Rio+10 Ends on High Note

By Dionne Jackson Miller

Environmentalists and representatives of non-governmental organisations from over 40 countries gathered at the Catholic University (PUCRS) in Porto Alegre yesterday for the final day of a major preparatory forum for the September 2002 Rio + 10 conference in Johannesburg, South Africa.

The forum endorsed a multi-pronged statement, which included a call for the inclusion of environmental issues in all global trade agreements and rejected the position of the United States on the Kyoto Protocol on climate change.

The meeting comes just ahead of the World Social Forum which opens today and participants hope that their statement, or manifesto, will ensure that sustainability issues are at the core of all WSF discussions.

Read at the closing session of the plenary by Brazilian senator Marina Silva, the statement noted that the upcoming conference on sustainable development in Johannesburg will not only serve to chart global progress since the ground-breaking Earth Summit in Rio ten years ago, but will also have the task of shaping a new agenda for the future.

"We defend the idea that the process of globalisation requires participatory mechanisms which are transparent," senator Silva read.

The meeting also reiterated that the mechanisms of globalisation must improve the conditions of the populations of the world; it rejected globalisation as solely the search for profit, and said that "nature and its protection must be above any international trade agreements."

The meeting rejected the patenting of the people's knowledge by international corporations, and the attempts to push genetically modified foodstuffs.

There was also a call for radical changes in consumption and production patterns, and the reiteration of the need for access to water and land, as well as a call for the incorporation of Agenda 21 into all international agreements.

"We reject the position of the United States in not ratifying the Kyoto protocol, and placing its own economic interests above the interests of humanity," the statement said.

Silva, who was given a standing ovation following her reading of the manifesto, told the crowded auditorium that she felt very emotional and had worried about not reading the document properly.

"I'm very happy because the document turned out really well," she said.

Also addressing the closing plenary yesterday, Claudio Langone, Environment Minister of the State of Rio Grande do Sul said that the Johannesburg meeting must not just be a conference of national governments, but must have the legitimacy of the people.

"We cannot turn this Johannesburg summit into a mere balance of what was and was not done (since Rio). It is important to check these agreements but we must look more into the future," he said.

There were concerns among some participants, however, as to whether the meeting would serve its true purpose.

Chair of the Geneva-based organisation New Synergies in Development Margarita Pacheco Montes told IPS that the organisational efforts from hereon will be critical.

"It would really be a pity if we don't take advantage of this gathering in Porto Alegre to make a very concise Southern statement of what we think should be our input in Johannesburg."

Johannesburg is going to be in six months, and for the time being, (in) the Latin American countries, and Colombia in particular - which is my homeland - the process of organising civil society has been extremely poor," Pacheco said.

"This has been (touted) as a Rio + 10 preparatory forum, (but) what is the link with what is happening in the official process? If this is not linked now, no one is going to take any attention of this three-day meeting here," she said.

"We are fed up with so many declarations around the world. We have been in too many summits. The last one which was extremely frustrating, the Social Summit in Geneva. It was a fantastic gathering of 15,000 people, and what (came) out? And how do we articulate whatever came out for the Johannesburg summit?" she asked.

"I hope whatever comes (out) will be a proposal of a working process involving a great number of organisations from all over ...and that we can continue the commitment to pursue a platform of consensus to take something from the World Social Forum to Johannesburg. At that table should be equal representation (by) men and women because we tend to have very few women and a lot of men around, so we need that space as well."