Full speed in the wrong direction
Has the world made real progress since the 1992 Rio Earth Summit?
Nnimmo Bassey
2009-05-14, Issue 432
cc CodaCSD-17
presents a unique opportunity for global governance to rise above the selfish
interests of individual countries and regional blocks to work towards
sustainable develop ment worldwide, writes Nnimmo Bassey. But, he warns, a
complicated negotiation text lacking in ideas to galvanise nations into acting
in solidarity, is likely to maintain the status quo. Bassey expresses dismay
at G-77 references to ‘national laws and cultural contexts’ when the
Commission for Sustainable Development ‘should be raising the bar, not
subjecting universal ideals to parochial local regimes’. Bassey suggests that
restoring confidence in global governance and democracy is an important part
of tackling the food, climate and economic crises on every delegates’ mind.
What is even more problematic to the negotiations, however, is the lack of
unanimity in defining what ‘sustainability’ actually is.
It was a bumpy
ride on the
Commission for Sustainable Development
(CSD) highway last week, as delegates appeared to be driving forward with
their eyes fixed on their rear-view mirrors. Considering events in the world,
everyone agrees that the themes of the last CSD cycle and those of the present
one have proven to be prescient and timely. The last one focused on energy and
climate change, while we are here in CSD-17 talking about agriculture, land,
rural development, drought, desertification and particularly
Africa
This week offers clear opportunities for delegates to take a
good look at the road ahead and avoid the obvious, as well as the hidden,
bumps and potholes. Throughout last week, delegates recognised the convergence
of crises=2 0confronting the world today and the urgent need for concrete
action to be taken. There were repeated talks about the food crisis, the
climate crisis and the economic crisis. The other crisis that did not show up
is the crisis of the growing deficit of confidence in global governance and,
in some cases, the deficit of democracy. And this should worry our
governments. The world sorely needs to regain confidence in internal
governance, in an era where financial and transnational institutions are
enjoying massive bailouts, while the citizens of this world are out in the
cold, hungry and unprotected
The CSD presents a unique platform for
global governance to rise up beyond individual countries’ or regional blocks’
selfish interests. Unfortunately, the bright spots in this regard have been
few and far between. As we listened to delegates go through the chair’s
negotiation text last week, we could not help but wonder how they would find
their way out of the maze of brackets and additions that have so riddled the
texts, and if the final outcome will be recognisable.
Obviously, this
is the way negotiations of this nature go, but we are concerned that additions
and subtractions on the text do not appear to be introducing ideas that would
galvanize nations into acting in solidarity. What we see are grounds being set
for competition and business as usual. The world sorely needs inspiration to
empower and engineer actions. So far, memorable texts would need to be
ferreted out with the aid of a Hubble telescope. We would agree that delegates
are not wordsmiths, but what is the point in introducing texts without clearly
seeing how the jigsaw fits or unravels? The transformation of the world will
not be built on episodic entries that focus on maintaining the status quo and
preserving narrow interests and privileges of some nations and
blocs.
The
G-77 kept bringing up references to national
laws and cultural contexts to cap some provisions. These may sound
progressive, but in reality they may prove obstructive to the attainment of
justice and higher ideals of liberty. For example, when G-77 speaks about
rights of women, they add ‘in accordance with national legislation’. The CSD
should be raising the bar, not subjecting universal ideals to parochial local
regimes. The picture that comes through all this is an insidious resistance to
change under the cover of tradition.
Right from the preamble to the
negotiated text, G-77 and China inserted a highly volatile piece of text on
the sovereign right of states to exploit their natural resources. There is
nothing unusual about states having the sovereign right to exploit their
resources, but we could raise the issue of what would be the case for
countries whose political setting is not settled. And what about those whose
sovereignty is threatened or subverted? It appears that basic questions,
including the prior right of communities and indigenous peoples, even before
the rights of states, need=2 0to be settled on this issue.
Given the
themes of CSD-17, one would be right to assume that G-77 would drive for the
best texts that would guarantee the right context for the citizens of this
bloc. We note that the bulk of the work done to improve the section on Africa
was done by the delegations from the USA and the EU. The most outstanding
contribution of the G-77 and China in that section was when they asked that
the proposal to encourage broad public participation of civil society as a
partner be removed, in particular in responding to food insecurity. This was
very curious.
