Johannesburg — Hopes at the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg for broad agreement on globalization and trade measures have not yet been fulfilled.
A new draft of the plan is being tabled Tuesday evening, heralding another late-night session for those delegates taking part in the negotiations.
During the day, plenaries, news conferences, off-the-record briefings and corridor gossip have rolled on at the Summit in Johannesburg, but the real action is taking place behind closed doors on the upper floors of the Sandton Convention Centre.
There, delegates and international bureaucrats are locked in discussions over the fine details of two key documents expected to emerge as the conference¹s Declaration and Plan of Implementation.
Between them, the documents will express the collective intent and commitment of the 190 nations attending the summit to achieve sustainable development around the planet. (Only five countries are not here -- Chad, Nauru, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Turkmenistan, and San Merino.)
As on so many other occasions, a deep divide lies between the rich nations and the developing world, and often between the United States and the rest of the world, with U.S. allies hovering uncomfortably in between.
The draft document being issued to journalists at the summit is dated June 26. But the text has been through several versions since then, as delegates struggle to find language on contentious topics that all sides can accept.
Now the endgame is on, with only a few days to go before over a hundred heads of state from all over the world gather here to sign off on the implementation plan and the summit declaration. The goal is to have a final draft by Friday, but, as an official behind the scenes confided, "that frankly looks unrealistic."
Some 80% of the document has been accepted by all parties. But of the remaining 20%, only a fifth has been agreed.
The official version of events is that things are going well. Sue Markham, the summit spokesperson, told the daily briefing that "excellent progress" was being made, with the text of 14 more paragraphs agreed since Monday, bringing the total to 38 since Saturday.
Lowell Flanders, UN senior adviser coordinating the draft, said that the "Vienna process" being used for the negotiation involved a number of regional country groupings meeting in parallel with ten different contact groups, each working on disputed sections of the draft. "We¹re optimistic about the outcome," he said.
Globalisation and subsidies key sticking points
But by midday Tuesday, the contact group dealing with sections of the draft on trade finance and globalization had managed to agree on only 18 paragraphs of the 68 in this section which need to be resolved, suggesting that some hard talking lies ahead. There are 153 paragraphs in the draft implementation plan.
The issue of globalization has been a major sticking point. Although the summit¹s secretary general, Nitin Desai, alluded in the opening plenary session to the negative impact of globalization on the implementation of decisions taken at the Rio de Janeiro Earth summit, his is far from a commonly agreed position.
The United States and its allies are, according to sources close to negotiations, determined to eliminate any language from the draft which suggests that globalization may present a challenge to sustainable development - as presently stated in draft paragraph 45.
There has been particular dismay and some anger among developing nations at the tabling of a document by the US trade representative and EU trade supremo Pascal Lamy, which seemed to consolidate into a solid block of text a 'rich countries' view' -- a move which came as a surprise even to some European nations and seemed to leave little room for negotiation.
For some it was seen as an attempt to railroad delegates; for others the 'non-paper' was regarded as no big deal and an attempt merely to be helpful.
Disappointingly for some poorer nations and the NGOs that oppose the US-EU position, it looks as though the new text will stand, particularly since key members of the G77, such as South Africa, appear likely to accept it with minor amendments.
Several of the most bitterly disputed paragraphs relate to trade and the issue of agricultural subsidies. According to Antonio Hill, Oxfam¹s Policy Adviser on Environment and Sustainable Livelihood, some of the issues are really a matter of degree.
Thus, draft text in paragraph 82 -- about the need for an international mechanism to stabilize commodity prices on behalf of poor countries -- is unacceptable to the United States. The Americans prefer simply to 'create conditions' bilaterally to support those dealing with commodity price fluctuation, rather than go along with an international-level solution.
In the case of subsidies, says Hill, the issue is more about delivery on commitments already enshrined in agreements made at the World Trade Organization (WTO) summit in Doha and in Rio's Agenda 21 than about new text, since little notice has been taken of existing agreements.
Nonetheless, the rich countries would like to limit the implementation plan to commenting on "trade-distorting" subsidies, where others would like to see the social impact of subsidies included. The recently passed U.S. farm bill, which delivered major new subsidies to already comparatively wealthy American farmers, has been particularly contentious.
Many of those who took part in the WTO summit in Doha feel the United States has reneged on agreements made there and now fear that commitments made at the Johannesburg summit will not be respected by rich countries either.
"We're subsidizing farmers in the north to the tune of $1bn a day to preserve some very valid goals like a way of life," Professor Pedro Sanchez from California told Tuesday¹s plenary on agriculture: "Can we take a piece of this billion dollars a day that European and North American farmers are getting and put it toward ending hunger and poverty in the developing world?"
It hasn't all been deadlock. South African Minister of Water Affairs Ronnie Kasrils said differences on water sanitation were narrowing after a late-night session Monday. The U.S. and others were opposed to setting a deadline for guaranteeing sanitation to at least half the people in the world who lack it, as has been done for drinking water. But other countries continue to insist that a deadline is needed, and Kasrils believes progress is being made.
Agreement has been reached on a section of the draft concerning Small Island States, and a G77 member of the negotiations was happy, Tuesday afternoon, with a U.S. agreement to draft paragraph 30 on fisheries and coastal environment protection.
Some NGOs have been troubled by the apparent lack of power wielded by poor countries in the negotiations. But Friends of the Earth (FOE) coordinator at the summit, Daniel Mittler, was "delighted" that the Group of 77 countries had tabled, at midnight on Monday night, a new draft section on corporate accountability, restoring the issue to the draft for the first time since the summit¹s June preparatory meeting in Bali.
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Inclusion in the text is only a first stage, however. Much text has been removed, restored and removed again in recent months and the forces that opposed inclusion in Bali are unlikely to be more tolerant, with only a few days before the deadline for completion of the document.
Mittler shares the gloom of Oxfam and other NGOs on the contentious trade clauses in the draft plan, and it is not only the subsidy issue that troubles him. "We¹re particularly worried that the 'precautionary principle' [that policies will not be embarked upon if there is a reasonable prospect that they will do harm], which was such a key element of the agreement at the Earth Summit in Rio ten years ago, is on its way out in the trade section of the draft," he said.
FOE is also concerned that the document may not ultimately seek to ensure that its own paragraphs regulating the action of multinational corporations cannot be undermined by WTO rules.
"We distributed alternative text about trade issues ourselves", Mittler said. "We keep being told that there is no alternative to the Doha text and we wanted to assert that principles of just trade do exist, but it wasn't adopted."
NGOs feel particularly unhappy that they have effectively been excluded from the negotiation process. For a while in Johannesburg, and earlier in Bali, they were informally allowed into contact group sessions and were able to contribute. But on Sunday afternoon they were swept out of the negotiation rooms and have been relegated to the corridors outside. They argue that accountability and transparency are suffering as a result.
