The Elusive Saviours

Chapter 2: The North and the South in the global environmental debate

Selective awareness of the global environmental problem in the North

Since the industrial disasters in Bhopal (Union Carbide), Basel (Sandoz) and the nuclear power plants in Chernobyl, the rich countries of the North have experienced a massive growth in awareness of the risks of modern chemical technology. Most attention has been focused on the public health risks involved in the chemical industry. This is an industry which has developed on a large-scale right in the middle of, or close to, urban areas. Governments have translated this increased awareness into regulations and legislation concerning disaster plans, risk analyses and safety measures. Take for example the European Community's post-Seveso guideline:

The Seveso guideline: An example of a binding regulation


 The Seveso guideline was effected in the EC in 1984, and requires that member states ensure that companies calculate risks, develop a disaster plan and actively inform the local population. Translated into the Dutch context: 74 Dutch chemical industries are now obliged to inform local people of the external risks of their activities. They had to draw up an External Safety Report which included a description of the production process, and an analysis of the risks.

Besides the risk of industrial disasters, the 1980s saw an increase in awareness of the problems of acid rain, the greenhouse effect and the consequences of the hole in the ozone layer. Renewed attention focused on the threat of extinction to many species of animals and plants and the value of "biodiversity". It became generally accepted that not only the immediate, but also the international environment was threatened. For the first time, people seriously looked at what was happening beyond their own borders and discovered that tropical rainforests - the lungs of the world - were at risk of extinction. They discovered that the levels of CO2 emissions were so high that the world had been transformed into a greenhouse, and realized that CFCs were responsible for an expanding hole in the ozone layer. People realized - as the Club of Rome and Meadows had already discovered - that there are limits not only to our raw materials, but also to other natural resources: soil, air, water, flora and fauna.

The optimistic theory of sustainable development

The gravity of the global environmental threat threw up solutions which can be summed up in the catchphrase "sustainable development," which, since the publication of the United Nations' World Commission on Environment and Development report, Our Common Future (also known as the Brundtland Report) has been assimilated into the North's philosophy on the relationship between environment and economy.
At the base of this concept lies the notion that environmental conservation and economic growth can be combined, and that ecological considerations should become integrated into all political and economic decisions. Regarding the environment, its use, reparation and maintenance, as "natural" capital, became viewed as not necessarily in conflict with the aims of economic development. The North assumes that this growth-optimistic vision can be applied world-wide.

Sustainable development?


The term "sustainable development" was first introduced in 1980 in the "World Conservation Strategy", a plan created by the IUCN and the World Wildlife Fund. It only came into wide usage, however, after publication of the so-called Brundtland Report, which defined it as: "development which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs".
Sustainable means no reductions to the environmental capital:

Theoretically, this implies an end to the dichotomy between economic growth and a clean (or cleaner) environment. No longer can negative environmental effects be regarded as irrelevant. Only sustainable/clean growth is acceptable growth.
Sustainable development has become a container term. A World Bank report noted 60 different definitions. Ecologists describe it as the: "harmonious relationship between the population and nature, the conservation of the integrity of ecology and a humane existence."
Others see "sustainable" in the light of present production and consumption. What, then, are the possibilities for keeping this intact and/or continuing growth? Critics, particularly from the South, argue that current activities described as "sustainable" are aimed, instead, at growth - or serve that purpose - and will remain so as long as the problem of poverty and unequal distribution remains.
Despite the diversity in definitions, there is a reasonable degree of agreement as to the necessary conditions for embarking on "sustainable development": It seems unlikely that a start will be made in applying these conditions (particularly the third and fourth ones) in the short term.

