By Sean Malloy
More than 20,000 people will be attending the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) at Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in June. While this major international conference reflects worldwide concern, there are growing fears that it will not be able to make the hard decisions that are necessary.
The aim of the conference is to formulate three documents: a set of conventions on climate change, biodiversity and forestry; an Earth Charter to guide development in a manner that ensures the future of the environment; and a program of action for implementing the Earth Charter.
Even though these documents would not be legally binding on governments, there are major divisions on their content between developed and Third World countries.
Lalanth de Silva, a lawyer and executive director of the Environmental Foundation in Sri Lanka, was in Sydney for a forum, "UNCED and the Need for Institutional Reform", held on January 31 and February 1.
He told Green Left that the North is targeting world reduction of greenhouse emissions and reduction of rainforest destruction, while the South identifies Third World debt and unequal trade relations as key problems accelerating environmental destruction.
De Silva comments, "The North-South problem is really not a new one. I think the North-South problem goes back to colonial times.
"If you look back on Sri Lanka, our 2500 years of written history demonstrate that people knew of sustainable ways of living. At the turn of the century, we had over 90% of our forests intact despite large populations.
"Colonialism really came to the Third World in that context, and Europe 'developed' and became rich because they extracted the resources at very low prices [from the Third World].
"When we got our independence 40-50 years ago, colonialism didn't really stop. Colonialism became entrenched in the global economic system through the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the regional banks and to some extent the United Nations."
Extractive policies that benefit the rich countries still continue, said de Silva. "Our major exports are still tea, rubber and coconut, which were put there by British colonial powers. All those thousands and thousands of hectares of tea and rubber and coconut stand on land that was originally wet zone tropical forest.
"Colonialism was replaced by the developing country idea, where the west would give us money to develop industry. But what that actually did was entrench the interests of the North.
"So when the Brundtland commission [UN World Commission on ment] came out in 1987 and said what we need is sustainable development, we all thought that is the solution to the problem. But having thought a bit more in the past four to five years, we are now convinced that it is no more than a reaffirmation of the old development idea with a little cutting of the edges here and there and a little green paint.
"What the South is looking for are real changes in the economic order which has come out of colonialism.
These changes would move towards an order "which begins to treat Third World countries as an equal, which removes the kind of protectionism that the first world practises, which would be paying the right price for natural resources, including the environmental cost of those resources.
"It also means cancelling some of the debts, because the Third World is in a debt crisis. Why should we be paying that debt when in fact it is the North that owes us the debt?
"You can't expect the Third World countries to have environmental reform and controls and all of that in the context of having to exploit and literally rape our resources in order to pay off just the interest on these debts.
"The North doesn't want to talk about global economic reform or even the debt crisis. The North is interested in how do we cut carbon emissions, and the global greenhouse effect. I'm not saying those are not important, but from the Third World perspective that's not the priority issue; we have got to deal with hungry people."
De Silva argues that the institutions that perpetuate these relations need to be reformed. "I think the institutions need radical reforms, have to become more democratic.
"Look at the undemocratic procedures of the United Nations, the fact that there is a veto power, the fact that there are permanent members of the Security Council, the fact that much of the power in the World Bank and IMF are still very much with the major donor countries.
"You can see that's what happened in Kuwait. Do you think the Gulf War would have happened if Kuwait was growing carrots instead of producing oil? That is what the UN is all about — protecting state interests."
A further problem with the UNCED process, said de Silva, is that it is too bureaucratic and diplomatic. This could make the conference "the world's greatest non-event".
Preparatory meetings for UNCED involve government representatives and some non-government organisations (NGOs). Regional forums have also been organised for public and NGO input to the official process. Three working groups are considering forests, oceans and legal institutions and reforms.
"NGOs or people's organisations have the right to be accredited, if they are sufficiently connected to an environment body and issues. Once they are accredited they will be heard at the option of the official chair," de Silva explained.
"That is the formal process, but the actual decisions are not taken in the working groups or the plenary; they are taken in what are called informals. Sometimes NGOs are allowed in these informal meetings at the discretion of the chair.
"That is still not where the actual decisions are made; the actual decisions are made in what are called informal informals, so you can see how complicated this whole thing is.
"The NGOs are not allowed into the informal informals at all."
The lack of accountability and binding decisions are identified by de Silva as serious problems.
"The fact that you make a statement doesn't mean anything. Sometimes a delegate or two might show interest and ask you for a copy, but there is no accountability in the sense of saying 'Here is a proposal that we have made, what have you done with it?', or 'If you've rejected it why have you rejected it?'. That kind of accountability doesn't exist.
"A lot has been said about public and NGO participation in UNCED, but in reality that is not the case. You might be able to talk to a government representative, convince that representative to change their position here or there. But that is about it. Real participation doesn't exist."
De Silva sees the need for a document that is binding on governments, "a legally binding document which sets up institutions and adjudicatory processes so that people can petition and say 'My government is not doing this and that', or 'This company is doing that'."
He calls for a charter "which establishes rights for human beings, for indigenous peoples, for women and youth; a charter which recognises that you just can't barge in and start 'developing' the earth without public involvement in decision making. If things like that could be contained in a treaty, then I think that would be an achievement."
Despite the bureaucratic nature of the UNCED process, de Silva notes useful aspects. "UNCED has been able to mobilise the world, through talk and thought, about environmental development issues.
"In Sri Lanka we've been having a public campaign on environment and development which is now writing citizen reports as a kind of counterbalance to the government report."