'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."