South Should Have Greater Say in GEF

by amin kassam

rio de janeiro, jun 8 1992 (ips) -- the dutch delegation to the earth summit here does not want the global environment facility (gef), which has been proposed as the funding mechanism for implementation of the summit decisions, to be dominated by northern countries.

netherlands development cooperation minister jan van pronk told ips sunday that he favours a structure that would ''guarantee that the donor countries could not impose their views''.

there would be a two-pronged decision-making mechanism to ensure this: all decisions would have to be agreed on through a majority vote of all members as well as through a majority vote of subscribers to the facility. thus, there would be a built-in veto for both donors as well as recipients as a group.

the gef would only be successful if it was truly global in this way, pronk points out.

the amount of funding would also be important. the dutch would like to see a fund as big as the world bank's international development association (ida) -- ''that would be somewhere between 15 and 20 billion dollars over a three-year period''.

this would be in addition to the 0.7 percent of gnp already set as a target for northern countries in the early 1970s.

however, pronk disagrees with the northern countries that are pressing for the gef to be the only funding mechanism. he would like to see funding for environmental programmes also distributed through existing funds such as the ida, the african development fund and the asian development fund.

'earth windows' would be created within such funds specifically for programmes to do with agenda 21, the action programme arising from the earth summit.

pronk is also hoping that african countries will press the european community at the next review of the lome treaty in 1994- 95 for additional finance for specific environmental programmes.

while saying that other northern countries should give more than the 0.7 percent already targetted for overseas development aid (oda), thus adding up to 0.8 percent, the netherlands will itself give more.

this is because the dutch oda is currently 0.9 percent of gnp. with an additional 0.1 percent, their total will come to 1 percent.

the dutch contribution is dependent on other countries being willing ''to give a substantive content to the concept of additionality''

since some countries do not yet meet the target of 0.7 percent and are reluctant even to agree to a proposed formula of meeting that target ''as soon as possible after the year 2000'', this condition could turn out to be an important stumbling block.

in contrast to his colleagues in some northern countries, pronk does not see capitalism as the only way for the south to speed up its development while implementing agenda 21.

''that is not the system, not the sole system. it is not even the only possibility to speed up economic development, and for that reason i would say that development does not necessarily include a wider disparity of income distribution (and) exploitation of specific populatimn groups,'' he said.

he recognises that if countries follow the capitalist model of growth, they have no choice but to pass through a stage where human rights are trampled on, as happened in europe after the industrial revolution.

''we need a paradigm that is not capital-oriented but man- and nature-oriented, and which is much less material consumerism- oriented,'' he said.

pronk, who is a member of the south commission, has an international reputation as a man who speaks his mind. he is always listened to, even by those who disagree with him, because his ideas are well thought-out and often prove to be the wave of the future.

during pronk's first tenure as dutch minister for development cooperation in 1973-77, he promoted the idea of tying human rights to development aid, a heretic concept at that time. now the international community is thinking along the same lines.

it is largely due to him that dutch aid is increasingly based on mainly promoting three aspects of development: quality of education, the position of women, and the environment. the focus is on direct poverty reduction programmes rather than big

infrastructural projects.

the dutch minister sees several facets to human rights. they include the right to participate in the design of, and benefit from, the implementation of development plans. where this is not done, the people should have a right to protest about their exclusion from the development process.

in the context of the rio conference, he cites specifically the right to live (and thus the right to an environment that does not shorten life), the right to be free and the right to get a fair portion of the available resources.

in addition, ''we also have to discuss equal access to scarce resources for people who are not yet born, the next generation,'' says pronk.

since these dimensions were not prominently included in the discussions on human rights during the fifties and sixties, the earth summit ''is adding a new dimension to the relations between human rights and development''.

on the thorny question of deforestation, pronk would like the north to open its markets to agricultural as well as industrial products from the south, to make up for the loss of foreign exchange as a result of reducing or stopping timber exports.

he believes that there should be a new round of talks following the gatt (general agreement on tariffs and trade) uruguay round, to negotiate such access.

however, the products imported into the north should be ecologically clean. to help the south achieve this, ecologically safe technology should be sold to the south at below-cost, subsidised prices.

since the private sector needs financial incentives to produce new technologies, the development of such technology should be a public responsibility rather than a private one.

he supports the indian proposal for the north to pay a fee for the use of southern forests as carbon sinks, but only if forests are considered to be a global resource rather than a national one.

this would also apply to the remaining forests in the north, and international agreements would be drawn up to monitor all forests globally and control their use. (end/ips).

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