A Report:

"After Johannesburg --
Debriefing World Summit
on Sustainable Development"

a meeting organized by De Balie cultural center in Amsterdam
in co-operation with the Transnational Institute (TNI)
and held at De Balie
on 13 September 2002

In attendance for Sun Conscious:
Surya Green
Ra Asha Wisse

"After Johannesburg: Debriefing World Summit on Sustainable Development"
was a presentation of first-hand reports and critical analyses of the achievements
and failures of the largest global summit on sustainable development since the Rio
Earth Summit of 1992. The speakers were Jan Pronk, former Dutch politician
and Cabinet Minister who was UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan's special
ambassador to the Summit; Wolfgang Sachs, former chairman of Greenpeace
Germany and senior fellow at the Wuppertal Institute, Germany, which researches
Climate, Environment, and Energy; and Daniel Chavez, co-ordinator of the
Transnational Institute's Energy Project.

The three speakers at the Johannesburg Debriefing:
(from left to right) Wolfgang Sachs, Daniel Chavez, Jan Pronk

Contents:

Debriefing by Jan Pronk
Debriefing by Wolfgang Sachs
Debriefing by Daniel Chavez
Questions and Answers
Hopeful Ray of Light
Conclusion

Debriefing by Jan Pronk
Among all the presidents, prime ministers, and other high-positioned persons who attended
the World Summit in Johannesburg, it is safe to say that no one among them was a more
experienced negotiator on the issues of environment and developmental issues than Jan Pronk.
Pronk served as Dutch Cabinet Minister for the Dutch Labor Party in both of these fields
during an active and engaged political career that spanned more than thirty years. As chair
of the UN Conference of Parties of the Convention on Climate Change (CoP 6), held in Bonn,
Germany, in July 2001, Pronk worked literally day and night to secure agreement
on the Kyoto protocol. His hard work also earned him the 2001 Climate e-award
of the U.S. Business Council for Sustainable Energy.

Jan Pronk
"no new breakthroughs"

In a somewhat somber and downbeat tone, Pronk gave his reading of the Johannesburg outcome:
there were no new breakthroughs. Most of the principles debated in Johannesburg had already
been accepted ten years ago at the Rio Earth Summit. However, because of a shift to the right
in many countries, old agreements were re-examined. One achievement of Johannesburg, said Pronk,
was that the Rio agreements were not affected. The 2002 Summit was marked by trying to keep
what had already been achieved during the last decade. There were difficult debates,
but they resulted in the reassertion of some important principles previously agreed upon.

Yet the Johannesburg Summit also made some small steps forward. Most important was
the agreement to reduce, by half, the number of people in the world without clean drink water and
sanitation by 2015. The year 2015 was also the target date to restore the depleted global fish stock
and achieve a sustainable supply. By 2020 are to be out chemicals dangerous for health
and environment.

More significant for Pronk were the important re-assertions to which he had earlier referred.
At the top of the list was the "precaution principle" stated at Rio: the actions of today
have to take into account possible future consequences. There was also the principle of
common but differentiated responsibility for Earth, with the rich bearing a greater responsibility.
Pronk mentioned as well the principle assuring the reproductive rights of women, and the
principle that trade is not more important than the environment. For these principles, however,
there were made no targets, no measures to assure implementation, and no proper action plan.

Pronk thought that the UN organized the conference well by starting with the "bottom up"
regional approach, but that did not lead to a good end. Most of the ideas of the civil society,
formulated locally and nationally during the preparatory meetings held in countries around
the world during the year before the Summit, did not "trickle up" to the official government level
in Johannesburg. As well, access to the official meetings was extremely difficult for ngo's
[non-governmental organizations]. Pronk said there was a gulf in Johannesburg
between what went on inside during the negotiations, and what the people outside thought.
"One outcome of the conference," he said, "is that the gulf may now be larger."

Pronk also mentioned some important issues that were not even mentioned
at the official gatherings. These included problems of landlessness and employment,
globalization and trade, and the protection of global public goods. "Global public goods,
such as oceans and mountains, can be seen not as the property of special nations
but of all people, and there can be mechanisms to save them," elaborated Pronk.

Looking back on the summit gave the Dutch ex-environment minister the feeling that not much
had been achieved in Johannesburg. On the positive side, three agreements that resulted
from Rio -- on biodiversity, anti-desertification, and climate -- were retained. As well,
there came crucially needed support for the Kyoto Protocol to decrease greenhouse
gas emissions.

