Citizens will turn the back to Johannesburg?

A SEED JAPAN
Yuki Tanabe
JULY 3 2002

At the 1992 Earth Summit, the action plan for sustainable development, "Agenda 21" was adopted. And the Johannesburg summit will be held in this August, is a conference for evaluating the progress situation and reconstructing targets and measures. The last preparation meeting for Johannesburg summit was held from May 27 to June 7 in Bali, Indonesia.

Outside the conference, Hundreds of people were putting up a lot of banners such as " NO WTO", "NO IMF" and "boycott PREPCOM4" everyday. The Johannesburg summit must be conference for poor people. What result should we just really expect in the situation that is not trusted by poor people who must be the leading roles?

A session called the "multi-stakeholder dialog" was held over first three days. The main argument in the dialog was "how to promote partnership initiatives". NGOs called for criteria of partnership Initiatives;

1. based on legally binding environmental standards
2. based on a framework for corporate accountability
3. based on a independent monitoring system

The United States and Japan were opposed to attaching such conditions. In the end, the argument on partnership will continue in Johannesburg. Multinational corporations and United States were emphasizing “No criteria of partnership initiatives” in Prepcom4. As a reason, Multinational corporations can;

1. escape environmental and social regulations
2. expand new markets of public service
3. avoid consumer and stockholder movements by NGO

The United States pushed out "partnership" strongly. The reason would be depended on change of the foreign policy by the terrorism on September 11, last year. The secession from the Kyoto Protocol and the Durban racial discrimination meeting brought a result which strengthened rebounding to the United States. However, it became possible to make the place where plays an active part in international conferences by emphasizing partnership. Probably, in the direction that makes a "cover" itself, the U.S. foreign policy had some change.

Indonesian people who were performing the demonstration outside the conference are acting with anger to the irresponsible actions caused by multinational corporations, international financial institutions, and the WTO. If the Johannesburg summit does not work in the direction that improves these actions, the citizen will turn the back to Johannesburg.