After Johannesburg: What next?

After Johannesburg: What next?

An EPC Dialogue was held on 17 October 2002 in conjunction with the World Bank on “After Johannesburg: What Next?” The panel was comprised of Inge Kaul, Director of UNDP, Salil Shetty, Chief Executive of Action Aid UK, John Evans, General Secretary of the Trade Union Advisory Committee to the OECD, Geoffrey Lamb, of the World Bank’s Resource Mobilisation Department and Hugo-Maria Schally, Head of Unit in the Commission’s Development Directorate. A question and answer session followed. This is not an official record of the proceedings and specific remarks are not necessarily attributable.

Moderator Hilary Bowker, of Bowker Media and Communications, began by asking the panel for a brief analysis of their “wish lists” from the Johannesburg world summit on sustainable development.

Results of Johannesburg

The panel agreed that the summit marked the end of a hectic round of similar events, and its delegates were suffering from “conference fatigue”. Johannesburg produced ambitious pledges but very few hard and fast guarantees. Now there was an urgent need for action to back up the many fine words. There may be a case for fewer of these jet-setting international meetings in future.

Salil Shetty said his focus had been to keep poverty on the agenda, particularly the plight of impoverished farmers. He described the Johannesburg goals as – “only partially achieved” – as the establishment of partnerships anchored in clear, multi-lateral commitments, and a reaffirmation of the Doha pledges.

There had been 400 trade unionists at Johannesburg, representing countries north and south, said John Evans, and the central message had been, that, through lack of political will, the social issues surrounding sustainability had not been taken seriously. The result was a “mixed bag”, with confused discussions on public-private partnerships.

For Geoffrey Lamb there had been “a large degree of overlap”. The need now was to step up the development assistance effort, doubling overseas aid to meet the Millennium goals. Reaching that 50 billion extra euro would involve working through partnerships at the global level. There had to be more delivery, with a big focus on trade, country-driven poverty reduction strategies, and emphasis on the social dimension – tackling disease, improving health education, and maintaining sustainable growth.

The goal for Inge Kaul was to turn words into deeds, mobilize resources and help developing countries get their voice heard – difficult when many delegations from the developing nations amounted to just one representative and some of the big players fielded teams of 1 000 people.

The Way Forward

Hilary Bowker asked where do we go now? Mr Shetty said a step back was now needed. Global economies were fragile and the current world focus was on security, an area in which money was suddenly no object. But poor countries were the losers, and Johannesburg had been the “nadir” of such summits, “struggling to agree on things already previously agreed.” Many promises (and Millennium goals) were at risk and efforts had to be redoubled to fulfill existing commitments on trade, aid and debt before new pledges were made.

Responding, Mr Evans said the important thing was to change from a “top-down” to a “bottom-up” approach, recognising the linkage between different agendas. Key issues were workplace partnerships, sustainable employment, poverty reduction, and framework programmes. It was also important to take OECD guidelines on multinationals seriously.

There were two kinds of summit agreements said Ms Kaul, hard and soft. Trade deals came into the first category, but poverty reduction and basic education were soft. One interesting development since Johannesburg was that “soft” agreements were becoming firme r. The Millennium goals were now being costed and closely monitored to ensure that countries both north and south, as well as international organisations, did what they were supposed to do.

Mr Schally noted that post-Johannesburg ambitions were high, with a clear intent to honour commitments and development potential. The Commission would put much effort into maintaining EU momentum, particularly on the initiatives on renewable energy and on sustainable patterns of production and consumption.

Business, Agriculture and Trade Issues

On business attitudes, Mr Shetty said some interesting partnership agreements had been forged at Johannesburg, but business was “quite exhausted from so much talk and little action.”

Trade unionists were not fatigued, replied Mr Evans: they were engaging in corporate responsibility, an area where there were good companies performing well and others not so well. He acknowledged the enthusiasm of businesses that attended, but questioned the commitment of companies such as the oil sector, which were not there.

Mr Lamb pointed out how many senior business figures had personally spent a significant amount of time seriously engaged in Johannesburg, rather than sending their public relations people. But he had the impression that they did not think Johannesburg was the right place to tackle global corporate governance and the post-Enron environment.

According to Ms Kaul, the Johannesburg meeting format had its shortcomings, not least the fact of its scale: while there were long discussions on the Rio principles and the global environment, there was also an urgent need to take bite-sized chunks, set objectives and move forward. You can’t do that at a meeting like Johannesburg, she said.