[Ed. note: The Protocol, initiated at the Third Conference of the parties to the
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) held in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997,
was agreed upon at the time by one hundred and seventy-one countries; a good number of those countries have not yet ratified.
In order to keep the Protocol alive, not less than fifty-five parties to the Convention must deposit
their instruments of ratification, acceptance, approval or accession (Article 25). Of these fifty-five ratifications
or accessions, at least enough industrialized countries will have to be included to account for at least
fifty-five percent of their total 1990 global carbon dioxide emissions.]

As a "kind of miracle," stated Pronk, at Johannesburg there came agreement for the
Protocol from Canada, India, China, and Russia. So now, even without the United States
which refuses to participate, the Protocol has the support needed to come into legal force.
[Ed. note: The Protocol will set out rules for countries on reducing (or paying penalties for)
the release of the so-called greenhouse gases thought to contribute to global warming
and the alarming temperature rise.]

"This means that Johannesburg helped," said Pronk,
"and we can expect that the Protocol will be operational by the end of this year.
Then we can decide on more ambitious aims." Furthermore, for the first time
at such a UN conference, there was mention of renewable energy and the need
for the substantial increase of its share in global energy production.

Summing up, Pronk said the world needs more conferences but fewer summits.
He called for a politicalization of the process of the international meetings between
governments, business, and ngo's so as to "bring in those people who have to justify
themselves at home to the electorate". The present system lacks the capacity
to translate a negotiation into political will, he said. In the future, international meetings
could take the opportunity to link world security with sustainability; they could "invest
in taking away the possible causes that provoke aggression", such as the huge gap
between poor and rich.

Debriefing by Wolfgang Sachs
Wolfgang Sachs, an analyst of environmental polices, is the coordinator of the Jo'Burg
memorandum "Fairness in a fragile world", published by the Heinrich Böll Foundation
based in Berlin, Germany. In the document, sixteen representatives of ngo's, business, politics,
and academia from around the world, people who have shown through their past activities
a commitment to ecology and global justice, give their views on the decade since Rio
and make their recommendations for the Johannesburg Summit.
[www.joburgmemo.org]

Sachs began by saying that, right from the start, the UN made mistakes in the organization
of the Johannesburg World Summit. Those mistakes led to some of the failures in outcome.
Sachs suggested that, as the ten years' anniversary of Rio approached, the UN looked to the
event in the same way that someone looks to a special birthday: it was something which had to be
celebrated, no matter what. "Johannesburg was condemned from the beginning because there never
was an agenda, and no particular reason to call people together." On the other hand, there were
many meetings of people, from representatives of the landless to those of the big companies.
Personal testimonies, especially from indigenous peoples, showed much gain in confidence,
competence, and knowledge by many in the world during the last decade.

Said Sachs: the effects of Rio itself have been, for the most part, a failure. The same governments
which presented themselves as the saviors of the world at Rio were the vendors of the world
two and a half years later in Marrakech, where the gains of Rio were eaten up by the establishment
of the World Trade Organization. [Ed. note: The World Trade Organization (WTO) is the successor of the
General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) created after World War II.] A worldwide free trade
market has become the priority instead of fair trade, which takes into account the voice of nature.

National environmental policies have difficulties in containing the transnational companies that
claim the right to free trade, said Sachs. The solution for falling currencies in countries as India,
Indonesia, China, and Brazil was sought in increased export of the national patrimony such as
forests and water. Falling currencies led to falling trees. "Governments see themselves in a
shrinking space so they get more competitive, and people and nature are put on the back burner."

Sachs further thought that Johannesburg was a missed opportunity in reducing the
environmental footprint of the rich countries whose overshoot has become a sign of modern times.
The wealthy are overstepping by twenty to thirty percent what the biosphere can accept;
the environmental space, which is finite, is unequally shared. He wondered aloud how
to make the rich live gracefully without occupying other people's space. He said that wealth
had to be transformed so that it will weigh less on the Earth. The theme of sustainable production
and consumption patterns had been steadily watered down in the pre-Johannesburg
preparatory meetings, he pointed out.

Furthermore, said Sachs, the use of the words "developed" and "undeveloped" frustrates
negotiations and makes the minds of people unclear. The so-called underdeveloped world
has its extremely rich elite, and at the same time the so-called developed world has huge numbers
of poor inhabitants. Not only is the world divided into a North and South of poor and rich;
each country has a global consumer class as well as a marginalized majority.

