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- Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive
- Path: sparky!uunet!wupost!mont!pencil.cs.missouri.edu!rich
- From: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu (Rich Winkel)
- Subject: Earth Summit: World Leaders get "Ostrich Prize"
- Message-ID: <1992Sep2.082315.20740@mont.cs.missouri.edu>
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- Originator: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
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- Organization: PACH
- Date: Wed, 2 Sep 1992 08:23:15 GMT
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-
- /** gen.newsletter: 136.2 **/
- ** Written 5:40 pm Aug 27, 1992 by ecologycntr in cdp:gen.newsletter **
-
- For the Earth Summit, world leaders congealed in Rio like blood drying
- on an open wound. The reports from the mainstream corporate media
- coming out of Rio were mixed: they ranged from hopeful observations
- that at least the leaders were meeting about environment and development
- as connected issues, and beginning to talk about solutions, to
- disappointed reflections that the governments were completely
- failing to make any serious commitments to deal with impending
- ecological catastrophes.
-
- Most of the establishment reporters were making a fundamental
- mistake. Thinking that the governments of the world are going to
- look honestly for new, progressive and innovative ways to address
- our ecological crises is like expecting the American Medical
- Association and the medical insurance industry to deal honestly
- with the health care crisis in the United States. Like these two
- bureaucracies, the national governments are stuck in the paradigm
- of greed, growth and more technology as the solution to any and
- all problems.
-
- A special award, the Ostrich Prize, was given by a group of
- Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) to the governments that had
- the worst performance at the Summit. NGOs are considered by the
- United Nations to be organizations that are not government, even
- including the International Chamber of Commerce. The NGOs that
- were giving this award, however, were grassroots community
- organizations and non-profit organizations like the Northern
- Peoples' Alliance for the Environment, Forum of Brazilian NGOs,
- Greenpeace, and Friends of the Earth, etc. At first the NGOs were
- looking for constructive actions by governments, but, finding
- none, they came up with the Ostrich Prize. The United States,
- represented by George Bush, won top honors by undermining
- virtually all the initiatives on climate change, biodiversity,
- biotechnology, models of consumption, weapons of mass destruction
- and elimination of nuclear waste. Saudi Arabia came in second for
- opposing development of renewable energy sources and energy
- efficiency, having a destructive attitude in the contact group on
- the atmosphere and climate, and cooperating with regressive
- industrial groups. Americans might want to remember this award as
- we spend billions of dollars to protect the oil interests in the
- Mideast.
-
- By being the only country out of 172 not to sign the Biodiversity
- Treaty, the US. showed how much corporations are calling its
- shots. In Rio Bush claimed the treaty would be too costly, but
- that wasn't the real reason. According to an article in the San
- Francisco Chronicle on June 12, "The biotechnology and
- pharmaceutical industries have been a driving force behind the
- administration's unpopular position." Genentech's chief executive
- G. Kirk Raab minced no words. In a letter to Bush he declared that
- the biodiversity treaty "runs the chance of eroding the progress
- made in protecting American intellectual property rights." The
- concern over biodiversity for corporations is to protect their
- "right" to own the DNA sequences of life. The biotechnology and
- pharmaceutical industries are only interested in preserving
- biological diversity long enough to discover, extract and learn to
- replicate DNA sequences for corporate profit. Once they have
- stolen genetic information from traditional peoples and figured
- out how to reconstruct those DNA sequences in their laboratories
- to make products at a profit, they will want to eliminate
- biodiversity from the natural world. For then, they will own all
- the patents on genetic materials, giving them exclusive
- "intellectual property rights." They will make even more profit
- because they will be the only ones manufacturing products based on
- genetic resources that will no longer exist in the natural world.
- The next frontier for corporate conquest has become life itself.
-
- Some positive things happened in Rio, but not many at the official
- Earth Summit. The NGOs had a parallel meeting called the '92
- Global Forum where over 17,500 registrants representing thousands
- of institutions from 167 countries met to address many of the
- problems causing excess suffering on and with the Earth. The forum
- was a physical, philosophical and political space created for
- people, representing civil society (as opposed to government
- officials). The aim was to envision a world that is more just,
- more equitable and more secure. Unfortunately "poor" people didn't
- get to have much input into this process because they were absent.
- I read in preliminary documents about the Global Forum that
- attempts were being made to fund people that couldn't afford to
- attend. Apparently that didn't happen.
-
- The Gloria Hotel served as HQ for the "Alternative Summit".
- Adjacent to the hotel was Flamengo Park, with 35 temporary meeting
- structures and 600 displays by various exhibitors.
-
- During the forum the NGOs finalized over 30 treaties to sign. The
- treaty making process was designed for NGOs to reach agreements on
- actions that they were prepared to carry out in their own
- communities.
