NGO PRESS CONFERENCE ON SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

On the road to "Johannesburg", governments were once again undecided and unable to move forward with proposals to promote sustainable development, Michael Dorsey, member of the Board of Directors of the Sierra Club, told correspondents this morning at a press conference at Headquarters.

The press conference on the second meeting of the Preparatory Committee for the World Summit on Sustainable Development (Johannesburg, 26 August-

4 September) was sponsored by the Department of Economic and Social Affairs. Other participants were Daniel Mittler, representative of the Friends of the Earth, International (FoEI) and Michael Strauss, representative of Earth Media.

Once again, the energy had to come from civil society organizations from North and South, Mr. Dorsey continued.  Governments and the commercial segment of civil society were still wondering how to foment sustainable development, while in the past 10 years official development assistance had fallen

$20 billion; Third World debt had risen 34 per cent; trade policies had gotten out of control; and trade institutions were promoting a host of unsustainable policies such as exportation of waste from the North to the South.  Transnational corporations had become the main drivers of unsustainable development.  Their profits over the last 10 years had gone up more than 300 per cent while they had increased jobs by less than 15 per cent.

The "sustainable development train" had to be gotten out of the station, Mr. Dorsey said.  Civil society had to act as a catalyst, and Johannesburg might be the last chance to do it.  There was a need to push for trade reform, increasing transparency and accountability of trade institutions.  Sustainable development must also be funded; at a minimum, funding of unsustainable development, such as subsidizing fossil fuel exploitation, had to be stopped. There was also a need for regulating transnational corporations.  Oddly enough, corporations were now willing to engage in a discussion, but governments were "dragging their feet".  If the President of the United States in his State of the Union address was serious when he said that process had to begin in light of the Enron problems, he should be taken up on that commitment.

Mr. Mittler said the right issues were put on the agenda of the current preparatory committee for the Conference.  Globalization seemed to be "firmly" on the agenda, which showed that, to some extent, governments had had the courage not to dodge difficult issues.  However, the way governments seemed to be dealing with the agenda was disappointing.  There was a clear free trade bias, ensuring that any outcome of Johannesburg would be subservient to the international trade regime.  The Johannesburg Summit must be about setting clear ecological and social limits to the globalization process.  The global trade regime could not be exempt from that.  There was a willingness from the side of multi-stakeholders, except from governments, to discuss corporate accountability.  It must be ensured, however, that the doors on binding corporate accountability were not closed.

The discussion on environmental governance seemed to move forward, and the discussion on sustainable development governance had started to gain momentum.  Those were positive aspects of the preparatory committee, Mr. Mittler continued. The issue of water seemed to have a lot of support.  However, there was no clear commitment against liberalization and privatization of water, which was of great concern.  That was an issue on which the seriousness of governments could be tested.  Regarding the process of the current prepcom, he said it was curious that last year the emphasis had been on a "bottom-up process".  However, the list of the current prepcom did not reflect the regional processes at all.

Mr. Strauss said the issue of partnerships was an important theme emerging both on governments and non-governmental organization sides.  There were two types of documents being considered.  Type 1 documents were political documents. Type 2 documents were based on partnership negotiations between NGOs, governments, industry and labour organizations.  NGOs supported both processes. Partnerships were important, but only if they were accompanied by criteria to ensure that they were environmentally and socially sustainable and could be monitored.  Partnerships must, however, not obscure clear political commitments, particularly from Northern governments.

Answering correspondents' questions about a United Nations convention on overseeing transnational corporations, Mr. Dorsey said regulation was necessary because volunteerism was not enough.  "The corporate fox cannot continue to watch over the people's house," he said.  Codes of conduct sometimes gradually gravitated towards codes of misconduct.  There was also a failure of corporate reporting, which could not be monitored.  The only recourse left was to increase the amount of regulation, particularly State-level regulation and global regulation.

Mr. Mittler said the Friends of the Earth was promoting a convention on corporate accountability, for which the negotiation process should start at Johannesburg.  To get the issue moving, massive public support and pressure had to be built up.  Support existed already among some multi-stakeholders and among some governments, mainly from the "Group of 77" Developing Countries.  The Enron debacle would be used in lobbying efforts for that convention, as it had helped to raise public awareness of the issue.  The convention must, among other things, ensure that legal aid gets globalized and that communities would be able to hold the top of the chain of command of transnational corporations accountable.

Mr. Strauss noted that support was indeed growing, because governments and industry did not want to see a repeat of what had taken place at recent WTO conferences.

Mr. Dorsey added that the convention would allow access to information and would offer a clear set of sanctions for those who broke provisions of that convention, something which was not offered under present voluntary arrangements.

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