[PEN-L:29992] Johannesburg: Strange bed fellows

[Sabri Oncu <soncu@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

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?"

Article at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldsummit2002/story/0,12264,783925,00
.html