'Chairman's Text benefits the North'

'Chairman's Text benefits the North'

Tantri Yuliandini, The Jakarta Post, Nusa Dua, Bali

International non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have demanded that the world delegates currently attending the fourth preparatory committee (PrepCom) meeting on sustainable development here produce time-bound and implementable measures to save the planet.

A number of NGO groups have expressed their concerns about the lack of time-bound measures in the Chairman's Text, prepared by the preparatory committee meeting chairman Emil Salim of Indonesia and currently being deliberated by the delegates.

"We don't want a broad political statement that says "Save the world", we want measurable and effective targets within specific time frames, action steps. That's the big problem with the entire chairman's text," Glenn Farred from the South African NGO Coalition (SAWGOCO-South Africa) said.

The documents processed here at the PrepCom IV are to be endorsed by the heads of state at the upcoming World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in August.

The Chairman's Text -- prepared as a global action plan towards sustainable development -- appeared to be more suitable as a core document for a "northern government summit for unsustainable development," the statement asserted.

A civil society statement regarding the Chairman's Text distributed to the media revealed that the United Nations General Assembly itself had asked for action-oriented decisions to implement Agenda 21 and proposed specific time-bound measures to be undertaken.

"Instead, it (the Chairman's Text) reads more as a government shopping list than an action program for the sustainability of life on this planet," Farred said reading from the statement.

NGOs said that they saw a common corporate threat throughout governmental deliberations, with no responsibility for corporate abuse and no restrictions on the behavior of transnational corporations.

"It is uncritically organized around the interests of the countries of the North," it said.

Besides the lack of a time frame and steps, the NGOs had also criticized the lack of willingness to include civil society participation in the deliberation of the Chairman's Text, he said.

This was demonstrated by the fact that many suggestions delivered by civil society during PrepCom II and III were ignored.

The decision-making process for the Chairman's Text remained solely in the hands of government representatives, with civil society assuming nothing but a minor, supplementary role, the statement said.

"Is Johannesburg about creating one common agreement between civil society and the governments, or is it two opposing movements - civil society and the government - that's the question," Farred asked.

Farred said that the major NGO group was currently networking with the various governments to apply pressure on this issue and get their messages across to delegations at the PrepCom meeting, besides holding dialogues through the Indonesian People's Forum.

"It seems that we are here just to legitimize something; we are here but they don't want to negotiate the text, they're saying to us that actually it's non-negotiable," he said.

At several separate events, various groups also expressed concern over the Chairman's Text.

Deling Wang, co-chair of the groups for energy and climate change, for example, said that many parts of the text were contradictory or did not take into account other United Nations documents of recent years.

"In many respects, the text is a regression from the agreements and commitments made in Rio, and it is certainly not worthy of presidents and prime ministers spending their time to travel to Johannesburg to meet at the-so called World Summit," the groups said in a statement.

The United Nations conference on environment and development, also called Earth Summit, in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 produced a set of action plans known as Agenda 21 -- a document on the necessary steps to accelerate the sustainable development of nations.

However, Agenda 21 failed to achieve the desired results due to various factors including a lack of a specific time frame for implementation and sanctions for failure to comply.

The group also said that the Chairman's Text was often contradictory, citing that it still promoted continued use of fossil fuels, while at the same time also showing concern about health, biodiversity, air pollution, and climate change.

"Agenda 21 itself doesn't talk about fossil fuels and nuclear power. It is only in the past few years that the two have started to be talked about," Deling said.

There were also repeated indications in the Chairman's Text that sustainable development was being recast to suit the globalization agenda, the group said in the statement.

Separately, executive director of the national committee for the preparatory meeting, Erna Witoelar, said that the Chairman's Text would not please everybody.

"Rather, it is a disparity of disappointment," she said in a media conference here.

Erna likened the text to a bottle that has to be filled with water from two other bottles. "Of course, some of the water will be spilled."