Diouf enraged NGO’s - EcoEquity Walks Out on Negotiations

By Farah Khan

The influential EcoEquity coalition, comprising the top six multinational non-governmental organisations, has walked away from official negotiations on trade and the implementation plans for the World Summit.

The six yesterday described negotiated wording on these two areas as "abysmal" and warned that without an overhaul the conference could degenerate into a Rio minus 10. They scoffed at the official U.N. view that consensus had been reached on 99 percent of the issues, saying the one percent was crucial to ensuring success at Johannesburg.

The position of the top six has been ratified by broader civil society and a statement has been signed by 214 organisations from 58 countries.

EcoEquity is concerned that trade rules could trump global environmental laws in importance; that developing world concerns about globalisation are not sufficiently reflected and that the precautionary principle, where governments can refuse goods if they doubt its green pedigree, is being eroded.

EcoEquity also said that European Union negotiators had walked out of talks for the same reason last night.

EcoEquity is a coalition of major non governmental groups including Oxfam, World Wildlife Fund, Danish 92 Group, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth International, and Consumers International.

Its members had helped draft text, advised negotiators and "engaged extensively" in the spirit of making Johannesburg a "multistakeholder" summit, said WWF member Tom Crompton.

He said the walk-out was not only about exercising the political influence of the coalition, but also about protecting the credibility of the allied organisations. The text was now littered with "weasel words" like "moving towards" and "if possible" instead of the targets and timetables necessary to build on Rio.

"But now we're close to the brink of rolling back principles agreed to in Rio. Key issues have been hijacked by World Trade Organisation interests," he charged.

EcoEquity says that Johannesburg has become like a WTO session for two key reasons. Firstly, negotiators were attempting to assert the primacy of WTO rules over the multilateral environmental agreements and secondly, definitions of globalisation were too closely reflecting the WTO position that globalisation is an ineluctable and beneficial process.

Friends of the Earth International, which has been tracking the negotiations, said there were 200 references in the World Summit's political document to the WTO.

"Many governments and civil society organisations are rightly concerned about the negative impacts that economic globalisation has had since Rio, and have endeavoured to ensure these are reflected as real challenges that the summit and sustainable development faces," said EcoEquity in a letter to the ministers who begin to arrive for the summit tomorrow.

Efforts to capture the impact of trade subsidies on development were also not properly reflected. The coalition has called on ministers to recognise the challenges posed by globalisation; reaffirm the precautionary principle; ensure environmental agreements are not subordinated to trade rules; enshrine corporate accountability and set time-tables for trade reform.