Sachs found it a pity that the entire Johannesburg Summit was framed in terms of action and
never in terms of non-action, such as setting moratoria on oil investigation and nuclear energy.
"The rush to do new things framed the Johannesburg issues in a very expansionist manner."
He regretted that the "fossil fuel coalition", made up of the Organization of Petroleum
Exporting Countries (OPEC), the United States, certain developing countries, and some
transnational companies, was able to block the progress of renewable energy at Johannesburg.
This was a missed opportunity especially for the developing countries [which are mainly located
in the more sunny areas of the world]. They should take advantage of their current position
and leapfrog to a post-fossil fuel stage; they could take a short cut to the modern world
by going right into solar, sustainable development.

On the issue of poverty eradication, Sachs said that this topic "was in everybody's mouth
at Johannesburg but surfaced only with the ngo's". He referred to the two current schools
of thought on the issue. First, he mentioned the basic rights strategy. This approach recognizes
that poverty is not the lack of money but of power, and therefore champions rights --
such as for land and water -- for more people. The prevailing strategy, however, is the
export-led perspective that considers market access to be the new expression of equity.
Sachs does not find market access a good way to solve the problem.

Moving towards the end of his talk, Sachs said the meeting in Johannesburg was not a summit
on sustainable development but, rather, on how to avoid it. He spoke of the "consistent strategy"
of the United States to protect itself from international agreements and considerations. In today's
global environment, where some parties want to go it alone without any constraints, stated Sachs,
it is better not to have global summits for the time being. Instead, regions should go for sub-global
agreements among like-minded countries.

In closing, Sachs said he would like to see the European Union press ahead on renewable energy
"without waiting for the slowest ship". A further suggestion followed: "One can build things from
an intermediate scale, and give an example, and that will create a dynamic. Europe can find
its own role in pushing ecology as a necessary policy for tomorrow."

Debriefing by Daniel Chavez
Daniel Chavez, currently working on his Ph.D. in "Participatory Politics", gave his overview
of the Summit in a tightly-packed Power Point presentation that sped by without mercy
for the reporters taking notes by hand. The presentation clearly outlined Chavez's assessment
of the positives and negatives of the conference as to its achievements or lacks thereof.
In short, he found that most of the discussions at Johannesburg merely continued the Doha
trade talks [Ed. note: In Doha, Qatar, in November 2001, the WTO held a ministerial conference.]
Johannesburg was "a triumph for greed; a tragedy for the people and the environment".
At Johannesburg there was "a dialogue of the deaf", as the President of Venezuela termed it.
Chavez regarded the 2002 Summit -- which cost about euros sixty-three million or US$ sisty-two million --
a waste of time and money.

Chavez read out a quote by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan calling sustainable development
an area for partnership. But Chavez sees the co-operation between government and business
as a process of privatization: the government gives over its responsibility for common goods,
like water and electricity, to big business. It is then left to "corporate responsibility" to agree
on voluntary commitments to respect the environment and defend human rights. Asking business
to regulate itself is like asking a lion to become vegetarian, commented Chavez.

The full presentation by Daniel Chavez, in text and accompanying illustrations, is available on the
TNI website (www.tni.org). TNI is a non-profit foundation and world-wide fellowship of
committed scholar-activists "seeking to create and promote international co-operation
in analysing and finding possible solutions to such global problems as militarism and conflict,
poverty and marginalisation, social injustice and environmental degradation".

Questions from the Audience
Some points that emerged from the question-and-answer session with the audience:

1. Jan Pronk:

    All things that are either scarce or polluting ought to have high prices, and the governments
    need to regulate this. Regulation will not work on a voluntary basis. Pricing mechanisms
    are important. Examples: an eco tax, a tax on global public goods.

    The world has become a global market because of Western expansion.
    There need to be environmental legal rights and an environmental social security system.

    The only way to tackle the global problems is with a global approach, and only the UN
    presents the necessary framework. The process can be sub-global and from bottom up,
    but only as a process. The UN is the only body "able to make treaties with
    legal consequences for countries and corporations that have gotten loose from their
    national power". A global treaty approach is also needed to deal with corporate accountability.

    The Johannesburg Summit was necessary in order to keep the current global state of affairs
    from becoming worse.

2. Wolfgang Sachs:

    The pressure coming from civil society was necessary for the Summit.

