[A-List] We can't save the world in a fortnight

[Mark Jones <markjones011@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

We can't save the world in a fortnight

Governments are no longer listening to anyone from the outside once a 
conference starts. But its the perfect chance to begin planning a long-term 
strategy.

Can the earth summit achieve anything? Talk about it here or email us at 
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Worldview: Earth summit special

More from Dan Plesch

Sunday August 25, 2002
The Observer

Ten of thousands of government officials and non-governmental 
representatives have now come to Johannesburg to debate sustainable 
development. While government officials meet, the non-governmental 
organisations (NGOs) will have their own separate conference. If you ask 
them why, they will tell you that they have come to take part in 
multi-stakeholder dialogue. This sounds to me like they will be munching 
chunks of Wildebeest at an open-air barbecue but it really means that they 
are to come for an open and rather inconclusive discussion.
I have attended many of these types of events and believe me they do not 
achieve a whole lot. The weary song, "we're here because we're here" could 
have been invented for them. True, they provide a great opportunity for 
exchanging and developing ideas and merely getting close to the powerful 
enables one to share some of the aura of power. Once home it is always 
helpful in discussion to be able to say with conclusive force, "Well I was 
in Jo'burg, you know, and...." But the reality is that governments are no 
longer listening to anyone from the outside once a conference starts.
Nevertheless, the growth of global civil society was one of the great 
positive developments of the second half of the last century. Without their 
awareness raising and lobbying progress on gender issues and the 
environment would have been far slower. However, the enormous and rather 
unfocussed effort culminating in South Africa may mark a high watermark for 
this type of effort. The bull-in-a-china-shop approach to world affairs 
introduced by President Bush threatens the carefully established fabric of 
international regulations. His damaging behaviour only accentuates the 
weakness of existing strategies for curtailing global corporations.
While NGOs will certainly be taking the opportunity of being together to 
try to plan their future strategies. But in such difficult circumstances 
there is no great shame in feeling confused. It is though too easy and too 
cheap just to criticise. So here are my two cents worth of ideas for the 
new long-term strategy that those on the outside, looking in, at the summit 
should seek to promote.
In fact there are five cents, or five points worth. The first is the 
contribution renewable energy can make not just to the environment but to 
revolutionising both development and security policy, which I have 
discussed in a previous article. The other central
Here are four parts of a better strategy for building a more just and 
prosperous world. These concern democracy, de-regulation, debate and 
disarmament.
We need to find practical ways of making democracy global. As one executive 
earning six figures remarked in a matter of fact way. "Unless we do make 
create democratic the institutions that govern the world we will never 
control the sort of companies I work for." But how can we move forward most 
ideas for reform of the UN or other bodies have one fatal flaw, they 
require every country to agree before any progress can be made.
There are a practical and immediate series of steps that Britain, the EU 
and any country could take. We should start by posting ministers, elected 
politicians, to bodies such as the UN, the WTO and the World Bank. At 
present we leave this job to civil servants who are not there to take the 
initiative, their job is literally to be diplomatic. With an accountable 
politician in place, we as a people have a much more direct way of applying 
out democratic power. At its crudest an ambitious politician has a much 
greater interest in making things happen and getting on the news that a 
diplomat - however competent. This idea of posting politicians overseas is 
not entirely new. Winston Churchill sent Harold Macmillan, an MP, to be his 
minister in the Middle East to conduct the political work that could not be 
left to generals and ambassadors.
The next step will be to reform our constitutions so that at general 
elections we can directly elect representatives to these bodies. This would 
give us a far more powerful and direct say. Imagine if across the EU we 
sent fifteen directly elected people to the UN. In a short time, many more 
states would follow suit giving much greater legitimacy and power to the UN 
General Assembly.
De-regulation has been the cutting edge of corporate domination of our 
societies. Nothing we are told must stand in the way of the free market. 
Politicians stand in fear that if they resist in one country then business 
