Multilateralism at stake in Johannesburg

Emil Salim, Chairman, Preparatory Committee Meeting, World Summit on Sustainable Development, Jakarta

On Sept. 1 in Johannesburg, President Megawati Soekarnoputri is scheduled to submit the conclusions of the Bali preparatory meeting for the World Summit on Sustainable Development in June to the summit host South Africa's President Thabo Mbekti.

Much of the document prepared in Bali, the "Implementation Program", has been agreed upon. Out of 625 paragraphs of the Implementation Program document a total of 469 paragraphs have been approved leaving 156 paragraphs still to be negotiated in Johannesburg by ministers, prior to the World Summit attended by many heads of government.

There are mainly five pending issues that need to be resolved. First, is the continued acceptance of the Rio Principle dealing with "common but differentiated responsibility." Certain developed countries view that this principle only applies to global environmental degradation, while developing countries argue that it also applies in the international pursuit of sustainable development. Several developed countries flatly reject all references to this principle in the Implementation Program document.

The Rio Principle 7 reads: "States shall cooperate in a spirit of global partnership to conserve, protect and restore the health and integrity of the Earth's ecosystem. In view of the different contributions to global environmental degradation, states have common but differentiated responsibilities."

The developed countries, it continues, acknowledge the responsibility in the international pursuit of sustainable development given their society's pressure on the global environment and of the technologies and financial resources they command.

Behind this issue is the rejection by the industrialized countries to carry the burden of "differentiated responsibilities" in terms of financial burden and technology transfer from developed to the developing countries.

Meanwhile developing countries claim that industrialized countries have been able to raise their income at the expense of the carbon dioxide emissions that affects global warming and the sea level rise. People in developing countries in the tropics mostly suffer from the air pollution created by energy, transportation and industry that support industrial development in developed countries.

To meet the challenges of development in this 21st century, a new pattern of development is required, namely sustainable development that merges social, environmental and economic considerations into the mainstream of development.

The program to implement sustainable development has been agreed upon in Bali. It covers the social dimension of eradicating poverty, the economic dimension of changing the unsustainable pattern of consumption and production and the environmental dimension of protecting and managing natural resources and the environment in a sustainable way.

The problem remains in getting countries to agree on implementation. This leads us to the second pending issue, namely "means of implementation in terms of finance."

In Monterrey, Mexico, the International Conference on Financing Development (March 2002) agreed to raise funds for development. Verbal commitments were made, but no figures were mentioned in the Monterrey Consensus.

In Bali the intention was to pin down these various verbal commitments and to link them with the needs of financing the "Implementation Program." But this was deemed as "going beyond Monterrey," and as such was not agreeable to some developed countries. Apparently, what is mentioned in speeches by heads of states is not considered binding, especially if it refers to financing development in developing countries.

The third pending issue is the "means of implementation in terms of trade." Trade ministers agreed in last year's WTO Conference in Doha, Qatar, on a new round of trade negotiations. But before negotiations can take place, an important decision on eliminating subsidies on agricultural products is a constraint: Several countries are already involved in raising subsidies in agriculture that make it difficult for developing countries to compete in the developed countries' markets.

While there is hesitation among developed countries to raise development assistance for developing countries to the amount of roughly US$ 50 billion, it is considered normal to extend subsidies to the agricultural sector to $350 billion and thus depriving the developing countries access to the developed countries' markets. This explains why developing countries endorse the slogan "better trade than aid."

The fourth pending issue has to do with globalization. The question is how to make globalization workable if the playing field in the global economy is uneven.

Developing countries are trapped in producing and exporting only raw material commodities, while these commodities are processed in developed countries using import duties as the convenient vehicle for preventing processed commodities from developing countries to move into developed countries.

The fifth pending issue is related to the rejection by many developed countries of an action plan with time-bound targets. What is an action plan without a time dimension for implementation?

These then are the five pending issues that need to be resolved in Johannesburg. Behind these issues looms the reluctance of working together in solving our common problems. There are efforts to tackle these issues. But the way it is being done is not in a multilateral spirit. Developing countries are not treated equally in meeting global challenges of development.

Everybody likes to speak about "good governance", stressing the need for clean governments, rule of law, transparency, democracy and accountability. It is usually addressed to developing countries. But the same principles do not apply when they are requested of international agencies, such as the World Bank and IMF where the rule of "one-dollar-one-vote" prevails.

Different treatment is obvious when developing countries ask for market access into the developed countries' market, just as developed countries demand access to developing countries in a free market economy in line with the "Washington Consensus".

The world is shrinking into a global village where everybody needs everybody. In Johannesburg, the heads of state of practically all countries will deliberate on the issues of sustainable development.

This deliberation will only be successful if our world leaders recognize that in Johannesburg what is at stake is not only issues of sustainable development as such, but by how we are able to solve these issues by working together, the rich and the poor, the developed and the developing countries in a spirit of togetherness. In Johannesburg, what looms as the main dominant issue is whether a spirit of multilateralism can prevail.