Global environmental problems and consumption patterns

It is not difficult to understand the popularity of the theory of sustainable development in the North. While it has, on the one hand, precipitated a revolution in ideas on patterns of economic progress, it also confirms that, in its patterns of consumption, the highly industrialized world is addicted to growth. The theory recognizes that environmental measures are needed to create a sustainable economy, and, at the same time, promises that this can be achieved without loss of wealth or welfare.
It sounds too good to be true. It is a false perspective. This is clearly illustrated by the practice of world energy management. If we look closer at our energy supply - the best measurement of economic growth and welfare - we see that it is not possible to maintain or even reduce CO2 emissions in world energy production while aspiring, at the same time, to provide every citizen in the world with the same amount of energy per capita as the average north American citizen.

The unequal responsibility for the greenhouse effect


The three hundred scientists from forty different countries that comprise the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) wrote in their report "Climate Change: The IPCC Scientific Assessment" that the only way to avert an ecologically disastrous warming of the earth is to drastically reduce carbon dioxide emissions (60% relative to the 1990 level). In September 1994 the IPCC meeting in Maastricht reaffirmed this view. <1>

 The greenhouse problem is directly caused by emissions of a number of gases including CO2, the bulk of which are due to the large quantity of emissions in highly industrialized countries. The so-called "stock effect" is important in looking at the problem of CO2 emissions. This term refers to the amount of pollution the earth can cope with before negative environmental effects are activated, a threshhold that has long been crossed, so that, at present, reductions in CO2 and SO2 emissions will not immediately lead to less environmental pollution and the reversal of the greenhouse effect.
In general, drastic reductions of 70 to 95 per cent in emissions are needed to combat environmental problems caused by the present stock of polluting substances. <2> The scale on which change is needed means that whole sectors will have to change dramatically before any improvement will be seen.
Estimated cumulative industrial CO2 output by continent <3>
In gigatons carbon and percentages
A B C D
1960/1989 % 1980/1989 % C of A
Far East 6,903 3 3,077 45
Central economies in Asia 12,114 6 5,385 44
Middle East 3,586 2 1,538 43
Africa 4,520 2 1,538 34
Eastern Europe 47,184 23 15,385 33
Oceania and Japan 9,932 5 3,077 31
South- and Middle-America 7,697 4 2,308 30
Western Europe 41,926 20 7,692 18
United States 67,671 33 12,308 18
Northern America outside the USA 4,877 2 769 16
Total 206,410 100 53,077 26

The Northern and the Southern Agenda for the 21st century

Armed with the theory of sustainable development, the world community met at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in 1992 to draw up a political agenda for the 21st century to end non-sustainable development through a series of wide-ranging measures. During the preparations, it had become painfully apparent that the agenda of the North was very different to that of the South, in that its starting point was not redistribution and equality, either in relation to people or the environment. In the words of Anil Agarwal, director of the Centre for Science and Environment, New Delhi:

"No discussion took place - in Brazil - on environment and aid, environment and trade, environment and poverty, environment and wealth and environment and patterns of consumption." <4>

 While non-governmental organizations were deeply involved in the preparations, the final meeting was a meeting of states, the agencies responsible for fulfilling the agreements.
According to resolution 44/228 of the United Nations, the conference was meant to deal with:

At the preparatory meetings, the following "cross-sectoral issues", or themes, relating to all of the above points, were added to the list. Countries in the South, in particular, emphasized that in order to come to an integrated approach, these themes had to be discussed: The goal of UNCED was to agree to an "Earth Charter", a sort of declaration of the rights of the environment, draw up an action plan for the future, called Agenda 21, and finalise two conventions, a on world-wide climate change (the greenhouse effect) and biodiversity.

Money in exchange for a clean environment

At the UNCED preparatory meetings, it became only too clear that the Third World's environmental problems are closely entwined with the old problems of poverty and wealth. Much of the poverty in the South and the resulting environmental problems are the result of the inequitable workings of the economic system devised by the industrialized countries of the North.

