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The World Summit on Sustainable Development 2002: Reports from the Scottish Civic Delegation
Dr Donald Bruce, Society Religion and Technology Project, Church of Scotland
I was invited to the World Summit on Sustainable Development to represent the Scottish churches and development agencies. I am a scientist, formerly doing risk regulation, research and policy studies in the energy industry, but since 1992 working full time for the Church of Scotland as the Director of its Society, Religion and Technology Project (SRT), and a member of Action of Churches Together in Scotland. The SRT Project is a unique unit set up in 1970 to engage with emerging ethical and social issues of technology. From the outset environmental matters have been a major part of our work. Currently we cover energy policy, renewables, agriculture, genetic modification and applying sustainable development principles in the churches. We have worked on sustainable development since the late 1970's, with the World Council of Churches programme for "just and sustainable societies" and more recently contributing to a series of reports on the interface of environment, economics and social affairs for the European Commission. After the Rio Earth Summit we produced a booklet for the churches in Scotland entitled "Seeing Scotland from the Summit". This is my report from Johannesburg, ten years on.
My brief from the Scottish Executive was to engage with relevant groups and issues in Johannesburg, to find out what I could bring back to Scotland to make difference in my constituency. I was fortunate to join the ecumenical team of the World Council of Churches with Christians from all over the world. The team was one of the accredited UN "major groups", and took part in the series of official preparatory meetings. I also made links with Christian Aid, TEAR Fund, Oxfam and other development agencies. I divided my time between following the main summit plenaries and negotiations - especially with energy and agriculture issues - attending some of the many fascinating side meetings, visiting displays of work in progress, and in grassroots contacts via the local churches around Johannesburg.
UK and Scottish Delegations
A highlight of each day was an hour long briefing meeting for the UK NGOs hosted by the UK delegation, usually led by Michael Meacher or Margaret Beckett. They summarised the developments in the negotiations over the previous 24 hours and then opened it up to questions. This was done in a good open spirit, with frank discussion. Despite some obvious differences, there was a good deal of respect for the UK line on many issues, and a collective sense of
realpolitik - that in negotiations only certain things were going to be possible. I pursued concerns on specific renewable energy targets, the removal of hidden fossil fuel subsidies, and the retention of the precautionary principle. The Scottish civic delegation met Jack McConnell at an informal reception, where we all had a good chance to talk to him about our experiences of the summit and what we would take back to Scotland. Next morning, Jack spoke well at a side event on Environmental Justice, where he reiterated his commitment to the 40% renewable electricity target and to turning round Scotland's poor waste record. Overall, I came away with a sense that there was much potential to work together in Scotland in our various sectors, and established some useful contacts.
Churches Connecting to the Grassroots
I saw a very different angle on the Summit through grassroots events organised by the South African Council of Churches. These enabled us tap into the local situation in South Africa and Jo'burg in ways we would not otherwise have done, and gain insights into the political climate inside and outside the Summit. In stark contrast to the luxury of the conference halls of the official summit, the Ecumenical Team were taken by coach across to the next valley to Alexandra township, where a population the size of Edinburgh is said to live in just three square miles. We took part in a special joint service to mark the Summit, in a Presbyterian church in the heart "Alex". Surrounding us, straight out of the church back door, was a sardine tin mass of tiny shacks made of whatever waste materials people could find. This unforgettable experience served as a reality check on the formal summit negotiations up the hill, seeing sustainable development as it relates to the global "South". Indeed we, representatives of churches all over the world, found ourselves guests at
their worship. I was deeply moved by the sense of joy and hope in God as the people prayed, worshipped and, especially sang, like nowhere else I've ever heard. Later I joined a symbolic march of solidarity from Alex to the main Summit, presenting to delegates the findings of the parallel Global Civic Forum.
Outcomes and Agreements
I came away from Johannesburg with deeply mixed messages. It was not the goal-setting platform from which governments, business and civil society could plan for long term sustainable development. The compromised international negotiations on issues of such huge and far reaching importance for the planet and the peoples of the world represented an opportunity missed. But it neither was it a complete failure. I saw much to encourage me from numerous practical environmental and social initiatives, which have sprung up all over the world since Rio. My conclusion is that the real action lay elsewhere than the fudged political agreements.
Perhaps more than anything the Summit expressed the conflict of two international streams over the last decade. One is the environment and social agenda pursued worldwide since the 1992 Earth Summit, which puts priority to addressing directly the degradation of our global environment, and insists that economic goals be set accordingly. The other is the rise of neo-liberal economic globalisation, which equates sustainable development with free market economic growth. It believes the environment and poverty will only be addressed as a consequence of freeing up markets worldwide and creating the conditions to let the private sector create wealth and consumer goods, with the minimum of state regulation. On the eve of Jo'burg I debated the issue on Radio Scotland with a noted free marketeer who said that environmental concerns were exaggerated and we should not worry if economic growth drove the rural poor off the land.
