Report of the Conference Rio +8 Copenhagen NGO Forum

Report of the Conference Rio +8 Copenhagen NGO Forum

Keywords Conferences, Food, Forestry, Water

This is a report from the Rio +8 Copenhagen NGO Forum, held on 20-22 June 2000 and attended by Pieter van der Gaag, executive director of ANPED. The meeting was three days long, had 70+ participants from the North and a majority from the South. It was chaired by Felix Dodds of UNED-Forum and Sunita Narain of CSE India. In the afternoon of Wednesday 21 June, Svend Auken, Danish Minister of Environment and Energy Affairs, participated.

The conference was built around five themes that are on the current political agenda: food, climate, forests, freshwater, and institutions. Below find a short description of the conclusions under each theme. In general the North-South angle, and especially the Southern frustration with Northern government and NGO attitudes, was very prominent.

The goal of this meeting was to forge global coalitions around the five themes in preparation for Rio +10.

Theme 1: Food

The view pronounced in the Alternative NGO Treaties for Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security in 1992 that the industrial model of agriculture,supported by unbridled trade liberalisation, abetted by hiding the true human and environmental costs of chemical dependency, and controlled by increasingly concentrated transnational corporations, are among the root causes of hunger,food safety decline, and the loss of smallholder agriculture both in the South and the North, still holds true.

The working group identified five key issues:

• 1.

  globalisation and trade regimes;

• 2.

  lack of access;

• 3.

  threats to biodiversity;

• 4.

  biotechnology;

• 5.

  climate.

Furthermore the group identified several failures of government, among which:not living up to Rio commitments, not assessing trade liberalisation impacts,not meeting land security, degradation and desertification commitments, etc.

The working group identified that stronger networks between the stakeholders might help present the solutions. The group also adopted the concept of "Food sovereignty" as the umbrella under which all activities should take place. Six strategies were designed to work further on this issue:

• 1.

  Identify and link with other international fora where food issues should be addressed by Civil Society with clarity.

• 2.

  Initiate an international campaign focussed on a clear call for resolution of trade and agriculture disputes in favour of the food sovereignty interests.

• 3.

  Civil Society Organisations should target the poverty reduction strategies and processes (PRSPs) with policy recommendations furthering food sovereignty issues and food security.

• 4.

  In preparation for Rio +10 organise a People's Summit on Food Sovereignty.

• 5.

  Invite the FAO to provide technical, research and other inputs to be presented as a side event to the People's Summit.

• 6.

  Issue papers should be commissioned on a number of specific topics.

Theme 2: Institutions

The group identified six key issues to be discussed, and suggested several actions for follow up.

Key issue 1: Participatory democracy and empowerment

A distinction was made between representative and participatory democracy. The group decided that the latter was the goal to be achieved. People at the grassroots and their representative organisations should be empowered to participate in decision-making at the local, regional and international level. Tools to be used should be stakeholder sessions, a code of conduct for participatory democracy, networks among NGOs (with an emphasis on the existing ones) to strengthen the lobby, and a book of good practices.

Key issue 2: International institutions within a globalisation context

There is a clear lack of strong global architecture for sustainable development. Northern interests increasingly dominate policymaking. There is a lack of institutional capacity in existing international sustainable development agencies (CSD, UNEP, UNDP, etc). There is a lack of mechanisms to monitor and enforce, and no SD dispute settlement mechanism. There is a lack of coherence and co-ordination between policies and institutions.

Several options were discussed, yet no clear decision was made. The group discussed the proposal for a WEO. This could be desirable if this body would solve all the problems described above. Is there political will to have a WEO be that strong? Should it not be a World Sustainable Development Organisation?Influence of WTO is too much and in too many non-trade-related areas. That needs to be decreased or offset. The group also discussed as an alternative to the WEO/WTO balance, increasing the power of the existing institutions and establishing co-ordinative links. Also the issue of an ombudsman for SD was discussed, and considered desirable as a short-term interim solution (Ed: the Earth Council, IUCN, and the UN University of Peace just set one up).

