Short on Time, Horse-Trading Starts

By Thalif Deen

The Johannesburg Summit is going the way of all U.N. conferences -- fighting for survival as it goes down to the wire.

“The delegates are now reduced to the lowest point in their bargaining: horse-trading and arm twisting,” Remi Parmentier of Greenpeace International told Terra Viva.

The United States and Japan are ready to accept time-bound targets on water on condition that developing nations agree to remove similar targets on renewable energy.

Parmentier said that the two countries are, in effect, telling developing nations: “Come on guys, we will give you money for water if you don’t press for concrete action on energy and climate change.”

The entire summit has gone into “an arm-twisting mode”, he warned, as both countries were also resorting to the tried-and-tested technique of “cheque book diplomacy”.

Lowell Flanders, the senior U.N. official tracking negotiations, told reporters that only about 5 percent of the draft plan of action is now under negotiations.

“They are the most difficult and the most contentious,” he said, listing 14 issues and sub-issues that may have to await the arrival of ministers next week for a final decision.

The 14 contentious issues include good governance, human rights, the world solidarity fund for the elimination of poverty, sanitation, energy, trade and finance, natural resources, climate change, global public goods, globalisation, social dimension, partnerships, the 10-year programme for production and consumption and the political declaration that precedes the draft plan of action.

At the time of going to press last night, negotiations were still underway on sanitation and energy.

Asked whether there was horse-trading behind closed doors, Flanders told Terra Viva: “That’s what negotiations are all about.”

Even developing nations seem inclined to follow this not-so-righteous path. At a closed door meeting of the Group of 77 developing countries, an African delegate was quoted as saying: “We need to start pro-actively looking into package deals in exchange for things we want. We will have to work out as many trade-offs as possible.”

Meanwhile, the political declaration spelling out some of the basic principles on sustainable development -- which members pledge to adhere to -- is struggling to be born.

Flanders said the declaration was being put together by South Africa, in consultation with ministers. But to his knowledge, no draft text was still available.

Responding to a question, Flanders said he cannot comment on whether the summit will spill over into an additional day of negotiations if some of the 14 issues remain deadlocked on the final day of the summit next Wednesday.

Parmentier said that South Africa has summoned a meeting of trade ministers to resolve some of the issues.

“But trade ministers are not qualified to deal with environmental issues,” he said, warning that the summit was in danger of being hijacked by these ministers as they make desperate attempts to find answers.

The United States and the European Union have also been at loggerheads over several trade-related issues triggering an E.U. walkout from a contact group negotiating trade matters. The rare verbal battle between Western delegates apparently generated a round of spontaneous applause from Third World delegates.

Tony Juniper, vice chair of Friends of the Earth International (FoEI), says “do not believe the U.N. and delegation spin doctors claiming that progress in the talks is good because 95% of the text has been agreed.”

“This is just a word counting trick that FoEI has heard before at failed negotiations from the Seattle World Trade Organisation (WTO) talks to the Hague climate talks.”

He said that important words relating to globalisation remain entirely “un-agreed”. This is not “rapid progress” in any normal sense of these words.

Juniper also said: "The whole point of this summit is to tackle the huge problems caused by environmental degradation and poverty, which have worsened since the Rio Earth Summit. At the moment, some governments, notably the U.S., are even trying to backtrack from commitments made 10 years ago.”

“This must not be allowed to happen. We must see real action over the next few days -- world leaders owe it the people of the world to make progress here in Johannesburg."