"As recent reports of the World Bank, the United Nations Development Programme and others show, the poor developing countries now actually measurably subsidize the rich countries through structural adjustment and regimes of export-led growth, inequitable barriers to trade, low commodity prices and the now seemingly endless regime of debt repayments. All this adds up to a considerable net resources transfer from South to North." <5>

From the perspective of the underdeveloped and poor countries of the South, the foremost environmental problems are the major, everyday ecological problems caused by underdevelopment and poverty, such as: the lack of clean drinking water, infertile soil as a result of erosion, salinification, the decreasing level of the water table, immense air pollution in the cities and the mounds of toxic waste in their back yards. In this part of the world, it is a luxury to include ecological considerations in political-economic decision-making processes. They hold the North as first and foremost responsible for global problems such as ocean pollution and the destruction of the ozone layer. Niala Maharaj summed up this view as follows:

"It is your skin cancer. Solve the problem yourself. Our problems are the measles, whooping cough and even bubonic plague." (De Volkskrant, 9 November 1991)

Despite its raised consciousness of the global environmental problem, the North still shows no interest in the everyday problems of the Third World. The North still regards these as "their" problems. For centuries, the North has treated nature as a useful resource. Only recently has it begun to look at "Nature" as a communal area, the so-called "global-commons". Attention is given to the pollution of the oceans, the atmosphere, space and the poles, as well as to the destruction of our tropical rainforests and other areas rich in biodiversity. People in the North have recently begun to regard these areas which are essential in the natural regeneration of the global ecosystem as "communal heritage for humanity". They are less interested in local environmental problems. Political discussions on solutions therefore tend to concentrate on the global management of these areas.

Most of the commons, however, are situated on nationally controlled territory in countries in the South. Understandably, these countries regard any Northern involvement in the management of these areas as illicit meddling in home affairs.
In a declaration published in Crosscurrents, 38 NGOs from 25 countries stated that they:

"were concerned that the introduction of the concepts of 'global commons' and 'communal heritage for humanity', if they do not include the protection of the rights of rural populations, would lead to an increase in the amount of control exercised by the North and particularly by transnational corporations over the natural resources of the South." <6>

It is not surprising, against the background of economic inequality and poverty, that governments in the South demand that the North finances the extensive, world-wide environmental measures directed toward the conservation of the commons.
During the preparatory negotiations for UNCED, Malaysian government representatives stated bluntly:

"If you do not want to discuss the development demands, we will not discuss the environment. If we die, we will all die." <7>

Environmental degradation hits hardest in the South


There are several reasons why environmental degradation hits hardest in the South:

Is there life after UNCED?

We know what happened at UNCED. According to the Climate Agreement, emissions of greenhouse gases will be reduced to 1990 levels by the year 2000. No agreement was reached on specific reduction aims for decreases in the emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and the other gases. That is a step backwards from the 1988 Toronto climate conference, where a 20 per cent reduction in CO2 emissions relative to a base year to be determined in 2005 was agreed. The developed and underdeveloped world were not able to agree on a definition of the prase "joint implementation of the convention".
It wasn't until April 22, 1994, that U.S. President Bill Clinton signed the Biodiversity Convention and presented it to the House of Representatives for ratification. The Bush government had refused to sign it during UNCED, arguing that it would restrain biotechnological development and undermine intellectual property rights.

The Biodiversity Convention

One of the most important issues in the discussions on the Biodiversity Convention was the distribution of the products of biodiversity. Genetic information present in plants and animals can be invaluable to commercial and non-commercial biotechnological research. At the present time, however, no mechanism exists for returning the profits made with the help of this information to the countries and population groups which are responsible for the conservation of the plants and animals concerned. Unfortunately, the negotiators were not able to agree to effective, mandatory solutions. The agreement was only able to state that parties have the right to demand that genetic material be exported under permit, and that parties can demand a share in the profits, either in the form of financial remuneration or in (bio)technological cooperation.

The Bush administration openly spoke of protecting corporate interests. As "intellectual property rights" was regulated to the satisfaction of the international (Northern) business world in the GATT agreement of April 13, 1994, this argument was no longer relevant to the Clinton administration. The Bush administration also argued that the proposed measures would cost money which the US preferred to spend on combating domestic unemployment. While some funding became available for the protection of rainforests, the proposed Rainforest Convention never got off the ground. In its place came the non-binding Forest Declaration. As well-worded as the 600-plus page Agenda 21 is, unlike other conventions it does not commit its signatories to any firm course of action and cannot live up to its subtitle: "a blueprint for action".

