NGOs Seek Meeting with Leaders

By Qurratul-Ain-Tahmina

NGO activists appear to just be going through the motions. They are not terribly optimistic about the outcome of the summit, nevertheless, they are pushing for a meeting with heads of states and governments, so they can air their concerns.

“The world leaders may reach a few agreements, but some crucial issues are likely to remain unresolved,” Gordon Bispham, the chairperson of the International Steering Committee of the Global People’s Forum, told Terraviva yesterday.

Bispham said that the issues which will see no agreement will include promotion of renewable energy sources, an international framework for global environmental governance, and mandatory guidelines for corporate accountability. The setting of time-bound, concrete targets, the withdrawal of agricultural subsidies in the rich nations, and initiating tariffs and other measures for fair trade between rich and poor nations are some other areas NGOs have concerns about.

“At present the summit is heavily leaning on voluntary accountability,” said Bispham.

Civil society has criticised the trend of bilateral partnerships -- much endorsed by the United States -- between governments, local authorities, NGO actors and multinational corporations and private businesses. Some fear that this trend will only repackage old projects and end up funding commercially motivated ventures at the expense of other more crucial endeavours.

NGOs also fear that such partnerships will push harmful practices such as the cultivation of genetically modified crops and the privatisation of natural resources. Already over 500 such partnerships have been forged, some even involving U.N. agencies and NGOs.

“One area of major concern for us is that the leaders are pushing to make resources such as water commercial commodities,” Bispham noted.

The NGOs from the very beginning have been demanding that such resources and services remain social goods. Activists say many of the government delegates have also been opposed to privatising the water sector.

Since it has lost all hope in the outcome of the official negotiations, the NGO forum is planning to launch a broad global front comprising NGOs of the north and south to decide how best to proceed in the coming years. Anticipating that on crucial issues their disagreements with the world leaders will outlive Rio + 10, the NGOs will plan how to eventually get their way.

Stronger networks in all the regions are what they are banking on. They believe that the more people become aware of the issues and discuss them, the greater the chances of ushering in the right kind of changes.

In order to have a greater pool of resources to help implement Rio’s Agenda 21 and the WSSD action plan, the NGO forum is contemplating establishing an international fund in which governments will be asked to participate.

Bispham said yesterday that so far much of the issues discussed at Sandton concerned economic matters. “Issues such as human security and other social issues are yet to be taken up by the summit,” he complained. The NGOs want the WSSD to properly recognise the social aspects of development, stressing country and community appropriate resolution of problems.

In the memorandum that one group of NGOs submitted to the WSSD on Saturday, the leaders had expressed their concerns that issues such as racism, xenophobia and other kinds of discriminations, women’s reproductive health and rights, and various aspects of human rights were not being adequately dealt with by the summit. The NGO leaders have been maintaining all along that these core problems are serious obstacles to sustainable development and that the summit needs to recognise that, in order to be able to deal with them.

The Forum is likely to come up with its final declaration today while it expects to announce its plan of action on Wednesday, the last day of the summit.

Meanwhile, civil society is hoping that now that the heads of states and governments have joined the negotiations, concrete decisions will be forthcoming.

“Technocrats who have been discussing the issues so far had no mandate wide enough to incorporate the all the issues,” Bispham said.

He held that the officials at the government delegations did not often have clear grasps of the issues and complained that during the four preparatory committee meetings governments kept changing their negotiating teams. “This was one of the main reasons why preparatory committees could not come up with any satisfactory results.”

“Now with the top leaders coming in, we can hope for wider spaces for negotiations,” he added.