By IPS Correspondents
WASHINGTON, Nov 23 1999 (IPS)

If deterioration of the global environment over the past several decades is any guide, the coming century does not hold out much promise for reversing these trends, many environmentalists are warning as the millennium comes to a close.

Rising Earth temperatures, record losses in biodiversity and species extinction, increasing demands and dwindling supplies of fresh water, only seem to be getting worse.

“If I look at the global environmental trends that we have been tracking since we first launched the Worldwatch Institute 25 years ago, and if I simply extrapolate these trends a few years into the next century, the outlook is alarming to say the least,” says Lester Brown, president of the Washington-based think-tank.

On the up-side, the past several decades has seen citizens and environmental groups, or non-governmental organisations (NGOs), worldwide pulling together in unprecedented numbers to pressure governments to pass laws to protect the ozone layer, ban toxic chemicals in the environment, reduce air and water pollution, and protect endangered species and habitats.

Seeking a balance between economic development and environmental protection, NGOs have played a major role in shaping international environmental treaties, including the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change, the Basel Convention which bans exporting hazardous wastes from industrialised nations to developing countries.

Yet as the millennium pulls to a close, the political and financial structure of the world economy which has become increasingly dominated by powerful multinational corporations is directly at odds with efforts to promote a healthy Earth, says Joshua Karliner, executive director of the Transnational Resource and Action Centre, the San Francisco-based corporate watchdog.

One clear example of this, says Karliner, has been the success of powerful multinational oil and gas industries in swaying the US Senate against ratifying the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, an international treaty seeking to reduce emissions of heat-trapping “greenhouse” gases.

Scientists believe that such emissions, caused by the burning of fossil fuels, will warm the Earth and result in drastic climate change, including increasing intensity and frequency of floods, droughts, and storms.

If current record-breaking warming trends continue, average global temperatures could rise between one and 3.5 degrees centigrade by the year 2050, according to expert studies.

“The challenge in the 21st century is to replace the corporate- dominated paradigm that worships the bottom-line with a framework that puts the environment, human rights, and labour rights first,” says Karliner.

In the past several decades, NGOs have applied a diverse array of strategies to counter corporate power including promoting laws to protect the environment, developing lawsuits against governments and corporations, and passing company shareholder resolutions.

Citizens in Ecuador, who see their own country’s court systems as inadequate, for example, have been attempting to hold US oil giant Texaco accountable for its past operations, by suing the company in US courts.

Similar suits have been filed in the US court system against UNOCAL and Chevron for their activities abroad.

While praising these efforts, Peter Montague, director of the Maryland-based Environmental Research Foundation, says the environmental movement must pay closer attention to how the push for trade liberalisation is eroding the power of nation-states.

“NGOs will become irrelevant if national government lose their capacity to govern because power has been transferred to international trade bodies,” he says.

After the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), for example, a US firm complained that it had been illegally prevented from opening a waste disposal plant because of environmental zoning laws in the Mexican state of San Luis Potosi.

Through NAFTA, Metalclad corporation sought some 90 million dollars in damages since it said state authorities were – against trade rules – prohibiting it from making a profit since they declared the site an ecological zone and refused to allow the firm to reopen the facility.

Similarly, many domestic environmental regulations – which NGOs have worked very hard to pass into law – have been challenged through the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and hence weakened or abolished, warn environmentalists.

The United States, for instance, gutted provisions of the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the Clean Air Act, and its Endangered Species Act after these environmental policies were challenged before the WTO,according to a recent report released by Public Citizen, a Washington-based NGO founded by consumer advocate Ralph Nader.

“This undemocratic trend must be reversed and power must be returned to governments,” says Montague, who like thousands of other environmentalists will travel to Seattle, Washington to protest these trends at the WTO’s ministerial negotiations, Nov. 30-Dec. 3.

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