the end
of June, and the ECOSOC sessions in July – will be used to
bring the governments together in order to to look for consensus
on open topics. Much of it will happen behind closed doors, and
without access of NGOs.
While South Africa’s
President Mbeki is trying to convince the Heads of States all across
the world to attend the Joahnnesburg Summit, his Foreign Minister
is traveling especially to the European capitals. According to a
survey by the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington DC,
45 governments already confirmed their presence in South Africa;
among them Germany’s Chancellor Schröder and Great Britain’s
Prime Minister Blair. Whether or not U.S. President Bush will travel
to Johannesburg is not yet clear. More and more NGOs doubt that
George W. Bush will decide to go.
South African Minister for the Environment and Tourism Moosa also
announced that South Africa would draft a Political Declaration
by Johannesburg. He is determined to make the World Summit for Sustainable
Development a success.
NGOs still have opportunities to lobby their governments on the
Chapters of Globalisation, Means of Implementation, and the Institutional
Framework in the Draft Plan for Action. The weekly briefings by
WSSD-Chair Salim will be helpful in keeping a close look on the
preparations and further developments. The outcome of these briefings
needs to be circulated widely.
A crucial tool will be to raise media attention for the World
Summit. The first step was done in Bali. For the first time in the
preparatory process, international media reported on the events
in Bali, and questioned the slow progress of the negotiations. In
order to pressure governments and reach public awareness, journalists,
now, need to be briefed. Therefore, NGOs need to find one common
message; the stronger and clearer this message is, the likelier
is that it will be heard by the media, the global public, and by
governments under pressure. Only a powerful and visible global NGO
coalition in Johannesburg will be able to influence the fate of
the World Summit.
Like it or not – the major outcome of Johannesburg will be
the launch of various Type-II- Partnerships. While civil society
organisations should continue to push for a framework on partnerships,
a linkage to the Type-I-Outcome, and a convention on corporate accountability,
they should also involve themselves in the partnership discussions
in order to have influence on their shape and in order to take over
the monitoring.
This might be the most important Post-Johannesburg task for NGOs
in the years ahead. It cannot be taken for granted that the World
Summit eventually decides on an institutional framework for Type-II-Partnerships;
if NGOs generally object to partnerships under the current conditions,
they risk losing access and influence in a process that will be
launched in Johannesburg anyway.
Voices critical of the Johannesburg process speak of a step back
from Rio 1992. They are right in as far as the World Summit for
Sustainable Development – though being the biggest international
conference ever – won’t be a visionary breakthrough
for the implementation of sustainable development, but the Johannesburg
Summit might change the paradigm of international cooperation.
It has become obvious that the usual international negotiations
of documents are extremely insufficient and often only lead to waste
paper. The fate of the Johannesburg Plan of Action is a proof. Partnerships,
as problematic as they appear at this point, might be a worthwile
experiment to take action – also for civil society organisations.
ends.
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