Global Policy Forum

By John Gershman

A decade after his father attended the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, President George W. Bush has declined to attend the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg, South Africa, largely because of all the heat he would take as an opponent of the Kyoto Protocol and other efforts to address climate change. The Summit began on August 26th and runs through September 4th. The summit will adopt (if all goes according to plan) two major documents. First, a political declaration that is being pulled together largely by the South Africans. It is likely to be long on rhetoric and short on specifics. Second, an implementation plan, of which 70% or so was agreed to at the summit's final preparation meeting (prepcom) at Bali in the middle of this year.

The U.S. delegation has led a rather inept press effort at the summit, which one suspects is a sound indicator of how seriously the administration is approaching the whole exercise (a story detailed with tragi-comic humor is available at the British Council's www.dailysummit.net).

The media campaign foreshadows a broader story as to how the Summit has highlighted the Bush administration approach to multilateralism. First, the administration has actively worked to undermine almost any statement of commitments, targets, or timetables, arguing that such efforts lead to meaningless rhetoric. This is correct as far as it goes, as anyone looking at the achievements--or lack thereof--following the promulgation of Agenda 21 a decade ago at Rio would agree. But timetables and commitments offer the possibility for "accountability" politics--of holding states accountable to their commitments--and it is here that the Bush administration is actually revealing its spots. Undersecretary of State Paula Dobriansky claims that "The United States is the world's leader in sustainable development. No other nation has made a greater and more concrete commitment." Yet, on several issues at the summit, particularly water and sanitation, the United States has opposed statements of binding commitments, prompting widespread criticism from the Europeans, among others. Japan, New Zealand, Canada, and Australia (combined known as the JUSCANZ group) have also come under attack for sharing the Bush administration's positions.

The only areas where the administration seeks concrete commitments are in the areas of trade and investment liberalization and commitments to strengthening the private sector's role in defining and advancing sustainable development through "partnerships." In these partnerships governments, corporations, and civil society organizations are supposed to collaborate on addressing a range of sustainable development issues from malaria control to clean water. Commitments from the Bush administration include up to $970 million over the next three years for water, which the U.S. expects will mobilize more than $1.6 billion through partnerships; $43 million in 2003 for clean energy that will lead to an additional $400 million in other resources through partnerships; and $90 million in 2003 to help farmers, particularly in Africa. The total U.S. investment in the partnerships could run as high as $3.64 billion over the next four years, according to Undersecretary Dobriansky. However, the U.S. delegation has provided few details about how much of the money is new aid or redirects previously committed funding. Nor can U.S. officials immediately explain who, besides the recipient countries, would join the partnerships or how they would work.

The focus on partnerships has raised many concerns among environmental and human rights groups, who worry that these partnerships are likely to become avenues for corporate greenwashing in the absence of accountability mechanisms for corporate behavior. Ever since the Reagan and Bush pí¨re administrations oversaw the decimation of the UN Center on Transnational Corporations in 1992-93, global justice activists have been looking to find ways to bring a strong corporate accountability agenda into the UN system. A number of groups, including Friends of the Earth and Corporate Watch, have been campaigning for more substantive efforts on the corporate accountability front.

While the administration's opposition to the Kyoto Protocol is well-known, it is also a laggard on other key environmental conventions, including one due to come before the Senate before the mid-term elections in November. This includes the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) that will ban or severely reduce the use of 12 (initially) toxic chemicals. Although the administration has come out in support of the convention, it has yet to introduce it into the Senate and its legislative proposals for implementing the convention will not provide an adequate and comprehensive framework for regulating the use of POPs.

The U.S. has also failed to sign or ratify the Aarhus Convention--also known by its more complete and mellifluous name as the 1998 UN/ECE Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision Making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters. This convention offers a rigorous set of criteria for respect for basic rights regarding freedom of information, transparency, and public participation in shaping environmental policy.

The war on terrorism, however, has rolled back respect for right-to-know and participation principles in America. Public information about environmental, industrial, and public health hazards on numerous public web sites has been blocked. On October 12, 2001 Attorney General John Ashcroft reversed administration policy on interpreting the Freedom of Information Act. The heads of all federal departments and agencies are now discouraged from disclosing information unless refusing it would be illegal--a significant departure from previous policy. Industry groups and municipal water suppliers are actively lobbying to amend FOIA and other laws to exempt energy, chemical, and water facilities from public disclosure. At the WSSD, the administration is blocking human, environmental, and freedom of information rights from being enshrined in the plan of action in order to protect multinational companies from litigation and protests by the poor. (These efforts are being supported by some developing countries such as India and China). These trends highlight how the Bush administration's rejection of international law abroad mirrors a growing assault on democracy at home.

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