Earth Summit Preparations Heading for Failure?

earth summit preparations heading for failure?

US & allies block progress at prepcom 3

daniel mittler foei earth summit coordinator/ foe germany

Frustration levels soared at the third global preparatory meeting (PrepCom 3) for the Earth Summit (World Summit on Sustainable Development), held in New York from 25 March to 5 April. With even practicalities like finding rooms for negotiations proving difficult, time was too short to cover the issues put on the agenda at previous PrepComs. Governments talked of these shabby circumstances as "external constraints". In fact, the dearth of rooms and translators directly resulted from these same governments' decisions to cut funding for the operations of the UN headquarters.

explosion of text
Meanwhile, governments found it hard to constrain their appetites for amending text. Within a week, the 21-page Chairman´s paper, vague and unfocused in parts but nonetheless manageable, ballooned to over 150 pages. Nobody was able to navigate this text. Taking comments and amendments from all governments consumed the entire second week.

NGOs including FoEI were obliged to make process suggestions just to ensure that the Earth Summit progress does not derail at this early stage. We at least convinced governments to mandate the conference chairman, Professor Emil Salim, to produce a short new Chairman´s paper before PrepCom 4 in Bali. Hopefully, the spectre of ministers arrival in Bali will prevent this text to the same fate of death-by-amendment as the previous one.

the unholy alliance
On substance there was also plenty of frustration. The USA, Canada and Australia blocked any substantive progress. They operated in an unholy alliance with the OPEC leadership of the G77 to sabotage the inclusion of any meaningful commitments in the text.

This was nothing new of course. But as with PrepCom 2, there was a sore lack of countries acting as a group to clearly and visibly fight these wreckers. The EU was woefully incompetent and unstrategic. At times, EU negotiators did not even know the EU position. This caused, for example, a decent piece of text on charges for aircraft fuels to be discarded without opposition.

eu unstrategic and confused
The EU also failed to sell its recent Barcelona commitment to increase its development aid budget. Yet the US used the (lower and less certain) new development funding it had promised at the UN Financing for Development conference in Monterrey to full effect. On the key issues of trade and finance, the EU kept pointing to the results of Doha and Monterrey and failed to offer anything new. (FoEI holds that the funds from Monterrey are pitifully short of what is needed and the results of Doha are, if implemented, a real threat for people and the planet.) But even tactically, this EU stance was a disaster. It alienated the very G77 countries that the EU must build a strategic alliance with if the Earth Summit is to be saved from the US and its allies.

with us or against us?
At the close of PrepCom 3, NGOs agreed to increase pressure on governments in the run up to Bali in order to start an effective fight for meaningful results at Johannesburg. Governments must choose sides: that of the US and its allies, who would bury a decade of multilateral efforts for people and the environment; or our side, which expects the Johannesburg Summit to set ecological and social limits to economic globalization.

foei effective
FoEI was frustrated but effective at this PrepCom. Together with Greenpeace and other NGOs, we issued a much-talked-about challenge to governments: establish at Johannesburg that WTO rules can never overrule multilateral environmental agreements. We also lobbied hard on corporate accountability. As a result Switzerland made some positive text proposals, and efforts by some governments to kick the issue off the agenda were frustrated. As UN Under-Secretary General Nitin Desai said in a press conference, the mere fact that governments discussed the issue of corporate accountability at all showed that NGOs were having an impact.

This was clearly a compliment to FoEI. But we were nonetheless deeply disappointed that negotiators fail to respond to the global concern over corporate misrule, and offer only more voluntary agreements as the solution.

ecological debt message penetrates
FoEI also lobbied on ecological debt, reminding governments that they cannot ignore this issue. We will intensify these efforts in Bali and Johannesburg, with side events on ecological debt planned for both occasions. FoEI also welcomed textual suggestions, once again by Switzerland, that addressed environmental justice concerns. The negative effects of the global North's consumption patterns are felt most strongly by the global South, as well as many poor communities in the North, and we started working with other groups to plan a high-level side event for Johannesburg.

PrepCom III was a disappointment. But FoEI will lobby hard in the coming months to prevent the US and its allies from turning Johannesburg into another neoliberal summit, good for big business but for nobody else.