The Johannesburg Summit lay in both streams, in an unsatisfactory and unstable compromise. Inevitably the environmental agenda was much eroded from Rio, but the free market was restrained by a notable agreement that the trade rules of the WTO do not take supremacy over multilateral environmental treaties like climate change and biodiversity. While it remains to be seen what this means in practice, this was seen by NGOs as a critical and unexpected concession. The acknowledgement of the mutual role of government, corporations and civil society in sustainable development was important, but partnerships involving different sectors were seen as ambiguous. Some are genuine initiatives in sustainable development and others less so. The need for greater corporate responsibility was recognised but commitments to work towards binding frameworks were resisted in favour of voluntary actions.
The official programme of action and implementation to which Governments committed themselves is rightly criticised for having watered down the aspirations of Rio in a set of political compromises. As a UN programme, it had to be agreed by consensus. The fear that negotiations could collapse hung heavily over South Africa as host, and the EU as the principal First World advocate of socially and environmentally enlightened policies. This gave a powerful bargaining tool for anyone minded to dig in over particular issues, like OPEC resisting the removal of trade distorting fossil fuel subsidies. It was depressing to see vital issues like sanitation and renewable energy targets being horse-traded like pawns in a diplomatic chess game. Indeed, many of the agreed goals had their specific timescale deleted (like renewable energy), or else retained a timescale but diluted the nature of the target to be achieved (like biodiversity loss), or ended up having neither, in the case of natural resources.
Among the key provisions agreed were:
Recognising the social and poverty dimensions of sustainable development,
Acknowledging that global environmental treaties are mutual with World Trade rules,
Recognising the mutual and joint roles of states, companies and civil society,
Initial steps towards setting up a system for international corporate social responsibility,
Actions plans towards sustainable consumption, but nothing concrete,
Halving those suffering hunger by 2015 and encouraging sustainable agriculture,
Minimising adverse health and environmental effects of chemicals by 2020,
Halving the number of people without safe clean water and sanitation by 2015,
Only removing sustainability inhibiting fossil fuel subsidies "where appropriate",
Significantly reducing rate of biodiversity loss by 2010 but not reversing it,
Reversing trend in natural resource degradation, but no targets or dates,
Restoring fishstocks urgently, to levels to enable countries to produce "maximum sustainable yields",
The effective removal of the precautionary principle from issues like biodiversity, resource use
Perhaps most disturbing was the erosion of some basic principles of sustainable development agreed at Rio. The precautionary principle, a foundation of the Climate Change Convention, was watered down to a precautionary "approach" and reference to it was removed from some major areas of policy. This reflects how the political climate has changed, in that the USA has adopted a dogmatic philosophical objection to the precautionary principle, seeing it as a credal issue in climate change and GM crop risks. Similarly, the notion of the global commons of nature, shared by all, was replaced by the expression of global "interests". This shifts the orientation from a common goal of looking after shared natural goods, on which we all ultimately depend, towards an instrumental concept of resources and individual exploitation. Ten years after Rio alerted us to global environmental damage, are we reverting to the mindset which caused it?
Conclusions
The most important thing about the World Summit on Sustainable Development was that it happened. Each government and leader had to prepare and say a credible piece about what they were doing about the issues, in the presence of nations suffering drought, poverty and starvation. It raised the profile of sustainable development in the international arena, in the media and with the public. The need is to ensure that it stays high on the political and personal agenda of Scotland for all parties and sectors. We can do better, both in Government policy and in what can be done through networks across civil society. Here, I and many others found ample scope for encouragement and hope.
In the churches, our first practical response is to promote the Eco-Congregation Programme for practical environmental action in local congregations and communities which began last year. The churches are said to be the only institution still present and active in every community in Scotland. We have a unique role to play and we see this as a priority task. The Church of Scotland has appointed an Assistant Director for the SRT Project specifically to work on this programme and other sustainable development issues in Scotland, working alongside Keep Scotland Beautiful, local authorities, and other environmental and community organisations.
One of the visions carried back from Johannesberg was seeing the global aspect of sustainable development at first hand. The need to enable people in Scotland to make the same connections is strongly impressed upon me. It is not just a question of being environmental in our own back yards, but seeing the bigger picture. Again the churches are well placed to make the link between what we do in Scotland and our grassroots links to local churches across the world and with the development agencies. We need to connect our existing initiatives in poverty, mission and development to the environmental issues which are often part of the problem.
The third area lies in partnerships with Government and the civil society sectors in Scotland, including local authorities and business sectors, as well as major environmental NGOs. The churches will be playing an active part in the Scottish Civic Forum's new Future Scotland partnership and the Scottish Executive's Sustainable Development Forum. We are building on our contacts with agricultural, biotechnology and energy industries. Encouraging corporate responsibility is central to our ethos. We also want to help tackle waste, drawing on the churches' presence at the heart of both urban and rural communities. Last, but not least, we have a lot to offer on the cross-cutting issue problem of motivating people to change their lifestyles, where the churches have long experience! Together we can make a real difference in God's world.
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