-
- Because I was working in the area of communication I decided to
- work on the Communication Treaty. Communication turned out to be a
- major obstacle in working on the Communication Treaty. The group
- of people who attempted to work together on the treaty spoke many
- different languages. As English was the language that the majority
- of the people could understand and speak, we used English as our
- language of negotiation. This upset the people from Northern
- Africa who spoke French, not English. They left the meeting. There
- was nothing we could do since the forum was under-funded, with a
- limited number of translators.
-
- The other major frustration within the group was between those who
- wanted to produce a treaty and those who preferred to work on
- action plans for communication and networking instead. The treaty
- people wanted a treaty that would provide NGOs a method for
- insuring the right to communicate. The result was a treaty called
- the Communication, Information, Media and Networking Treaty. It
- laid out a set of agreements on communication as well as specific
- commitments for the NGOs that signed it. I agreed to sign the
- treaty after presenting it to the Neahtawanta Center board of
- directors on June 21 for approval. Many aspects of the treaty fit
- with the goals of the Neahtawanta Center that address
- communication nodes and information exchange. Here are the opening
- paragraphs of the Treaty:
-
- The right to communicate freely is a basic human right and a
- necessity for sustainable development. Access to information is
- essential for informed decision-making at all levels. As Chapter
- 40 of Agenda 21 declares, "in sustainable development, everyone is
- a user and provider of information considered in the broad sense
- that includes data, information, appropriately packaged experience
- and knowledge."
-
- The "Green Press" International Meeting of Journalists on
- Environment and Development (Belo Horizonte, May 20-24, 1992)
- identified as threats to democratic communication: unequal access
- to the media, the concentration of information resources in the
- hands of economic groups, censorship and other forms of government
- control.
-
- Governments and international institutions should guarantee the
- right of all people to communicate, to collect, to put in proper
- shape, to disseminate and to exchange all information they choose
- without any risk to personal security. People should have the
- material and cultural means, including the basic mail and
- telephone facilities, to communicate with colleagues locally and
- globally. Unfortunately, in many Southern countries, these
- facilities are deteriorating.
-
- The problem of deteriorating communication facilities stems from
- privatization. This is happening in Southern countries where the
- governments are paying off foreign debts by selling parts of their
- public infrastructure, such as the telephone service. This creates
- different levels of access to communication between those who can
- afford to purchase the service once it is in the private sector
- and those who cannot. In addition, some Southern countries'
- governments are loaned money by official northern lending
- institutions for improving the high-tech infrastructures for
- communication that benefit the banks and multi-national
- corporations, while the postal service deteriorates, again
- creating unequal access to information between the haves and the
- have-nots.
-
- In this country the wave of privatization will have the same
- effect of further widening the gap between the haves and the have
- nots. This division is widening in most places on the Earth as the
- majority of governments in the world are in some stage of crisis a
- crisis of authority and leadership. The NGOs' main message from
- the Global Forum is for communities everywhere to strengthen or
- create participatory democracies and to honor diversity. As one
- sign read at a protest march in Rio: "No Environment without
- Democracy."
-
- The deterioration of the planet will continue to escalate for some
- time yet: the turnaround is not in sight, not in my eyes anyway.
- It makes one wonder really what is the right thing to be doing. Is
- it working on a vision of the future and how you would like to see
- the world healed? Or working to stop the current destruction of
- the planet by the corporate multi-national governments? Or do you
- work on both? And is there energy to work on both? One is really a
- battle in defense of Earth, the other is about changing yourself
- and your community, but they are inseparably related.
-
- Perhaps if the NGOs of the world had the time, the resources, the
- skills and the communication links, strategies could unfold. The
- Global Forum was an attempt at such a meeting. Was it successful?
- I don't think any one person knows the answer. Perhaps in a few
- years we will see real progress as a result of the meeting, but
- nothing will happen quickly.
-
- Tom Princen, an assistant professor of International Environmental
- Policy at the University of Michigan, compared this global
- movement of NGOs to what happened in Eastern Europe. He contends
- that before things broke loose there, a social movement of people
- existed who were planning for the future after their governments
- collapsed. This movement and the coming collapse was invisible to
- the CIA, the KGB, universities' studies, the think tanks and the
- mainstream media. To learn about this movement you would have had
- to look hard in the alternative media and underground press. The
- same may be true of the global civic society forming a new vision
- around the issue of sustainable development. As I look at the
- stories in the mainstream press about the events in Rio, the
- Global Forum is almost absent from their coverage; yet that is
- where the hope for a sustainable future may emerge for life on
- Earth.
-
- The Global Forum was not everything it wanted to be, but it was a
- cause for hope. People from around the world, working together,
- began to envision a more sustainable future.
-
-
- This article was first printed in Synapse, a quarterly newsletter
- of the Neahtawanta Research and Education Center, 1308 Neahtawanta
- Rd., Traverse City, MI 49684, (616) 223-7315 email
- neahtawanta@igc.apc.org. Reprinted by permission of the author.
-
- ** End of text from cdp:gen.newsletter **
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