will go elsewhere. Opposition is also fragmented as different sectors such 
as agriculture and textiles have difficulty finding common cause with 
protectors of labour standards in the rich countries. What is needed is a 
political and economic objective than can be used by anyone seeking to 
limit corporate power and so provide unified effort. Such a demand also 
needs to have the potential for widespread and positive change to make it 
attractive.
The key to the success of modern capitalism has been the limited liability 
company. The essential element that has proved so successful is that 
individuals can risk their money and be legally protected from being sued 
if things go wrong. The company can be sued and so can its executives but 
investors do not stand to lose everything if things go badly wrong with the 
company. Until this law was past, investor liability was literally 
unlimited and people were naturally reluctant to invest.
This extraordinary immunity used to be balanced in an informal 'social 
contract' with protection for employees and communities. Now that that is 
being destroyed, we need to review the special interest regulation that 
protects investors and business people. The next time you find yourself 
facing a demand for 'de-regulation' try replying that there must be a 
matching de-regulation of limited liability. You will be surprised, I 
think, at the incredulity, turning to outrage, of the reply you get. That 
is in my experience an indication that you will have struck a nerve. At a 
minimum, we may slow down the 'de-regulators' and we may have found the 
achilles heel of the corporate world.
Now electing the UN and the 'limited' out of 'Limited Liability Company' 
will at best take a few years to get going. In the meantime, we will have 
to try and deal with the many issues that beset us. The US for Americans 
and the rest of the world remains a central concern. Not because it is has 
the worst policies, far from it, but because its shear size and influence 
make what it does for good or ill count for so much more. This brings me to 
my third 'd': dialogue. In Johannesburg and in the run up tens of thousands 
of people will have sent millions of emails. The globalize Internet working 
as a powerful tool of mobilization? Up to a point, Email and the net has 
been great for helping us talk to ourselves.
We now need to use the same tools to have a new dialogue with the US. In 
addition, this can be done in a focused manner. What do I mean by focused? 
Well do you remember when Bush threatened to ban imports of steel from 
Europe? Well in reply, one of bureaucrats in Brussels decided to return the 
compliment by proposing to stop imports of goods produced by districts in 
the US that Bush's Republican Party has to win in this November's 
elections. This blatantly political intervention helped produce a 
compromise. Global civil society groups should take a tip from the EU and 
begin emailing and advertising in key US states. We may find some of the 
discussion hard, but just as Americans have much to learn from the outside 
world, so American ideals of freedom need to be better appreciated abroad. 
So let's stop talking with each other and start a new and long-term 
dialogue with the US.
Finally, there is the issue of disarmament. When I was a student 
'disarmament and development' was a theme of groups like War On Want and 
the Campaign Against the Arms Trade. The basis of the slogan is that civil 
war and heavy military spending gets in the way of sustainable development. 
It is strange then that disarmament is not a significant theme of the 
Johannesburg conference. Many environmental and development groups have 
been very shy of getting engaged in issues that encroach on national 
security. Friends of the Earth, for example, opposes nuclear power but has 
nothing to say about nuclear weapons even though they were a key reason 
that power stations were built in the first place and nuclear war would not 
be very friendly to the earth.
Some groups like Christian Aid have got heavily involved in attempts to 
control the spread of guns - especially in Africa. However, even the 
International Network on Small Arms gave up trying to get the prevention of 
killing onto an agenda about development. One senior African Church leader 
I spoke to has even refused to go to the Conference because small arms are 
not on the agenda. Unfortunately, many NGOs are reluctant to get involved 
in national security issues and governments are happy not to have the 
pressure. If you doubt me, look at the next major summit which will be the 
NATO meeting in Prague: you will be able to sit all the NGOs around one table.
· Dan Plesch is Senior Research Fellow at the Royal United Services 
Institute (www.rusi.org ) and writes a monthly online commentary for 
Observer Worldview. You can contact him via dplesch@xxxxxxxx or send your 
views to Observer site editor Sunder Katwala at 
observer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx with comments on articles or ideas for 
future pieces.