A NEW CODE OF CO-EXISTENCE

By Rigoberta Menchú (*)

MEXICO CITY, Aug (IPS) - Ten years ago at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janiero a commitment was made to slow and reverse the degradation of the environment and to redistribute power, resources, and opportunity within and between countries.

For the Johannesburg Summit on Sustainable Development, which will be held August 26-September 4, it will not be enough to show up with more paper commitments -- not with the global powers continuing to weaken international instruments until they are effectively irrelevant, and while the unilateral arrogance of the powerful continues to promote --through action or calculated inaction-- acts of genocide as the world looks on, paralysed by impotence, failing to recognise that life is equilibrium, that equilibrium is consensus, and consensus must be respected.

I don't dismiss the advances, particularly legislative and regulatory, that have taken place over the past ten years or the wealth of local experience that has been developed in the wake of
Rio.

However, the question we must ask is whether this progress is rapid enough. How many disasters must yet occur, how many arrogant unnecessary wars must yet be fought, how many international instruments guaranteeing not only peace but life itself must be defied or denounced before we can accept that the ''civilisation'' in the name of which so many errors and injustices were committed is not the only path for humanity.

In the cosmovision of my Mayan ancestors, every people, every culture, is the mirror of the natural world in which they live. No one can imagine a polar bear in the Amazon, or the Maasai people moving from Kenya to Greenland. Cultural diversity is the mirror of the diversity of nature. Creation is the unity in diversity, where all live in harmony. Each time a forest is razed, a form of life is violated, a language lost, a form of civilisation ended, an act of genocide is committed.

Of particular relevance to the indigenous peoples, the Rio Summit approved the Convention on Biological Diversity, of which article 8J requires recognition of and learning from the richness
and diversity of indigenous practices and systems of knowledge. However, what has prevailed has been the old thinking of plunder, arrogance, and colonial disdain that underestimated the wisdom of our ancestors and denied our peoples the right to well-being .

The theoretical and normative arsenal that emerged from Rio - binding instruments and the irreplaceable methodological tool of Agenda 21-- constitutes the most significant intellectual and
political advance produced by the debate on development and peaceful co-existence in contemporary history. Rio represented a definitive shaping of concepts, giving development an
integral focus that established the interrelation between economic, social, environmental, and cultural dimensions.

Because of the degradation of nature and various life forms over the last ten years, despite the existence of an important consensus, declarations, and accords, we hope that the Johannesburg Summit will make a clear, firm political commitment to guaranteeing the environmental governability of the planet and with it world peace.

The past ten years have shown us that is insufficient to depend on precise diagnoses, even with binding international instruments and plans of action. Mooreover, it is needed is to renew the political will that restores the value of the founding pact that underlies our actions, validating the sense of shared responsibility that animated the contemporary international system half a century ago and above all establishing with clarity the responsibility of each of the actors.

We also hope that the Johannesburg Summit strengthens the recognition of the rights of the indigenous peoples, particularly the right to own our unalienable lands, the resources that we have used ancestrally, and the collective intellectual property of the traditional knowledge relating to it.

On our lands we indigenous peoples sustained life for generations without changing the conditions that will allow our sons and grandchildren to preserve the wealth that we inherited
from our grandparents. We preserved the natural diversity and efficiently produced the foods that marked the history of the civilisations. It is through these lands that we relate to the rest
of humanity, offering millennial knowledge to improve the lives of our brothers and sisters throughout the planet and applying knowledge learned from other peoples. We will not accept
any restriction on the international standards now in force, particularly the requirement that there be ''prior consent'' regarding any action that affects our interests.

The Rio pact must be converted into a Code for Co-existence for a world that has caused as many deaths since the World War Two as died in the war itself, that has generated more
than 23 million refugees and no one knows how many displaced. We can't continue masking with euphemisms the gravity of the current situation and the worsening of destructive trends that we are well aware of. We need to radically change the rhythm and the direction of this model of co-existence which is so accommodating to cruelty and disaster. We must restore dignity, the most profound sense of a commitment to life, to all lives, and to the survival of the species and all civilisations.

(*) Rigoberta Menchu, 1991 Nobel Peace Prize recipient and UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador.

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