Apart from the brilliant addition to the introduction of
the section on desertification, this has not often been the case. When G-77
suggested that desertification ‘is a global problem that requires a global
response through concerted efforts’, that really shone. However, some of the
areas bracketed or deferred by G-77 raised some worries. Why would G-77, for
example, need to defer immediate acceptance of a clauses such as ‘mindful of
the growing scarcities of many natural resources and the competing claims to
their use’, and on building ‘the resilience of rural communities to cope with
and recover from natural disasters and conflicts’? In many other sections, we
find an unwillingness to assume responsibilities, but rather a readiness to
push implementation burden on to the ‘international community’.
The
issue of the right to food was firmly raised by the UN rapporteur on the right
to food when he addressed the session on 7 May. He affirmed that the right to
adequate food is a human right and emphasised that the CSD should recommend
measures that would promote the adoption of national right to food strategies
and for states to implement the findings of the
IAASTD. He also strongly recommended
that states should realise the centrality of the role of smallholder farmers
in meeting the food needs of the world. The ideas pushed by the rapporteur
found echoes in a few submissions of Switzerland and G-77 during the
negotiations.
On the whole, the EU has made substantial additions on
forests, drought and desertification. They underlined the need for the
UNFCCC parties to
utilise the
UNCCD framework in combating drought and
desertification. G-77’s reference to the UNCCD was mainly on the imperative of
the industrialised world to meet their commitments with regard to provision of
resources.
The USA, Canada, Australia and Japan worked often in tandem,
but Australia must be given the medal for fighting to foist
WTO rules as a damper
on more progressive trade and business relations.
In a bid not to
mention genetic engineering by name, delegates have taken the convoluted route
and left everyone wondering what they are really talking about. The G-77, for
example, ‘supports e fforts to increase the nutrition content of food’. While
that is not a bad idea on its own, we must be wary of falling into the hoax of
the so-called golden rice, or the new experiments with genetically modified
super cassava, both engineered to have enhanced levels of vitamin A for poor
people in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The strong underlying hands of what
has been termed philanthropic capitalism keeps excessive pressure on the
staple foods of vulnerable peoples with utter disregard of the precautionary
principle that is cardinal in biodiversity protection. Mexico recommended the
using of plantations of non-native species of trees to combat the spread of
sand dunes.
Sadly quite a number of trite additions were brought into
the section on rural development. It is hoped that such will be thrown out
during the negotiations.
With a week to go in the negotiations, it is
hoped that delegates will safely disentangle from the web of brackets with a
clear road map and not just a pack of words. We note that in the course of
last week, delegates queried the possible meanings of otherwise simple words
or concepts and answers were sometimes immediately offered or deferred until
the following day. In one case, the USA brought up the concept of using smart
growth techniques in
Working Group 2 [PDF]. G-77 asked to know
what that meant. USA explained the following day that they have found out that
the smart growth concept had several meanings and therefore withdrew the
submission. That was a good example of helping make progress and ensuring that
obscure terminology are not used to conceal hidden examples.
If it was
just that a concept such as the ‘green revolution’ has become obfuscated, we
would not have a reason to worry too much. But the CSD-17 has also revealed
that there may not be unanimity of understanding of the very concept of
sustainability. In a conversation on the lobby, a veteran participant said
that she was always of the view that
Rio 1992 outcomes were
very tame, but now she can see that it was far more radical than what may be
expected of CSD-17. And she asked the question: Are we making progress in
reverse gear?
Delegates have the duty of giving an answer to this
question next week. Already there are talks of a possible 20th anniversary
session of the CSD in 2012, and Brazil may possibly be the host. Will this be
a date to celebrate a revival, or one to place Rio 1992 on the funeral
pyre?
* Nnimmo Bassey is executive director of
Environmental
Rights Action in Nigeria. Pambazuka Press is publishing his book
To Cook a Continent:
Destructive Extraction and the Climate Crisis in Africa in January
2010.
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