Green
Capitalism and the New African Imperialists-
Tales on the Road to the Joburg Summit
by
Patrick Bond and Michael Dorsey
The
World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) will be held in
Johannesburg beginning on August 24, proceeded by various civil
society conferences and events. Its purported aim is to find a
common international discourse, strategies and tactics that allow
governments, business and civil society to eradicate poverty,
end unsustainable patterns of consumption and production, and
combat environmental degradation. But will it flop?
Host
president Thabo Mbeki's New Partnership for Africa's Development
(NEPAD) is one of the main agenda items, having recently gone
through official state endorsement processes at both the June
summit of the G-8 leaders in Alberta, Canada, and the July launch
of the Africa Union in Durban. Pronounced "knee-pad"
by many civil society advocates, the "Partnership" may
be a shot-gun wedding forcing the rest of the continent to its
knees, bowing to the whims and demands of proto-capitalists, like
Finance Minister Trevor Manuel and his Pretoria cronies. The WSSD
will also be the site of a mass anti-capitalist march on August
31, although there are two major camps on the South African left
claiming the tradition of the World Social Forum. Regardless of
whether a labour/church-backed pro-government grouping--the Civil
Society Forum--continues to crowd out the independent-left Civil
Society Indaba, the WSSD will not be left unscathed. The latter
group has the support of urban anti-privatisation and rural landless
people's organisations and until February was the official UN
host, before being booted out unceremoniously during internecine
conflict with larger, more mainstream groups.
In
addition, a variety of NGO side-events by groups like Greenpeace,
Friends of the Earth International, the International Forum on
Globalization, Corpwatch and many sectoral advocacy groups will
keep the pressure on. Security is likely to be sufficiently tight
as to prevent disruptions. As many as 100 heads of state are expected,
with 60,000 other delegates, press and activists. Even aside from
civil society protest, bad content and process threaten to delegitimise
the official event, as happened at the June Preparatory Committee
in Bali, Indonesia. The very name "Johannesburg" may
go down in infamy as the global elites' last-gasp attempt--and
failure--to address a world careening out of control.
The
ghosts-of-Earth-Summit-past configured Johannesburg to compromise
the environment. The 1992 Rio event did establish the Rio Principles,
Agenda 21, the UN Convention on Climate Change, the Convention
on Biological Diversity, the Statement of Forest Principles and
the Commission on Sustainable Development for implementation.
Yet Rio also set in motion third-wayism--championing market solutions
for securing environmental protection and promoting free trade
as the sole path to sustainability.
Not surprisingly, the German Green party's Heinrich Boell Stiftung
recently issued the Jo'burg Memo, which perhaps most eloquently
and thoroughly summarises the criticisms of WSSD work to date.
Editor Wolfgang Sachs claims that the institutional process has
gone forward "without tangible global results. In particular,
economic globalisation has largely washed away gains made on the
micro level, spreading an exploitative economy across the globe
and exposing natural resources in the South and in Russia to the
pull of the world market."
Sachs
credits elites with only an increase in the global surface area
under environmental protection, slowing carbon emissions and declining
ozone-depleting CFC production. "Apart from these cases,"
he continues, "the excessive strain placed by human beings
on nature's sources, sites, and sinks has continued to rise. The
extinction of species and habitats has increased, the destruction
of ancient forests continues unabated, the degradation of fertile
soil has worsened, over-fishing of oceans has continued, and the
new threat of genetically engineered disruption has emerged."
In
theory, the Johannesburg Summit is meant to produce a negotiated
leader's statement, a negotiated plan of action and a non-negotiated
list of sustainable development initiatives involving states,
interstate relations, and business and civil society sectors.
But few areas of consensus exist. Several alternative texts, for
example, were tabled about the word "globalisation"
at the end of the third PrepComm. The US proposed a positive statement,
the EU suggested a balanced text, and the
G-77/China insisted on a short paragraph that avoided definitions
and instead focused on difficulties experienced by developing
countries.
More
substantive controversies continue over the role of the profit
motive, "public-private partnerships" and market mechanisms
in environment and development. The WSSD's main problems are its
tendency to allow increasing scope for commodification of nature,
its inadequate measures to address poverty and excessive wealth,
and its orientation to implementation via TNCs, instead of through
strengthened nation-states.
The
major background issue is whether the World Trade Organisation
will become the default organisation and set of rules governing
Multilateral Environmental Agreements.
Elite capacities to restore both the earth and the social wage
have been questionable since at least the 1992 Summit. Then billionaire
Maurice Strong, the conference Chairman, helped eliminate the
UN Centre on Transnational Corporations, hatched the World Business
Council on Sustainable Development and mapped a role for corporations
to guide (un)sustainable development. Now WSSD Chairman Nitin
Desai has actively blocked negotiations for a side agreement on
binding Corporate Accountability, and endorsed the involvement
of the newly created Business Action for Sustainable Development
Group - which will have a parallel meeting in Joburg in a building
adjacent to the government proceedings.
Rio
inaugurated the 21st century's eco-social war for the planet,
the next battleground will be Johannesburg. But what the framers
of corporate environmentalism did not count on then was that where
there is government and corporate collusion to plunder the environment
and hijack humanity, the radical forces of civil society are never
too far behind.
***
Bond is editor of Fanon's Warning: A Civil Society Reader on the
New
Partnership for Africa's Development (Africa World Press, 2002)
and
Dorsey is Thurgood Marshall fellow at Dartmouth University, New
Hampshire.