Martin Khor
Third World Network
The World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) ended
on 4 September night shortly after 9 pm, after an extended
six-hour final plenary which was held up half way as delegates
haggled over a second draft on the political declaration
that was released only after the plenary had started.
The plenary, chaired by South African President Thabo
Mbeki, finally adopted the political declaration, called
The Johannesburg Declaration on Sustainable Development,
and a Plan of Implementation of WSSD, the two main documents
of WSSD.
It was the culmination of two weeks of negotiations during
much of which there was a strong feeling of uncertainty
whether an agreement could be reached because of deep
divisions, mainly on North-South lines, over several issues.
Among the most contentious in the Plan of Implementation
were finance and trade, governance, two of the Rio principles
(common and differentiated responsibilities and the precautionary
principle), and the acceptance or otherwise of time-bound
targets, including for energy and sanitation.
The negotiations on these issues in the draft Plan remained
stuck at the level of senior officials, and were elevated
to Ministerial level (at which a mix of Ministers and
officials took part) in the final phase of the Summit.
When the Plan was submitted at the plenary, many countries
took the opportunity to make comments or put their interpretation
on one or the other point. The United States, however,
made major points of interpretation that appeared more
like reservations against the consensus on the text, on
four areas. The US speech was met with loud boos from
the NGO section of the hall.
The first US interpretative point related to Rio Principle
7 on common and differentiated responsibility. It said
the US does not accept liability under international law.
Also, by its terms, this principle deals with global environmental
problems. (The implication is that the US does not accept
this principle except in relation to global environment
problems).
The second US point was in relation to the Implementation
Plan's para on corporate responsibility and accountability.
According to the US delegate, the chairperson of the main
committee meeting (held on 3 September night) had said
that it was the collective understanding that the para
refers to existing international agreements, and that
this should be reflected in the report of WSSD.
(The para calls for promotion of corporate accountability
through full development and effective implementation
of intergovernmental agreements and national regulations.
In fact the US delegate made a factual error in announcing
the US interpretative statement. The chairman of the 3
September night meeting, Emil Salim of Indonesia, expressly
rejected a proposal read out by a UN official that it
was the common understanding of the contact group on globalisation
and means of implementation that only existing intergovernmental
agreements were being referred to. The chairman's clear
decision to reject the proposal came after strong objections
by Ethiopia and Norway. That the chairman had rejected
the proposal that there was "collective understanding"
which should be reflected in the WSSD report, was confirmed
personally by Emil Salim to the author of this article
during the final plenary session of 4 September itself).
The third US point related to the para in the Implementation
Plan on the Biodiversity Convention and the Bonn Guidelines.
The US view was that any initiative must give access to
biological resources, and also respect other international
laws.
(The issue relates to the principle of access and benefit
sharing regarding biological resources and associated
knowledge. Through its interpretation, the US was stressing
the rights of foreign parties to gain access to the biological
resources of countries of origin, whilst ignoring the
benefit-sharing aspect, which is of prime interest to
developing countries and local communities. This obviously
one-sided emphasis is made more extreme by the reference
to respect for other international laws, which might be
taken to refer to the WTO's TRIPS agreement which facilitates
patenting and other intellectual property claims by foreigners
over countries' biological resources).
The fourth US point was that it did not interpret that
UN conferences were in support of abortion.
The US intervention dampened the proceedings, and was
in line with its positions during the conference.
The loudest applause was given to Venezuela's President
Chavez, who called the Summit a "dialogue of the deaf"
and complained that the heads of states and governments
could not find a way to influence the Summit outcome.
He said he had made a proposal during a roundtable where
40 heads of government were present, and his proposal
had been supported by many heads present (including Brazil's
President Cardoso), "but our opinions had no influence
on this summit conclusion.
Another round of applause was given to the representative
of St. Lucia who spoke for the small island states and
criticised the WTO as not being a friend of the small
island states. "It has a principle on special and differential
treatment but no effect has been given to it. I regard
the WTO as having no soul. Trade liberalisation has affected
our banana industry adversely, that is what trade liberalisation
and globalization has meant for us. Something is wrong."
He said WSSD had failed to set a target for renewable
energy. Yet St Lucia had set its own target that 20% of
its energy would be from renewable sources. "But the World
Bank is pressing us to privatise our water, electricity,
telephone services. On one hand we have to privatise,
but when we attempt to put our policy of renewable energy
in action, the multinationals frustrate every effort we
make as they are only interested in the rate of return."
Meanwhile, there was hardly any process at all on the
political statement, and it was touch-and-go whether the
Summit would end with one at all. At the Rio-plus-Five
summit in 1997 in New York, there was an extended period
of negotiations on successive drafts over many days, yet
the meeting ended without a political declaration when
the then UN General Assembly president, Ambassador Razali
Ismail of Malaysia, abandoned the exercise when it was
clear no meaningful text was possible.
