[PEN-L:29988] the new surrealism

["Ian Murray" <seamus2001@xxxxxxxxx>]

Some yawn, some hope, some rage, some despair. The summit goes on

How the real action takes place away from the conference

John Vidal in Johannesburg
Saturday August 31, 2002
The Guardian

Mark Malloch-Brown, head of the United Nations development programme, gave his
first speech to the main UN conference at the earth summit in Johannesburg
yesterday morning. It was monumentally boring, he freely admitted, and the
former man from the Economist magazine expected few to have paid much attention.

"You have to say these things. You have to listen to everyone saying the same
bloody things. The international negotiations and governmental declarations will
be forgotten within minutes of the ink being signed on the paper," he said.

The most monstrous meeting the world has ever conceived is now at its mid-point.
The main conference, with its tortuous governmental negotiations, gets the
attention, but there are 18 other smaller summits and parallel events taking
place, and each day the three pillars of the world community - governments,
business and civil society - spew out several thousand statements, pacts,
initiatives, declarations, partnerships, deals, resolutions, position papers,
responses and challenges.

By 10.30am yesterday, lawyers, children, African scientists, leaders of the
world's cement and mining companies, fertiliser and tourist industries, human
rights workers, conservationists, waste managers and local government officers
had all had a platform.

As trade unions met in one venue, city traders held a press conference in
another to accuse the police of extortion, while the landless were marching,
Oxfam was dumping tons of sugar on the EU delegation's doorstep, Friends of the
Earth had mobilised a squatter community to make accusing figures made of waste,
and a police horse had bolted across town as a helicopter flew too low.

The second earth summit is the world's biggest ever meeting, and one of its most
surreal. John Gummer, the former British environment secretary-turned
businessman, was yesterday found staring into the ice-filled urinals of the
neo-Italianate, hollow-pillared Michelangelo hotel where the world's leading
businessmen and heads of state are staying.

"Is this sustainable development? No one can explain it to me," he said.

Meanwhile the World Bank has sponsored messages on 65,000 recycled toilet rolls
the delegates are using this week.

No one at this mid-point pretends to grasp it all, but the feeling is growing
that Johannesburg will definitively change the relationship between civil
society, business and governments over the next 10 years.

"Rio de Janeiro in 1992 saw the start of the flowering of non-government groups.
Johannesburg will be seen as the Crystal Palace of sustainable development," Mr
Malloch-Brown said. "It is a great trade fair. Civil society is unnecessarily
alarmed that big business is here in such force. But obviously, there is a risk
that this whole thing will get hijacked by the PR companies."

The future, he says, is partnerships, and some pretty bizarre marriages are
being consummated.

As of yesterday, McDonald's is an official Unicef partner. The children's agency
and one of the most vilified companies in the west will team up to raise money
for charities, the chairman of the burger chain said.

Meanwhile, conservationists are linking with logging companies. Greenpeace,
which has been attacking South African nuclear and chemical plants, has linked
up with Shell, Monsanto and the mining giant RTZ in the Business Council for
Sustainable Development. Yesterday one of its boats was alongside the South
African navy tracking a Spanish trawler fishing illegally.

"This is Blairism gone mad," said one observer.

There are more than 100 US groups in Johannesburg and the majority are
apologetic. America, despite announcing what it calls $4.5bn of aid, is the butt
of most delegates. "By trading off water against renewable energy ... they are
pissing on the poor," said an outraged French group.

The real action takes place well away from the convention centre. Yesterday the
World Bank attacked the US for its stance on climate change, while the bank
itself was in turn lambasted by anti-privatisation water groups.

Meanwhile, in another part of town, the giant French water company Suez, which
now has 30-year rights on much of southern Africa's water resources, was
insisting that its investments had brought clean, safe water to more than 2.5
million people.

Few industrialists want international attention, but Sir Mark Moody-Stuart, the
former chairman of Shell and now head of the Business Council for Sustainable
Development, yesterday declared that it was a myth that business was not in
favour of government regulation.

"There is a great deal of mutual distrust [between government groups and
business], but why should business not be here?" he asked critics.

"Because they are polluting and profiteering," piped up an Indian activist. He
is with several survivors of the Bhopal tragedy, in which tens of thousands of
people were killed by a gas leak from a Union Carbide plant in India.

Down in the main convention press room - a hurriedly converted underground car
park with about 10 toilets for 4,500 press - Ann Pettifor, the founder of
Jubilee 2000, tried to call a press conference. Tempers were frayed. "No one is
bloody interested in good news," she said. According to her calculations, debt
relief has begun to work. "Education has benefited by more than $380m, spending
on health by more than $330m," she said.

Meanwhile, the resource consumption at the summit is soaring. According to the
official barometer, in four days delegates have consumed 662 kilolitres of
water, sent 12 tons of waste to landfill, and consumed 105MWh of electricity.

The hot air is incalculable. "I haven't a clue what is going on elsewhere," said
Keith Ewing of the British charity Tearfund. "I have been concentrating on
sanitation and lobbying governments. A child dies every 15 seconds for the lack
of a loo and can you believe that the US, Australia and Canada are holding out
against an agreement that would halve that number by 2015?"