Johannesburg

["Lisa Murray" <allilapp@xxxxxxxxx>]

Published on Sunday, May 19, 2002 in the Observer of London
Why The Earth Summit Matters

Instead of worrying about the trivia of hotel bills and travel arrangements,
we should recognize that one of the most important global summits of the
decade risks being wrecked by the rich north.

by Ian Willmore

The media was in full cry last week at John Prescott and Margaret Beckett
for racking up impressive hotel bills during what was presented as a giant
junket to Bali. So were Margaret and John just engaging in a mutual taste
for sybaritic living?

Well, no. Bali was the admittedly exotic venue for a preparatory meeting for
one of the most important international summits for a decade, the Earth
Summit, which will take place in Johannesburg in August this year. This will
be the first major inter-governmental conference dealing with sustainable
development since Rio in 1992.

There is plenty to talk about. The world economy has outrun the capacity of
national Governments and international institutions to regulate and control
it. In particular, the largest transnational corporations now wield enormous
economic and political power. The number of multinational companies jumped
from 7,000 in 1970 to 40,000 by 1995. If they were states, 50 companies
would now appear in the list of the world's largest one hundred economies.
The five largest companies in the world have combined sales greater than the
total incomes of the world's poorest 46 countries. Multinational companies
now hold 90 per cent of all technology and product patents.

The growing power of corporations has been accompanied by worsening
inequality both within societies and between states. In 1960, it is
estimated that the richest fifth of the world's population, almost all
living in developed countries, were 30 times richer than the poorest fifth,
almost all living in developing countries. By 1997 the top fifth were 74
times richer, and the figures are believed to have got worse since then.

Corporate power is also often associated with irresponsibility towards local
populations and the wider environment - Asia Pulp and Paper rampages through
the rainforests of Indonesia, using money provided by Barclays Bank;
Exxon-Mobil lobbies to destroy the Kyoto agreement on climate change and
Balfour Beatty planned to evict thousands of Kurds to build the destructive
Ilisu Dam.

A key issue at the Earth Summit will therefore be corporate accountability.
Many environment, development and labor organizations - and some
Governments - want the Summit to agree on the principle of internationally
binding rules to control corporate behavior and ensure that they can be held
accountable for their actions. This campaign is backed by political
institutions such as the European Parliament. But it is being resisted by
the British Government among others, and of course by the United States.

Even some of the G77 group of developing countries have reservations,
fearing that a Treaty in this area might simply be used as an excuse by
developed countries to deny them access to markets. The hypocrisy of the
United States and EU, on the one hand demanding progress towards an ever
stronger World Trade Organization while on the other hand jumping to protect
their steel industries from external competition, shows just why this
concern exists.

The same story could be told about other key issues. The Bush administration
has made it clear that it does not want any new global agreements since Rio.
It is even trying to unravel some of the progress gained over the last
decade. For example it wants to restrict the use of the precautionary
principle in decision making. This principle has of course been at the
center of trade confrontations between the USA and the EU over restrictions
on hormone treated beef and GM food.

Oil producing nations - especially Saudi Arabia - are also trying to prevent
energy from becoming a major issue at the Summit. They are supported in this
by the USA, which is intent on preventing any mention of the Kyoto Treaty,
which of course was reneged on by the Bush Administration. The European
Union and others want progress in developing renewable energy, especially in
delivering energy to communities who do not have access to electricity, but
in the face of US opposition progress may be slow at best.

Developed countries must make solid commitments at a domestic and at an
international level before the Earth Summit, including timetables, targets
and finance. Without this, the Earth Summit will be little more than an
expensive photo opportunity for world leaders. But the omens are not good.
At the last preparatory meeting held in New York in April, Governments
failed to deliver the promised a 'Program of Action'. This was meant to
include commitments to action, identify barriers to progress and ways of
removing them, and also agree necessary financial support. This is now the
main focus of the meeting in Bali.

Other issues to be discussed at the Earth Summit include water, forestry,
fisheries, poverty reduction, and HIV/AIDS. Fourteen to thirty thousand
people die each day from water-related diseases. More than a billion people
lack adequate clean water, more than double the number using computers.
Nearly three billion do not have access to adequate sanitation. On forests,
for example, the Summit will need to discuss why destruction of old growth
forests has continued apace since Rio.

Between 1980 and 1995 the extent of the world's forests decreased by an area
roughly the size of Mexico. In 2000 the World Conservation Union (IUCN)
found that 18 per cent of the world's estimated 11,000 threatened species
were critically endangered. Meanwhile, 80 per cent of the world's people do
not have access to enough paper to meet minimum requirements for basic
literacy and communication, but wealthy countries consumer paper at an
astonishing rate. An average American uses 19 times more paper than the
average person in a developing country and most of it becomes trash. Less
than half of the paper used in the US gets recycled.

The extent of the illegal timber trade is shocking. A report by the
Brazilian Secretariat for Strategic Affairs in 1997 found that 80 per cent
of logging in the Brazilian Amazon was illegal. The Indonesia-UK Tropical
Forest Management 'Program (2000) concluded that 73 per cent of Indonesia's
logging was illegal. Figures are similar throughout the tropics. FOE has
concluded that half of the timber that enters the EU may be illegally
sourced - and in the UK the rate is believed to be 60 per cent.

So it's not as though there's nothing to talk about in Bali or Johannesburg.
Poverty, environmental destruction and climate change threaten all our
futures, our society and our families as well as those of the developing
world. They are a principal cause of insecurity and conflict across the
planet. But the Summit is now in grave danger of failing completely, as
President Bush's "unilateral" - or isolationist - foreign policy threatens
to wreck any progress on the most vital areas. No wonder politicians are
held in such disrepute. They show few signs of even understanding the
dangers posed by a world economy that is beyond political and popular
control, let alone agreeing on what to do about it.

The likely failure of the Earth Summit was the real story this week. Rather
than worrying about Mr Prescott's hotel bills, the media should be demanding
that the United States and other rich northern countries stop their
outrageously obstructive behavior and allow real progress towards a fairer
and more sustainable world.

Ian Willmore is Media Coordinator of Friends of the Earth.