    Deep changes have to be made in regard to the WTO.

    Corporate accountability is an important issue for the coming years.

    The Summit, representing the cause of sustainability, was worth its costs;
    nobody questions the costs involved in sports events.

3. Daniel Chavez:

    To solve global issues, alternatives are needed from below; however, no concrete
    solutions are available for the near future. Alternatives are needed from above as well.

Hopeful Ray of Light
By the end of the debriefing, which related the difficulties, lack of concrete agreements,
and missed opportunities at Johannesburg, the atmosphere in the meeting room was quite dark
and grim. That is why, when the discussion leader called for a last question, Sun Conscious
chairpersun Surya Green went up to the microphone. Thanking the three speakers
for their efforts for the Summit and for their information shared with all of us gathered,
she suggested that the evening end with a ray of sunlight shining through the clouds.
Therefore she asked each speaker for their response to the question: "What gives you hope
for the future?" Some people in the audience clapped their approval and, even before
the speakers could respond, the atmosphere lifted.

Jan Pronk gave the first reply: "I am on the whole quite pessimistic. The Summit was not as
good as it could have been, and as I had hoped it would be. Yet many people came together
and were critical of the paradigm of the 1990s, the market-oriented paradigm.
And this was debated not in an alternative place far away, but in the core of the conference,
among government leaders. This may have political significance in the years ahead."

Wolfgang Sachs, too, said he was pessimistic about the outcome of the Summit.
He was, however, was very much encouraged by the many people
working at themargins for new options for the future.

Daniel Chavez answered that although he thought the outcome of the Summit meager compared
to the costs, he noted that a lot of people came away from Johannesburg filled with new interests
and new will to go on with the work. Also, he has the idea that "the line between the left
and the middle is getting thinner". This new trend he found to be a good sign.

Daniel Chavez (center) gives his final thoughts on Johannesburg
while Wolfgang Sachs (left) and Jan Pronk (right) look on

Conclusion
The Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development, despite all its failures,
brought together in one place a large number of concerned planetary citizens.
In the official UN proceedings alone, some twenty-thousand country and ngo delegates
participated. Some of those present were just carrying out a paid job, and may have had
no real commitment to sustainable development, except perhaps to block or at least delay it.
Yet, in attendance at Johannesburg, were also a good number of committed social activists
who belong to the global civil society trying to prevent the forces of ignorance
from running this planet into the ground. A socially responsible, well-informed,
and growing global citizenry not only wants, but increasingly demands,
protection of the environment and people everywhere from exploitation.

As Jan Pronk indicated during the debriefing on 13 September 2002,
one should not be de-motivated by the lack of achievements at Johannesburg.
Things would even be worse without the steps, however small, taken at the 2002 Summit.

Up until now, the world's decision-makers have usually placed economic considerations
before the lives of human and other beings, and also before the life of the planet itself.
Johannesburg turned out to be another case in point. But all the arguments, deals,
and opposition marking the Johannesburg Summit are also a sign. They serve witness
to the desperate attempts of the old system to keep its control while,
simultaneously, a new world of global justice, cooperation, and sharing is manifesting step by step.

All concerned people today, and especially those men and women who hold
decision-making positions in any country, on any level, need to look at life beyond
their own personal, local, and national interests. Each one of us has to ask
the imperative questions: "What can I do for the planet? How can I,
as an individual, working alone or together with like-minded persons,
influence the positive transformation of planetary society?"

As the present state of the world is the result of the working out of karma
[the effects of all actions], personal and collective, in the same way the future planetary society
will also be the result of karma. Feeling responsible for what happens in the world
does not mean we have to react to events or to other people with sadness
or anger or despair. The aim is to remain calm in the face of all outer circumstances.
An attitude of balance will help us focus our attention, energy, and efforts,
and allow us to carry out more effectively our essential tasks. Let us proceed forward
in the spirit of selfless service, performing our actions without attachment.

Let us remember there is an Intelligence at work in the world
that is superior to any international superpower or person.
that higher power is guiding the planetary community ahead towards the Light.
No matter what outer appearances may reveal about the negative state of the planet,
there is a Divine Plan continually unfolding for the benefit of humanity and all life on Earth.

May we attune with the divine Sunlight, and share it with others,
and help this planet move closer -- by steps of whatever size --
to the envisioned sunny future.

©Surya Green 2000-2011

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