Bu-lat-lat (boo-lat-lat) verb: to search, probe, investigate, inquire; to unearth facts Volume 2, Number 30 September 1 - 7, 2002 Quezon City, Philippines |
New
Conquest of Corporate Globalization? Transnational
corporations are seen to dominate and dictate the outcome of the World Summit on
Sustainable Development in Johannesburg. By
Jennifer del Rosario-Malonzo, IBON Features A decade after the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), popularly known as the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in June 1992, the global environment continues to rapidly deteriorate while majority of the world’s population remain poor and hungry. The much-extolled spirit of Rio has dissipated as the promises and hopes of the paradigm called sustainable development failed to materialize. This
month, the world revisits the accomplishments and failings of the Earth Summit
10 years after. Rio+10 - or the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) -
is being held in Johannesburg, South Africa. At
the WSSD Preparatory Committee meeting held in Bali, Indonesia last May,
environment groups were warning that Rio+10 is in danger of collapse because
governments continue to place greater importance on corporate globalization over
the well-being of people and the earth. Undoubtedly, business and financial
institutions are profoundly involved in and dominating the WSSD processes. Earth
Summit in retrospectThe Earth Summit held 10 years ago supposedly provided a
unique opportunity to establish the basis for the major shift required to put
this planet on the path toward a more secure and sustainable future. Its
main achievement was compelling diplomats and leaders of nations to recognize
both the critical state of the global environment and how this was intrinsically
connected to the present economic and social order, and that the solution
involves addressing the environment and development crises simultaneously. Thus
the concept of sustainable development was promoted, carrying two principal
components: environmental protection and providing the basic needs of present
and future generations. The
major products of UNCED are the Agenda 21 and the Rio Declaration on Environment
and Development, a set of principles supporting the sustainable management of
forests, and legally binding conventions on climate change and biological
diversity. Agenda
21 and the Rio DeclarationAgenda 21 is a complex document that took two years to
develop. It aims to set global goals on manifold issues on environment and
development, define the direction of actions, identify priorities and assess
progress. The
United Nations considers the document as a comprehensive and far-reaching
program for sustainable development, and embodies the centerpiece of
international cooperation and coordination activities within the UN system. The
Rio summit was praised for producing the specific agreements and initiatives on
climate change, bio safety and water. Grassroots organizations, however, counter
that almost all the agreements formed or under negotiation display neo-liberal
and corporate bias. In fact, the Earth Summit provided corporations the
opportunity to privatize and commercialize nature, with air, water and genetic
building blocks of life transformed into commodities. For
example, the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change is filled with market-based
solutions that undermine its very integrity. Meanwhile, biotechnology is being
hailed as the solution to worldwide hunger and is being promoted by UN agencies
although there is growing concern over safety and the lack of stringent testing,
labeling and liability requirements. As for water, corporations are steering the
debate over access to this resource as a basic human right toward considering it
as an economic good. This advances TNC interest in the privatization of water. The
Earth Summit may have placed the environment on the global consciousness and
established the relationship between economic and ecological crises. Despite
these achievements, however, UNCED had many basic weaknesses and failures. Topping
the shortcomings is that despite the professed consensus, governments of
developed countries refused to commit to vital change in the world economic
order. As a result, UNCED failed to highlight this in Agenda 21. In the
partnership between developed and underdeveloped countries, the pledge for new
and additional financial resources and the pledge to implement technology
transfer became poor replacements for reforms in international economic
relations. Despite
the promise of technology transfer, governments of developed countries
emphasized that they will not compromise the intellectual property rights of
their corporations. Also, with the failure to include TNC regulation, Agenda 21
provisions were rendered toothless and largely unimplemented. Larger
picture: corporate globalizationBeyond the structural defects of UNCED, the
fundamental reason for the failure of sustainable development was the
conflicting paradigm of globalization. Supported and propagated by developed
countries and their TNCs, globalization marginalized sustainable development
while at the same time using it to cover its destructive force. The
global campaign for neo-liberal free market demands the reduction/removal of
government measures that were put in place to protect national economies and the
environment. The market reigns supreme, with big business, particularly TNCs
that dominate and control industries, granted various rights and privileges.
State intervention, even in social services, has been limited. The
negative impact of market forces is glossed over, and human development and
equity issues such as poverty and access to basic needs are sidetracked.