Everyone was excited about the partnership initiative, said Mr Schally, but even companies keen to engage constructively were still very confused and cagey about responsibility and the role of businesses in development and sustainability.

Ms Kaul was of the opinion that Johannesburg had witnessed the emergence of a totally new system of politics. Businesses had been very heavily represented simply because they could not afford not to be there. This “partnership modality” signalled a new political era, using purchasing power to set public policy priorities. Governments, she said, were becoming “ratifiers of civil society consensus.”

Mr Shetty said one problem was that, since September 11 last year, a lot of trade and development issues were taking second place to security – a situation that had created a “trust deficit” between the developed and developing countries. Before launching into new partnerships, there had to be a new focus on issues such as agriculture subsidies, and the fact that debt repayment levels were 300 billion dollars while the industrialised world was spending one billion dollars a day on farm subsidies.

People were working on ways to address the debt burden, said Mr Schally, but the issue of agriculture subsidies had been one of the most divisive in Johannesburg.

According to Geoffrey Lamb, there had been a reversal towards more protectionism in trade, particularly on agriculture and steel, and this had to be corrected for the benefit of developing countries. There was a need to cut through the red tape surrounding aid partnerships, and simplify operations with both borrowing and recipient countries.

Global Governance

Mr Evans said the challenge was to change political will to provide coherent global governance to match the switch from national economies to global economies. Ms Kaul, however, warned against “globalising” everything: she was not in favour, for instance, of a global environmental agency, where the need was to take action in an issue-specific way. There was a climate change secretariat and a unit for the ozone layer. There was an urgent need for something more manageable and more regular than the Johannesburg summit format – perhaps a “G29”, compromising a bureau of 29 countries nominated by the international community, with a larger rotating membership to set the agenda on how to balance global environment issues, trade negotiations and the world’s financial architecture.

It was vital to increase the American role in summits and in the global governance process, said Mr Shetty. It was very important not to allow Islam or China to provide the counterbalance to the way the global governance debate was going.

The Voiceless

The panel was asked to address the issue of “giving a voice to the voiceless.”

Ms Kaul said a study of participation in major conferences in the last ten years found that 80% of developing countries have one-person delegations – but often that one person is not the same person for all such meetings, pre-meetings and informal gatherings. The G77 format did not work any more because there is very little overlap of interests, and the result was that international negotiations were in a “precarious” situation: “Developing countries feel this, which is why little happens after agreements are reached.”

There was a good case for cutting back sharply on international meetings and summits, said Mr Lamb. “They create momentum and opportunities for people to travel but are not necessarily that productive.”

It was striking that people thought that nothing had happened at Johannesburg, replied Mr Evans. The media perception reflected that, but giving voice to the voiceless meant respecting human rights. The need was for a functioning lobbyist group for poor people with impact in the bodies that make decisions.

There was caution from Mr Shetty about setting up new institutions unnecessarily: there were already fora for the poor, social movements and poor people’s organisations: “There are ways to find to talk to them if we want to. It is a matter of wanting to do it.”

Conclusion

Summing up, Mr Evans said the key was empowerment, with people having the right to form their own institutions. Mr Schally said a real change was on the way, but Mr Shetty remained concerned that the global spotlight had shifted to security concerns, such as Iraq and Bali. Without swift results from the rich countries on global issues, “we underestimate the risks in front of us.”

Inge Kaul said it was now an age of interdependence and international cooperation had to be at the centre of policy making: “We need a whole new set of policymakers and whole new set of diplomats.” Mr Lamb said the process leading to meetings such as Johannesburg had been unexpectedly good in affirming development issues to be at the centre of many international debates, in a way they had not previously encountered. Development now pre-occupied finance ministers and hard-faced decision-makers and not just the “bleeding hearts.” The world was in an era of exceptional risk, not just on the security front but also because of a very fragile world economy.

In his concluding remarks, Andrew Rogerson, Director of the World Bank in Brussels, urged more coherence in global issues. He said the Johannesburg target of bringing sanitation to the developing world would mean connecting 400 000 people a day to sewage systems – the equivalent of connecting up Greater London every month or Brussels every week. No single organisation could do that. New partnerships were required and a new sense of purpose.

For more analyses see The European Policy Centre’s

website