What will be the likely outcome of Joburg Summit?
What will be the likely outcome of Joburg Summit?
Agus P. Sari, Executive Director of Pelangi,
an Environmental Research Institute, Based in Jakarta
The Bali preparatory committee meeting was meant to prepare
material for the World Summit on Sustainable Development in
Johannesburg to address a range of issues from helping millions
out of poverty to protecting the environment.
These issues were, among other things, poverty alleviation,
changing unsustainable production and consumption, transfers of
resources and technology from rich countries to poor countries
and preserving natural resources and the environment that
development needs of future generations will be dependent upon.
In conclusion, the meeting was to agree on the implementation
of sustainable development.
The past week and a half at the Bali meeting, however, has
been dominated by economic globalization, trade liberalization
and corporatization. Champions of the World Trade Organization
(WTO) have been insisting that a globalized world, free trade and
the increased role of corporations would contribute to
sustainable development. Critics, however, argued that the
results would be increased poverty, gaps in income and further
destruction of the environment.
Against the backdrop of these polarized arguments,
Johannesburg will have to come up with an outcome that is
acceptable to the stakeholders that the Summit represents, yet
worth the papers it produces, the words it forms and the costs it
incurs. What will this be?
Remember Seattle? In 1999, the WTO held its annual meeting in
Seattle, and the U.S. anti-globalization movement, joined by a
number of anarchists, took over the streets and inadvertently
incited destructive riots.
This event caught the attention of world leaders. Clinton's
speech said that the WTO must take the voice "from the outside"
into account. Then there was the meeting in Genoa where one
protester was killed, putting heavy pressure on other protesters.
Afterwards, there was Doha, where the world leaders finally
agreed on the basic terms for free trade.
The expansion of the role of corporations is all too
noticeable. And the impression that the WTO is just an extension
of corporate interests is all too apparent. In the years between
1987 and 1997, foreign direct investment grew drastically from
US$88 billion to $400 billion. Overseas Development Assistance,
on the other hand, grew from $42 billion to $63 billion over the
same period.
Social and environmental impacts made by these corporations
have been felt mainly by local communities while overseas
executives and shareholders have enjoyed large profits. The
piecemeal programs by these multinationals, in the name of
community development, have failed to address the longer term
problems of corporate responsibility and good governance. A
viable longer term solution to this is urgently needed.
There is an unspoken agreement that, given the global and
corporate world that we live in now, there is a need to balance
the power of the WTO -- to complement it, and more importantly to
undertake tasks that the WTO cannot undertake. While the WTO is
good at promoting free trade and investment, it is not well-
situated to address poverty, equity and environmental protection.
These tasks should be undertaken elsewhere, not through the WTO
framework.
The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) for a while
tried to champion international environmental governance, with a
likely outcome of forming an organization, such as the world
environment organization. This idea, though it gained momentum in
its time, failed to materialize because it failed to address the
most pressing developmental issues, such as poverty alleviation
and equity. Nevertheless it has started a discourse on global
sustainable development governance.
Along these lines, proposals to establish the likes of a world
environment and development organization and a world sustainable
development organization have been put forth. Johannesburg may be
a process striving to achieve just that: to establish an
institution with a set of rules, mechanisms and agreements. The
institution may not necessarily be an organization, which at
first competes with and is the anti-thesis to the WTO, but in the
end it would work alongside the WTO, complementing its
undertakings in areas where the WTO cannot go.
At the same time, in response to global world problems, civil
society has become increasingly globalized as well. Alongside the
worldwide non-governmental organizations (NGOs) such as
Greenpeace, World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and Friends of the
Earth, numerous smaller NGOs have established international
networks among themselves according to common interests.
Institutionalized rules and mechanisms to govern sustainable
development will have to comprise a range of multi-stakeholders
and governments. The old model of intergovernmental mechanisms
can no longer work. In conclusion, even though the WTO is
currently the only game in the global town, it should not be.
Mechanisms to make the corporate world accountable and
responsible for its conduct everywhere in the world will have to
prevail and the constituency for it among governments as well as
civil society is growing. The shape of this new model of multi-
stakeholder mechanisms will be determined at Johannesburg. Bali
started the move, and Johannesburg must finish it.