Environmentalism’s
Woodstock: The UN "World Summit on
Sustainable Development"
8/22/02
Cambria CA – In two
weeks some 60,000 members of the international
chattering class will assemble in
Johannesburg, South Africa for the United
Nations’ “World Summit on Sustainable
Development” (WSSD). The unctuousness of
U.N. gabfests can always prompt a smile, as
they chiefly produce paperwork sufficient to
supply several recycling plants in perpetuity.
The U.N.’s Environmental Programme (UNEP),
for example, is about to conduct a study of
environmental conditions in Palestinian
territories. One wonders whether they will
reach the bold conclusion that terrorism is
incompatible with sustainable development.
These U.N. meetings are the
Woodstock for NGOs, non-government
organizations. These are better understood as
the self-appointed pressure groups who purport
to represent the public interest precisely
because they never have to face voters. They
thrive on “dialogue” and the promulgation
of endless declarations, pledges, commitments,
ministerial statements, lists of principles
and goals, resolutions, frameworks, and
annexes. These myriad statements are always
bulked with talk of interdependence,
solidarity, collaboration, stakeholders,
public-private partnerships, policy
integration, and empowerment. And that’s
just on the first page.
Occasionally the process
produces a treaty, such as the Kyoto protocol.
Always it produces agreement to have more
conferences. They are, after all, inside work
with no heavy lifting, and well catered to
boot.
The WSSD is a follow-up to the
Rio Earth Summit in 1992, which was merely the
latest, though most prominent, in a series of
U.N. environmental conferences stretching back
to 1972. The WSSD is hoping to build upon the
principal work product of the Rio summit, a
document known as “Agenda 21,” which has
been described as “a road map to a
postindustrial, postmodern era of economic,
political and environmental sanity.” As one
might expect from a U.N. gathering devoted to
such a fulsome purpose, Agenda 21 is the size
of a New York telephone directory and
therefore defends itself against the risk of
being read.
The blather-to-substance ratio
is pretty high, the predictable outcome of a
grab-bag process where every NGO’s wish-list
is incorporated in windy bureaucratic prose
such as establishing “modalities for
operationalization.” It is expected that
everyone will have the good manners to
overlook the vague generalities or
contradictions between sections of the Agenda.
A typical example: “Governments should adopt
policies at the national level regarding a
decentralized approach to land-resource
management, delegating responsibility to rural
organizations.” Doesn’t a decentralized
approach mean not adopting policies at the
national level?
Implementing Agenda 21 is the
objective of the WSSD, and the draft plan that
will be discussed and ratified in Johannesburg
offers some specific policy goals in an
attempt to move beyond the generalities of
Agenda 21. There appears repeatedly in the
draft plan another non-specific statement from
the Rio conference that is clearly intended to
create the authority for all kinds of
redistributive mischief: “in view of the
different contributions to global
environmental degradation, States have common
but differentiated responsibilities”
(emphasis added). Translation: Let’s shake
down the rich countries, especially the United
States.
The good news is that
President Bush isn’t going to the summit. By
rejecting the Kyoto Protocol last year, Bush
has shown that the U.S. isn’t playing patsy
at these meetings anymore. Without the U.S.
rolling over, how long can the U.N. process be
sustained?