A global compact was discussed (Ed: not the ICC + UN one). North and South should come to some form of agreement between them, that: the South should be helped to eradicate poverty and increase the standard of living; and the North should deal with its environmental problems.

Key issue 3: The problems of participation for the regional and national level

Southern governments lack the capacity to participate meaningfully in international negotiations. Similarly Southern governments lack the capacity to foster stakeholder involvement at the national level. The principles of the Arhus convention should be translated into regionally accepted language and norms.

Key issue 4: Financing, lack of political will and efficiency

ODA has dropped significantly. Trends in North to South tech transfers etc.,are dismally declining. The lack of finance for development is causing a backlash in the South. Secondly institutions are faced with budgetary declines,and are not able to garner the capacity to tackle the issues laid before them. NGOs should combine in a campaign to reverse this trend.

Key issue 5: Private sector

There is a clear lack of accountability of corporations. To ensure this, NGOs will need to push and develop international standards for responsible corporate behaviour. These norms will have to become binding. NGOs need to pressure governments and business to commit to report on social and environmental policies and impacts. To enforce verification of these reports, a sanction-based system needs to be developed, also when standards are violated.

Key issue 6: NGOs

NGOs have increasingly more power. As a reaction there are more and more calls for accountability of NGOs. NGOs should practice what they preach and become accountable. NGOs need to develop a system that deals with their own legitimacy and make sure to demand the same of other actors in the decision-making process.

Theme 3: Climate change and energy

Key problems presented by the climate working group were:

• the urgency for global leadership for the Kyoto Protocol (KP) to enter into force and to maintain the environmental and social integrity of the climate change process;

• the concern and inherent contradiction of the climate change negotiations that the emission reductions contained in the KP, even if achieved, are irrelevant;

• there is a need to address the lack of access and availability of climate change technologies in developing countries;

• the people who suffer from the consequences of climate change were not the ones who chose to use fossil fuels;

• the lack of global democratic decision-making reinforces the global inequality with regard to the consumption of fossil fuels.

The group focused on Rio +10 and what role it could play. It was decided that the vulnerable groups would be highlighted, along mechanisms to prevent or adapt for these groups the negative effects of climate change (mostly financial resources), and focus would be placed on the technologies needed.

Strategies decided on include: making the costs of climate change known,monitoring the effects of climate change on people setting up an Adaptation Fund supporting nuclear and dams as alternatives, including energy sharing in the global compact, promoting energy awareness, a structured and timed phase,showing no out of fossil fueling based technologies.

For Rio +10 an interdependency campaign should be started to make people aware of their interdependence, and making an agreement to lobby for a renewable energy declaration at heads of state level. Second, an ombudsman needs to be discussed.

Theme 4: Forests

The forest group highlighted about 20 key issues, but picked four main ones to focus on. These were:

• 1.

  policy reform;

• 2.

  compliance with existing laws and policies;

• 3.

  community participation in decision-making and implementation, including community management of forests; and

• 4.

  indigenous people's and local communities' rights, including self-determination and land rights.

The forest group also dealt with the following subjects in more detail:valuation of forests, climate change linkages, illegal logging, plantations,global instruments and processes.

Several key solutions were offered, including stakeholder participation,access to information, increased policy co-ordination, and multilateral FDI rules. (This working group produced a long list of solutions, which can be obtained in detail from the ANPED secretariat.)

Theme 5: Freshwater

This working group agreed on the necessity to provide all people with the right to have access to safe and clean drinking water.

Three cross-sectoral issues were taken into account:

• 1.

  Governance and democracy, including questions of ownership, and participation in decision-making.

• 2.

  Poverty: including the need for indicators, free access to a minimum of water from a source within a reasonable distance.

• 3.

  Consumption: need to change consumption patterns, to revaluate different forms of water uses, allocate crop production near available water sites.

The group went into greater detail on the issues of water ownership and the role of the public/private sectors as well as Integrated Water Resources Management.

This group was also a prolific lister of actions and suggestions. The details can be obtained from the ANPED secretariat: http://antenna.nl/anped/index2.html.