The slow implementation of the UNCED agreements

The process of implementing the watered down UNCED conventions has been slow. In November 1992 the General Meeting of the United Nations established the Commission for Sustainable Development (CSD) whose first substantial meeting took place in June 1993, when 53 member-states discussed the Secretary General's proposal for monitoring the progress of implementation of Rio agreements and set a deadline for its work, 1996.
Developing a financing mechanism for the implementation of the UNCED conventions in developing countries turned out to be a laborious process. After 16 months of negotiations between representatives of more than 80 countries, an agreement was reached and signed on March 16, 1994 in Geneva. The Commission appropriated the already existing Global Environmental Facility (GEF) as the interim financing mechanism for the UNCED Conventions relating to biodiversity and climate change.
Various Northern countries agreed to donate a total of to billion dollars for this purpose between 1994 and 1996. While this is not much money in relation to the size of the global environmental problem, it is already clear that it will be difficult to find development projects which fulfil the criterium of "sustainable development" and profit from this funding. See appendix 2 for these and other critical notes on the Global Environmental Facility (GEF).

 By January 1994, of the 166 countries that had signed the climate convention, only 53 countries had ratified it (a minimum of 50 was needed to set the convention in motion). These countries are eligible for participation in the first Conference of Parties to the Climate Convention in Berlin, which only took place in 1995 because of the slow pace of the ratification process. And ratification is only the first step in implementing the convention. Adaptation to national rules and regulations is the next step. It is not always clear what that should involve as there are many vagaries and very few aspects are actually discussed in the convention.
Meanwhile an intergovernmental commission began negotiations for the 1995 conference. Representatives of non-governmental organizations campaigned for the acceptance of the 20 per cent CO2 emission reduction goal set by the Toronto conference in 1988 and try to gain clarity on the concept of "Joint Implementation". They wanted to establish the level of participation of both developed countries and underdeveloped countries in the reduction goals, as well as the position of the Newly Industrialized Countries. The Conference also discussed establishing its own financing mechanism and a system of observation. In the end, the Berlin Climate Conference did not succeed in establishing reduction goals.

The transnational corporation as redeeming angel

The incapacities of the world politic and the tremendous differences in positions between the North and the South has caused more and more governments and politicians to turn to the transnational corporate community for assistance. But what can the transnational corporations do if politics fail? Are they the angels of environmental redemption? Can they fulfil this role?

The corporate viewpoint was clear and totally in agreement with the results of UNCED, namely, that binding global environmental measures for international business be avoided. With the help of an extensive public relations campaign, top managers of the world's largest corporations informed UNCED participants and the general public that they had voluntarily chosen to embark on the road to "sustainability". To do this they need economic growth, free trade and open markets. Profit making and environmental protection can be combined, they argue, in a system in which the damage to natural resources is compensated in the cost price of goods, and in which nature is patented. According to the influential lobbying organization, the Business Council for Sustainable Development, this is the road to a sustainable future.
As the Indian ecologist Vandana Shiva put it:

"Governments have distanced themselves from their responsibilities. As of now, it is a fight between transnationals and citizens."

The international business community's successful lobby during UNCED

The choice for Maurice Strong - a Canadian businessman and multi-millionaire - as Secretary General of the UNCED was an early sign of the influence of the international business community on this conference. In the early preparatory stages, Strong appointed the Swiss captain of industry, Stephen Schmidheiny, to be the most important advisor for business and industry, and he approached 48 top managers, of corporations including DuPont, Shell, Dow Chemical, Ciba-Geigy and Mitshubishi, to form the Business Council for Sustainable Development (BCSD), which published a book, Changing Course before UNCED began, outlining their proposals.
As UNCED opened, Strong told Schmidheiny in front of scores of reporters: "No contribution <to UNCED> has been more important than yours (i.e. BCSD)." <8>
He also remarked that he held the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), a major lobby against binding environmental measures, in "high esteem". Approximately half of the corporations in the BCSD were represented on the ICC's board of directors, a board which was partly responsible for the failure of the detailed proposals presented by Norway and Sweden, advocating binding environmental measures, at the preparatory meeting of UNCED in New York. At the end, the final concept of Agenda 21 did not include any proposals controlling the multinationals, but stressed rather the role of the business community and industry in environmental protection and the importance of the voluntary measures they had already taken.

