Johannesburg — The World Summit on Sustainable Development has opened in Johannesburg with exhortations from South Africa's President Thabo Mbeki and its secretary general, Nitin Desai, to end the inaction and failures of the past decade.
Elected by acclamation as president of the summit, Mbeki told the summit it was no secret "that the global community has, as yet, not demonstrated the will to implement the decisions it freely adopted" at the earth summit in Rio ten years ago, and at subsequent meetings.
Pointing to the lack of progress in implementing Rio's "Agenda 21" - a 40-chapter programme of action -- Mbeki pulled no punches: " The tragic result is the avoidable increase in human misery and ecological degradation, including the growth of the gap between North and South."
"It is as though we are determined to regress to the most primitive condition of existence in the animal world, of the survival of the fittest. It is as though we have decided to spurn what the human intellect tells us, that the survival of the fittest only presages the destruction of all humanity."
Addressing the rows of delegations in the hangar-like 1,500-seat hall in which many were forced to stand, Mbeki said there was no need to "discover" a new agenda, nor to "relearn what we already know" about the parlous state of human society and the environment; there was no need to "reopen battles that have been fought and resolved".
No doubt aware of widespread cynicism about the potential outcomes from the summit, Mbeki called for the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation and the Political Declaration of the summit to be real, honest and credible.
Indicating that disagreements over the final form of these documents still remain unresolved, he said work was proceeding to construct the Declaration but that it could not be finalized "outside the context of the Plan of Implementation."
"The necessary consultations will take place to ensure that it is truly owned by all of us and constitutes a genuine a commitment to act," he promised.
Reasons for past failures
Secretary General Nitin Desai said the Rio summit had sought to establish measures to eradicate poverty, achieve more sustainable patterns of consumption and production and take a more holistic approach to protecting ecological assets like oceans, forests and a stable climate. But, he admitted, the overall record card was very poor, and he said it was important to ask why.
Seeming implicitly to criticize globalization, he said the world had changed very rapidly in the decade since the Rio summit. The fact that economic development had been driven by trade and financial liberalization had, "in some ways", made it more difficult to achieve some of the goals set out in Rio. Far from leading to greater equity, he said, the division between rich and poor had been widened.
He also pointed to the Aids pandemic as a hindrance to countries trying to achieve Rio goals, to governments' struggle to meet the challenge of implementing multi-sectoral plans and to the impact of the macro-economic climate of recent years, in which development aid had declined and debt relief and market access remained thorny issues.
Alluding to what some see as a controversial commitment of the summit, to promote partnerships with NGOs and business, Desai said he hoped to see relations between the UN and partners "ratcheted" up to encompass not just advocacy but application.
One of the complaints of the anti-globalisation lobby that is mounting protests at the summit, is that big business and corporate players, in particular, and multilateral organizations like the World Bank, have been integrated into decision-making areas that used to be the preserve of the UN and governments; they argue that the public sector's development agenda is being diluted to avoid offending business interests.
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Plenary sessions on health and the environment and on biodiversity and ecosystem management continue today, as well as a packed programme of side events involving NGOs, campaigners, and business groups.
Some 20,000 passes have been issued for the summit by late morning, nearly 13,000 of them today. The latter include nearly 6,000 delegates, 2,500 media representatives and over 4,000 pressure groups. The numbers are expected to rise through the week.
Although a carefully planned string of formal procedures has kept activists at bay, much attention is being focused on the marches scheduled for August 31, when anti-globalisation groups and local South African anti-privatisation activists plan major protests.
The authorities say 17 groups have applied to hold demonstrations on that day and that 13 have reached agreements with the police about routes and management of the crowds. With two of the groups, however, there is deadlock over the route, with protestors refusing to agree precise arrangements in advance.
