NGOs ready to fight in Johannesburg
NGOs ready to fight in Johannesburg
A'an Suryana and Fabiola Desy Unidjaja, The Jakarta Post, Nusa Dua, Bali
As the battle for sustainable development remains unresolved in Bali, international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) vowed they would continue the battle, saying that "the fight for a better agreement would be taken to Johannesburg".
The disappointing results of the Bali talks prompted the NGOs to vow to keep burning some unresolved and contentious issues from Bali to be brought up at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg.
Kim Carstenson, an activist from the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), said that pressure from the civil society was needed to keep alive the spirit of sustainable development so that the issues would continue to be pursued in the next World Summit in Johannesburg from August to September.
"As there are some 80 days left before the Johannesburg summit, we will keep on playing some important issues before the summit. Public pressure is needed to push governments to respect the Rio commitment and make it a reality," Carstenson told a news conference on Friday.
Other NGOs, grouped under Eco-Coalition, joined the news conference, including Oxfam and Greenpeace International.
They expressed concern that the Bali negotiations had failed to meet people's expectations, winding down into a foul result for sustainable development.
The NGOs voiced their disappointment several times over the U.S.-led coalition of developed countries, whom they accused of hijacking commitment made by heads of state in Rio de Janeiro 10 years ago.
Remi Parmentier from Greenpeace said that the negotiations in Bali produced nothing due to hard resistance from the developed countries to bring forward the Rio commitment.
"Ten years have passed, but we are still reviewing Rio here. Definitely, we are still in Rio (and not in Bali)," said Parmentier.
Parmentier said the text produced in Bali was merely a text void of substance and full of ambitions.
In a release sent to the media, the Friends of the Earth International joined the chorus, lambasting the United States for attempting to force through its free trade agenda and doing everything in its power to prevent an agreement on legally binding commitments.
Different interests certainly divided the North and the South.
The U.S. and other developed countries insisted that there should be no time-bound measures to implement the Rio commitment for sustainable development.
On the other hand, the developing countries, backed by the NGOs, pushed ahead that the Rio commitment must be guarded with a fixed time schedule and a monitoring institution to make the commitment a reality.
Another specific issue that divided the North and South plus the NGOs was the trade and finance issue.
The NGOs have raised concern that some aid money from developed countries, which they pledged during the Monterey conference in Mexico, would come in the form of foreign investment and trade incentives, rather than pure grants.
The NGOs also expressed concern that agricultural subsidies were six times the amount of the Monterey aid, and were harming developing countries, while ironically, developed countries refused to cut the subsidies.
"The weak political commitment to address the issue will merely widen disparity between developed and developing countries," said Antonio Hill from Oxfam.
Knowing that they were being cornered by the majority of developing countries and the NGOs, the U.S. and its allies such as Australia and Canada, tried to shift the agenda, pressing ahead issues of voluntary partnerships, involving public and private institutions.
The Friends of the Earth International condemned the tactics, saying that the partnership initiative would not deliver sustainable development, since it lacked legally binding commitments.