Culture Change Media International Editor New York, N.Y. April 7, 2004

On 19 March 2004, during the sixth meeting of the Bureau of the twelfth session of the Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD-12), Chair Borge Brende, Norway’s Minister of Environment, briefed the Bureau Vice-Chairs on his meeting with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. He said the Secretary-General reaffirmed the importance of following up on the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) and achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and confirmed that he, the Secretary-General, would address the High-level Segment of CSD-12.

The Secretary-General expressed thus, in effect, the very interest of the oil exporting countries, who are the effective leadership of the G77, to continue their successful elimination of the main content of the concept of sustainable development as introduced into the UN deliberations during the 1992 Rio UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), and then practically killed ten years later in Johannesburg at the WSSD.

This process replaced sustainable development with the concept of poverty alleviation in the poor countries, and reintroduced the concept of economic development, and stressed foreign aid obligation by the industrialized countries of the North; the G77 leadership pushed thus for forgoing the other two legs of sustainable development — the importance of environmental factors and social development that include good governance in the south and human rights. Halving poverty by year 2012 is clearly a laudable goal, but this indeed came into the picture in Johannesburg because of the well organized effort to avoid any discussion on environmental damage from increased use of oil.

Rio and UNCED was where the UN Framework Convention of Climate Change started its life. UNFCCC is bound to the need to decrease globally the dependence on fossil fuels and by reducing Agenda 21 to the MDGs amounts to an attempt at freezing out the whole discussion on climate change.

In Johannesburg oil interests in countries of the North bonded with the oil exporters of the south in an effort to negate the 1997 success of Rio+5 that mandated the introduction of the subject of “energy” into the list of topics to be discussed as part of Agenda 21. Until 1997 discussing energy was possible only under the topic of “atmosphere”, i.e. air pollution and indirectly greenhouse gasses — but not directly as “energy”. Even the corrected situation did not allow discussion of climate change directly but only of its effects. Now we have practically totally nothing.

Strangely, the touted MDGs have no actual standing under the decisions of CSD-11 where it was decided to dedicate the discussions at CSD-12, in 2004, and CSD-13, in 2005, to the thematic issues “Water, Sanitation and Human Settlements”. While CSD-12 is intended as a talk-fest to review the issues, with the participation of High-level government representatives and NGOs intent in discussing the problems, CSD-13 will be a policy session to discuss how to implement actions.

The program of CSD-12 and the thematic issues can be found at www.UN.org/esa/sustdev.

Further, an added interesting and delightful complication comes from the 43 member Small Independent Developing States (SIDS), most of which are small independent island states, via their lobbying organization — the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) - which wants to have the preparation of its ten year review of the Barbados Plan of Action as part of CSD-12.

Thus, the program for the SIDS was set for 14-16 April 2004 in parallel with the preparations for the CSD-12, the CSD-12 proper for 19-30 April 2004, and the SIDS demanded that their issues will also be part of the discussion at the High-level meetings. I said “delightful” because it is obvious that AOSIS are facing problems relating to the themes of water, sanitation, and human settlements that are somewhat different from those of the G77 oil exporters.

In effect, the troubles of the SIDS in these areas are clearly a direct result of climate change rather then of urbanization. These states may actually be wiped out by the impending environmental disasters, and they have no time to fiddle around - their leadership may want to say just that — so there is some hope that the CSD meeting this year may yet not be a total wash.

In effect, one can bank on this — that the SIDS will raise the issues involving climate change, sea level rise, and how the greenhouse gases cause their problems when it comes to water, sanitation and income from tourism. Costa Rica’s Ambassador, Bruno Ugarte, Vice Chair of CSD-12, had three meetings with the country representatives to the UN: January 23, February 25 and March 22.

At the February meeting, the representative from Qatar, with the representative for Iran at his side, speaking for the G77, requested that statements from the member States be given priority over Major Groups of the NGOs. He wanted also to be informed how the Secretariat chooses the Major Groups and that the summary of the discussions differentiates between the statements of the member States and the Major Groups. He also wants the Bureau to distribute as soon as possible the work program of the SIDS part of the event.

Belize, speaking for the SIDS, wanted the work program to reflect the concerns of the SIDS in their meetings to be an integral part of the CSD report, while Ireland, speaking for the EU, made it clear that as this year’s CSD is intended to provide a basis for the CSD-13, it must hear all stakeholders - One assumes this meant the Major Groups and the SIDS/AOSIS as well. March 2004, at the Asia’s First Global Ministerial Environment Forum. While talking of Water and Sanitation, further topics brought to the fore-front were: dead zones in oceans caused by pollution, and dust storms caused by climate change.

Further, the UNEP chief, Professor Toepfer, stated: “The historical pattern of development in the economies of Europe, North America, and Japan, was to industrialize first and clean up later. Such outdated thinking is not possible in a world of 6 billion people and counting. We need to marry strong economic growth with conservation of the air, land and water supplies upon which we all depend. In other words we need environment for development. For without a healthy and stable environment, long term economic growth will falter and our goals of eradicating poverty will fail.”

These words are indeed a singular voice calling in today’s UN desert — totally out of line when considering what is being said at the UN in New York.

Reflecting today’s realities, enlightening is the “World Chronicle” — a radio/TV interview given by Mr. Borge Brende, CSD-12 chair. It was shown on the UN internal TV circuit, Tuesday, March 23. Mr. Brende was describing the program of this year’s CSD to a panel that included Jack Freeman from Earth Times and a Norwegian journalist. He stated that he does not see any increase in contributions of aid to poor countries following the Johannesburg meeting — in effect it is all downhill since 1992.

Then came from the Norwegian journalist the question about terrorism. Q: “Do you see any connection between poverty, development, and terrorism?.” His answer: “One billion people live in slums [he first used previously the nicer term ‘informal settlements’]. If you do not come up with water, sanitation, schools, there will be problems in the future and criminality.” Q: “Cities become more vulnerable to terrorism — more people will be living in the cities.” A: “When people move into cities they go to the hardest sections — no water, sanitation. It is much more expensive to do things after they moved in then when preparing housing.”

Q: “If the governments do not want to spend money for this how can we do this as an international community?.” A: We must convince donors, but governments must do their part.”

Here Mr. Brende added that as a member of the Conservative Party he sees a role for private sector to come and establish infrastructure. These exchanges, I believe, show that the debate at CSD-12 may “update” the empty discussion but lead, nevertheless, nowhere — even on the thematic subjects. I wonder if anyone believes in his heart that terrorism is built on poverty — seemingly all known, recent, terrorists were well educated and did not come from poor homes in the context of their communities — in effect many came from universities from the North.

The bottom line of these arguments leads from the de-facto destruction of the concept of sustainability to a new mumbo-jumbo that will allow for the wheels to continue turning without result; this so there is no interference with the interests of the oil industry.

Those recognizing the immense problems ahead of us, that originate from the excessive transfer to the atmosphere of fossil carbon, should look elsewhere — no help is on the horizon from meetings of the CSD, and probably neither from any other official UN forum held at the UN headquarters in New York. This seems to be so at least till mid-2005. Discussions that may touch upon global warming, or climate change, have been frozen out, intentionally, from any discussions at UN headquarters until further notice.

(This article was first posted on CultureChange.org)