The divisions along North-South lines, especially over
financial resources, had been too deep (the developing
countries having argued that the North had failed miserably
to meet their commitments on finance and technology).
Razali declared it was better to be honest and have no
declaration, than to issue one full of generalities but
without any meaningful points.
That way, Razali had said, the Rio-plus-Five would not
attempt to fool the world into falsely believing that
progress had been made by governments.
In the WSSD process, the opposite approach was taken.
Attempts to draw up the declaration had taken a back seat
all along, as almost all the attention of delegations
were focussed on the Plan of Implementation. The last
preparatory meeting at Bali ended without a draft declaration,
and the Prep-com chairman, Emil Salim of Indonesia, issued
a draft of elements paper under his own authority after
the Bali meeting.
Even that document was not discussed at all in Johannesburg.
Indeed, there was no process or meetings held at Joburg
on the declaration. The host country, South Africa, distributed
a first draft only on the night of 1 September, just three
days before the summit was to conclude.
That draft was received with a lot of criticism from
many countries. No meeting was held to discuss it. On
the night of 3 September, when the Main Committee met
to discuss the Implementation Plan, a few delegations
led by Malta, asked what had happened to the declaration
process and when would a meeting be held to discuss it?
The South African Foreign Minister, Mrs. Dlamini-Zuma,
replied that there were as many proposals for amendments
to the first draft as there were people in the hall (which
was packed with about 300 delegates). She said a second
draft would be ready on 3 September morning and the WSSD
secretary-general Nitin Desai indicated that a meeting
of the Main Committee would be called the next morning
to discuss it.
However, when pressed by delegates, neither of them could
answer when the meeting would be convened.
On the Summit's last day, 4 September, delegations were
eagerly awaiting the new declaration draft and the opportunity
to discuss it, but neither the draft nor the meeting materialised.
Thus, the final official plenary chaired by President
Mbeki started, after 3.00 p.m. without delegates having
had the chance to see the new draft for a declaration.
It was finally circulated after the plenary started, with
the heading, "Draft political declaration submitted by
the President of the Summit."
With several delegations, and NGOs, informally indicating
their displeasure at the new draft, particularly over
some text in the first draft that was now omitted, Mbeki
announced the meeting would be suspended for ten minutes.
But the break stretched to almost two hours as several
delegations were seen in intense discussion among themselves
and with senior South African and UN officials.
After the plenary resumed, a document with four new points
or amendments were circulated, and with these, the Johannesburg
Declaration on Sustainable Development was adopted.
The manner in which the declaration was introduced, so
late in the process and on almost a take-it-or-leave-it
manner, was way out of line with normal procedure of UN
conferences, in which many drafts of such an important
document would have gone through months of negotiations
at various stages of the preparatory committee and at
the Summit.
Instead, the Johannesburg Declaration and process of
its introduction and adoption was reminiscent of the way
the WTO Ministerial declaration was drawn up in its two
final drafts at the WTO's Doha meeting of November 2001.
Up to now, it is unclear who did the drafting of that
final Doha text, which was circulated by the Secretariat
on the extended final day on a take-it-or-leave-it basis.
Even then, the Doha text had gone through two drafts
in Geneva and the final two more drafts at Doha. There
were only two drafts of the Johannesburg Declaration,
and no opportunity for the delegations to go through it
as an informal group or in a committee.
A great deal of disquiet was expressed by many delegations
on the utter lack of transparency and procedure of the
political declaration process, and some delegates, familiar
with the WTO, remarked in frustration that the infamous
WTO "Green Room" process had now crossed over to the usually
open and participatory UN system.
In the end, the delegates all accepted the Johannesburg
Declaration, despite the frustration of many, probably
because there was nothing of significance in the text
that anyone would be concerned or unhappy about.
It was, as many delegates were heard to say, a "harmless
text." By which was meant that the declaration contained
general statements of goodwill and "motherhood", that
did not contain any meaningful commitments for anyone,
and thus did not have the potential to harm the interests
of any country.
That, perhaps, is an appropriate description of the WSSD
as well. The political leaders and their senior officials
came and met, fought over difficult text in the Implementation
Plan, agreed to adopt some nice sounding words in an insignificant
political declaration, and then left.
With nothing much achieved, and probably no harm done
to anyone as well, it left the official participants with
the feeling that the meeting was somewhat worthwhile in
having the opportunity for them to meet and in clarifying
where everyone stood on the crucial issues facing humanity
and nature, but that there was a deadlock, hardly any
progress in new areas, and almost a setback in old areas
of previous agreement (such as reluctance of continued
acceptance of the two key Rio principles).
With such small results for such a heavy expense in personnel,
time and resources, it will be quite a long time before
a convincing case is made for another world summit of
this type.
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