In a perfect division of roles, the task of the BCSD was to show the public the environmentally friendly face of the international corporate community, and even to promote calculating the environmental costs in the price of goods. Meanwhile the ICC surreptitiously lobbied with all its might against inclusion of measures in Agenda 21 which would make this possible.
The international business community also set up lobbying organizations on various subject areas to keep a finger on the UNCED pulse. An example is the Global Climate Coalition (GCC) which worked diligently on influencing politicians who were in favour off reductions in carbon dioxide emissions. As a result, UNCED failed to develop a Climate Convention obliging signatory countries to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
International corporations such as Asahi Glass, Atlantic Richfield, ICI, Swatch and 3M also influenced UNCED in indirect and subtle ways. These corporations were the most important donors to the Ecofund, a non-profit organization working from Washington DC, set up to help finance the UNCED. Global Forum, the alternative environmental conference for non-governmental organizations, also received money from the business community.
By the time UNCED drew to a close, functionaries of transnational corporations breathed sighs of relief. They could now embark on a period of free-market international environmental protection without the involvement of national governments in their business activities. With little hindrance from environmentalists, they were now free and well equipped to continue working through their full agenda load for the GATT negotiations (on the liberalization of world trade).

Spurred on by its own successes, the Business Council for Sustainable Development, originally created as a one-off coalition of 48 captains of industry for the duration of the UNCED process, decided to continue operations. It now acts as the conscience of the international business community. Hugh Faulkner, president director of the BCSD, commented:

We will be working with other groups and sectors to try and promote the change in policy, in corporate governance and various areas which are preconditions to sustainable development. <9>

He referred emphatically to the GATT:

We have to make clear to the world and the politicians that there is a higher order of public interest in this point.

Before we discuss the actual importance of GATT for the environment, and transnational interests within this, the following chapters will firstly analyze the involvement and the role of transnational corporations in the creation of and solutions to the world's environmental problems.

Summary

With their optimistic theories of sustainable development, Northern politicians argue that it is possible to develop in a sustainable way without risking wealth and welfare, in other words, without fundamental changes in patterns of consumption and production. The North focuses its attention on the problems of the commons, such as tropical rainforests, which it views as the common heritage of humanity, essential in the natural regeneration of the global ecosystem. Political discussions on the solutions to global environmental problems are directed towards possible forms of global management of these areas.
During UNCED it became increasingly apparent that this was a false perspective. The primary environmental problem from the perspective of underdeveloped and poor countries in the South is the tremendous, everyday ecological problem which is linked to underdevelopment and poverty. This takes a variety of forms: lack of clean drinking water; infertile soil due to erosion, salification and receding water tables; air pollution in the cities and mounds of toxic waste surrounding human habitats. In political-economic decision-making processes, ecological considerations are luxury items. According to the South, the North is primarily responsible for such world-wide problems as the pollution of the ocean and the destruction of the ozone layer. The commons are mostly found within the borders of countries of the South, and they resist the North's interference as unlawful meddling in or on their national territory.

 These differences in position between the North and the South led to a situation where more and more governments and politicians looked to the international business community rather than governments as the redeemer. The BCSD, a one-off coalition of 48 captains of large transnational corporations, lobbied intensively to achieve this, and by the time UNCED came to a close, the transnational corporations were able to draw deep sighs of relief in the knowledge that they could embark on an era of free-market international environmental protection without the interference of international governing bodies.

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