GLOBAL DEAL OR GLOBAL FARCE?
The preparations for the World Summit on Sustainable Development
so far fail to inspire
By Daniel Mittler, FoE Germany, WSSD Coordinator for Friends
of the Earth International
The themes for the World Summit on Sustainable Development were
being discussed in regional preperatory meetings worldwide in the
second half of 2001. Friends of the Earth was present at many of
these preparatory meetings and was pushing its own agenda focusing
on corporate accountability, trade justice, environmental space
and ecological debt and its proposals for a reformed system of international
environmental governance. On the basis of these regional meetings,
a global agenda may be agreed at the next global preparatory meeting
to be held in New York at the end of January. FoEI will use this
PrepComm to particularly push for corporate accountability to be
on the agenda. FoEI will call on Governments to initiate a negotiation
process in Johannesburg on a Global Convention on Corporate
Accountability.
So far, the official preparations are not inspiring. The most progressive
policy, coming closest to being a "big new idea", is being discussed
under the name of a "Global Deal". So far, the content of this deal
remains rather vague. Elements to be included are debt relief and
market access for developing countries, a commitment to break the
link between economic growth and environmental degradation in industrialised
nations, increased development assistance and a reaffirmation of
adherence to the "Rio Declaration"
and other international environmental agreements. Though not yet
fully defined, the Global Deal already has one clear enemy: the
United States. In the UNECE region, which comprises all of Europe,
Canada and the US, the Americans ensured that no clear affirmation
of such a deal made it into the ministerial declaration.
The US is blocking the "Global Deal" because it would commit the
US to things like further development aid, which they are unwilling
to even consider. The US is also worried that a Global Deal would
strengthen important elements of international environmental governance,
such as the precautionary principle. The US is attempting to undermine
this key principle of environmental policy making at all international
levels, including the WTO. The US is not just blocking a global
deal, however. At the UNECE
meeting, for example, it also blocked the aim of increasing
the global supply of renewable energy to above 10% of the energy
consumed. Targets and timetables seem to be off limit for the US,
which could move a major stumbling block for Johannesburg.
But back to the Global Deal. Though it is so far the most progressive
idea being advanced at the international level, its current form
also has some deficiencies. It, for example, calls only for a "decoupling"
of economic growth and economic development and not (also) for clear
ecological limits to economic activity, as defined by environmental
space. Most worrying is a link of the Global Deal with a neoliberal
free market agenda. A non-paper tabled by Denmark at the UNECE meeting
stated that a Global Deal "may include ... strengthened free trade".
Much of the Global Deal discussion so far implies that the further
inclusion of developing countries in international trade, based
on a continuation of expert-led growth in the South, is the answer
to the problem of unsustainable development. It is thus worrying
that the South African Government wants to link the Johannesburg
Summit with the "New Economic
Programme for African Development (NEPAD)", which is largely
based on an exactly this export-led development model. Paragraph
6 of the WTO Doha Declaration, which states that trade and environment
rules should be "mutually supportive" and that environmental agreements
are not allowed to be in conflict with WTO rules, is probably also
written with the Global Deal in mind. After all, the UNECE
Ministerial Declaration for Johannesburg uses exactly the same
language calling on governments to "enhance the mutually supportive
role of MEAs (multilateral environmental agreements) and the international
trading system" and supporting a new liberalisation round.
This free-trade bias of any Global Deal will have to be rectified,
if Friends of the Earth International is to actively support this
deal against the even more reactionary agenda advocated (mainly)
by the United States. Their proposals so far are exlusively based
on encouraging foreign direct investment and telling the world what
"good governance", narrowly defined, looks like. Developing countries
should pressure the EU to make the Global Deal a truly fair one,
rather than an add on to an overarching neoliberal trade agenda.
A clear lack of honesty about the conflicts of neoliberal trade
policies and environmental and social justice also prevails in the
assessment of the last ten years, that governments are providing.
Nobody, except perhaps some business representatives, claims that
the last ten years have been a resounding success. No government
I have come across denies the continuing overarching negative trends.
But no government so far has had a convincing story to tell about
why these trends continue. Even those, like Germany and Britain,
that make a link to globalisation by admitting that the fruits of
globalisation have so far been unevenly shared, shy away from drawing
the conclusion that the neoliberal policies of the last ten years
might be a root cause. Because of this faulty analysis, governments
can get away with proposing more of the same, more marekt liberalisation,
as the only solution going. All programmes of Friends of the Earth
International will have a lot of educating to do on this point until
September 2002.
ends.
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