Similarly, environmental regulations are emasculated by capitalist interests,
allowing market forces to be free (i.e., harmful practices of TNCs are
unhampered) on the premise that this would encourage growth. Neo-liberal
globalization is used to sustain global corporate monopoly. In the face of
global crisis and recession in industrial nations, opening up and creating
markets to dump surplus products and capital to generate profits become urgent
for giant corporations and their home countries. Thus, under present political
and economic structures, the ideals of Rio are extremely difficult to achieve. It
is unfortunate that rising environmental awareness has been used to further the
corporate agenda. In Rio (and perhaps in Johannesburg, too), business and
financial institutions were able to exploit the slogan of sustainable
development to serve their purpose. WTO and Rio+10 One
of the institutional tools of corporate globalization is the World Trade
Organization (WTO). It started out as a trade agreement after World War II (the
General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) but was expanded through various
negotiations. Today, the WTO is the largest trade organization and its scope
continues to extend to matters beyond trade, including intellectual property,
services, investments and the environment. The
WTO regime aims to remove both tariff and non-tariff measures (NTMs). NTMs,
which are any government measure, policy or practice that distorts trade,
include those designed to promote sustainability and safety such as harvesting
restrictions, bans on destructive equipment, ecolabels and embargoes on species
suspected of disease or illness. In
fact, the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) has conducted a survey of
NTMs in the Pacific Rim markets, with the objective of bringing it to the WTO as
a framework for negotiations on market access. The report, which still has to be
made public, could be a laundry list of measures being targeted for elimination
through WTO negotiations. This comprises the final push to remove all government
control on natural resources like fisheries and forestry, where policies for
conservation or community development are made subservient to trade expansion. In
the WTO Fourth Ministerial Conference held in Doha, Qatar in November 2001,
trade ministers from 140 nations gave the WTO new mandates that could intensify
ecological destruction. The Doha Conference mandated environmentally-harmful
actions such as burning of fossil fuels, logging, large-scale fishing, use of
toxic chemicals, and the commercialization of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Public
opposition worldwide has been mounting but the WTO continues to accrue power,
increasing its influence and placing the fate of peoples and nature in its
hands. Although the WTO never fails to give lip service on reducing poverty and
pursuing sustainable development, the Doha Ministerial Declaration gave the WTO
the mandate to prohibit governments from regulating TNC operations that can
negatively affect the environment. It declared the trade body as the arbiter of
the natural resource crisis and the venue to discuss conflicts in international
agreements on trade and the environment. The
Doha Declaration has clearly challenged the WSSD preparations and usurped the
role of the United Nations on the matter. Ironically, the UN
Secretary-General’s WSSD preparatory report proclaimed the Doha program a
success. Corporate influence in the international body is evident in the Rio+10
preparatory process, which displays intense neoliberal bias. Undermining
MEAs Another
significant implication of the Doha Declaration is that the corporate agenda on
the environment is given legitimacy under the aegis of so-called WTO principles.
A concrete manifestation of this is the subordination of multilateral
environmental agreements (MEAs) to trade agreements. The
most direct attack of the WTO to sustainable development and the WSSD is the
mandate to unilaterally decide on how to deal with MEAs that have trade
sanctions as enforcement mechanism. (See below) Through
the Declaration, powerful countries have given the WTO the right to arbitrarily
determine whether the measures imposed by the MEAs constitute so-called barriers
to trade. Thus, the MEAs are made subordinate to the rights of corporations and
investors enshrined in the WTO. In
the context of WTO-sponsored negotiations to "clarify" the
relationship between the MEAs and WTO agreements, the Doha Declaration
stipulates that: 1) trade, not environment, ministers shall lead the
negotiations; 2) MEA secretariats are given "observer" status only;
and 3) outcomes will not be prejudged . Progressive
groups observed that in the Bali preparatory meeting, due to strong pressure
from industry and some governments (particularly the United States, Japan,
Canada, Australia and New Zealand), Rio+10 seems to have completely surrendered
to the WTO and saw its main responsibility as ensuring the implementation of the
Doha agenda. The so-called Chairman’s Text, or the Draft Plan of Action, still
promotes the neo-liberal export-led and growth-directed development
model.Johannesburg: another corporate victory? Corporations
were victorious in the 1992 Earth Summit. At Rio, the corporate lobby
successfully contrived certain outcomes. The summit may have brought to fore the
environment and development crises, but it was also the first time that business
was able to position itself strategically in the debate. First,
TNCs and their lobby groups were able to oppose many demands that ran counter to
business interests. The most significant was how binding regulations on TNCs
were dismissed and replaced with their so-called voluntary measures. Second,
TNC lobby groups, particularly the World Business Council for Sustainable
Development, gained international influence over the environmental and social
debate. Before Rio, their efforts were primarily directed toward national
governments. Because of this development, TNCs have been given a cloak of
legitimacy, making them stakeholders instead of culprits, glossing over their
dirty practices with greenwash. As stakeholders, their opinions and interests
were reflected in all major environment and development agreements. Other
corporate lobby groups such as the Business Action for Sustainable Development,
the International Chamber of Commerce and the Mining, Minerals and Sustainable
Development (MMSD) Initiative are also working to focus the WSSD output on
technocratic and voluntary solutions. Once again, they are redefining corporate
regulation into corporate-friendly regulation. As
TNC power increases in the era of globalization, their capacity to dictate
outcomes is also enhanced. Due to lack of political will on the part of many
governments, as well as the lack of effective and democratic international
institutions, corporations gained access to decision-making processes to the
detriment of people and nature. Will Johannesburg be another triumph for
corporate globalization? IBON Features ========== Some
examples of MEAs in conflict with WTO rules. *
The Convention on Biological Diversity s Biosafety Protocol - Contradicts with
WTO rules on what governments can do to regulate GMOs. This convention provides
that governments have the right to ban imports of GMOs if they suspect damaging
impacts, while the WTO Agreement on Sanitary and Phyto-Sanitary Measures
restricts governments from taking such precautionary measures without conclusive
scientific evidence of harm. *The
Kyoto Protocol *
The Convention on the Law of the Sea *
The Basel Convention on the Trade in Hazardous Wastes (Source: From Doha to Johannesburg by Victor Menotti, International Forum on Globalization) We want to know what you think of this article.
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