It was a bumpy ride on the Commission for Sustainable Development (CSD) highway last week, as delegates appeared to be driving forward with their eyes fixed on their rear-view mirrors. Considering events in the world, everyone agrees that the themes of the last CSD cycle and those of the present one have proven to be prescient and timely. The last one focused on energy and climate change, while we are here in CSD-17 talking about agriculture, land, rural development, drought, desertification and particularly Africa

This week offers clear opportunities for delegates to take a good look at the road ahead and avoid the obvious, as well as the hidden, bumps and potholes. Throughout last week, delegates recognised the convergence of crises confronting the world today and the urgent need for concrete action to be taken. There were repeated talks about the food crisis, the climate crisis and the economic crisis. The other crisis that did not show up is the crisis of the growing deficit of confidence in global governance and, in some cases, the deficit of democracy. And this should worry our governments. The world sorely needs to regain confidence in internal governance, in an era where financial and transnational institutions are enjoying massive bailouts, while the citizens of this world are out in the cold, hungry and unprotected

The CSD presents a unique platform for global governance to rise up beyond individual countries’ or regional blocks’ selfish interests. Unfortunately, the bright spots in this regard have been few and far between. As we listened to delegates go through the chair’s negotiation text last week, we could not help but wonder how they would find their way out of the maze of brackets and additions that have so riddled the texts, and if the final outcome will be recognisable.

Obviously, this is the way negotiations of this nature go, but we are concerned that additions and subtractions on the text do not appear to be introducing ideas that would galvanize nations into acting in solidarity. What we see are grounds being set for competition and business as usual. The world sorely needs inspiration to empower and engineer actions. So far, memorable texts would need to be ferreted out with the aid of a Hubble telescope. We would agree that delegates are not wordsmiths, but what is the point in introducing texts without clearly seeing how the jigsaw fits or unravels? The transformation of the world will not be built on episodic entries that focus on maintaining the status quo and preserving narrow interests and privileges of some nations and blocs.

The G-77 kept bringing up references to national laws and cultural contexts to cap some provisions. These may sound progressive, but in reality they may prove obstructive to the attainment of justice and higher ideals of liberty. For example, when G-77 speaks about rights of women, they add ‘in accordance with national legislation’. The CSD should be raising the bar, not subjecting universal ideals to parochial local regimes. The picture that comes through all this is an insidious resistance to change under the cover of tradition.

Right from the preamble to the negotiated text, G-77 and China inserted a highly volatile piece of text on the sovereign right of states to exploit their natural resources. There is nothing unusual about states having the sovereign right to exploit their resources, but we could raise the issue of what would be the case for countries whose political setting is not settled. And what about those whose sovereignty is threatened or subverted? It appears that basic questions, including the prior right of communities and indigenous peoples, even before the rights of states, need to be settled on this issue.

Given the themes of CSD-17, one would be right to assume that G-77 would drive for the best texts that would guarantee the right context for the citizens of this bloc. We note that the bulk of the work done to improve the section on Africa was done by the delegations from the USA and the EU. The most outstanding contribution of the G-77 and China in that section was when they asked that the proposal to encourage broad public participation of civil society as a partner be removed, in particular in responding to food insecurity. This was very curious.

Apart from the brilliant addition to the introduction of the section on desertification, this has not often been the case. When G-77 suggested that desertification ‘is a global problem that requires a global response through concerted efforts’, that really shone. However, some of the areas bracketed or deferred by G-77 raised some worries. Why would G-77, for example, need to defer immediate acceptance of a clauses such as ‘mindful of the growing scarcities of many natural resources and the competing claims to their use’, and on building ‘the resilience of rural communities to cope with and recover from natural disasters and conflicts’? In many other sections, we find an unwillingness to assume responsibilities, but rather a readiness to push implementation burden on to the ‘international community’.

The issue of the right to food was firmly raised by the UN rapporteur on the right to food when he addressed the session on 7 May. He affirmed that the right to adequate food is a human right and emphasised that the CSD should recommend measures that would promote the adoption of national right to food strategies and for states to implement the findings of the IAASTD. He also strongly recommended that states should realise the centrality of the role of smallholder farmers in meeting the food needs of the world. The ideas pushed by the rapporteur found echoes in a few submissions of Switzerland and G-77 during the negotiations.

On the whole, the EU has made substantial additions on forests, drought and desertification. They underlined the need for the UNFCCC parties to utilise the UNCCD framework in combating drought and desertification. G-77’s reference to the UNCCD was mainly on the imperative of the industrialised world to meet their commitments with regard to provision of resources.

The USA, Canada, Australia and Japan worked often in tandem, but Australia must be given the medal for fighting to foist WTO rules as a damper on more progressive trade and business relations.

In a bid not to mention genetic engineering by name, delegates have taken the convoluted route and left everyone wondering what they are really talking about. The G-77, for example, ‘supports efforts to increase the nutrition content of food’. While that is not a bad idea on its own, we must be wary of falling into the hoax of the so-called golden rice, or the new experiments with genetically modified super cassava, both engineered to have enhanced levels of vitamin A for poor people in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The strong underlying hands of what has been termed philanthropic capitalism keeps excessive pressure on the staple foods of vulnerable peoples with utter disregard of the precautionary principle that is cardinal in biodiversity protection. Mexico recommended the using of plantations of non-native species of trees to combat the spread of sand dunes.

Sadly quite a number of trite additions were brought into the section on rural development. It is hoped that such will be thrown out during the negotiations.

With a week to go in the negotiations, it is hoped that delegates will safely disentangle from the web of brackets with a clear road map and not just a pack of words. We note that in the course of last week, delegates queried the possible meanings of otherwise simple words or concepts and answers were sometimes immediately offered or deferred until the following day. In one case, the USA brought up the concept of using smart growth techniques in Working Group 2 [PDF">. G-77 asked to know what that meant. USA explained the following day that they have found out that the smart growth concept had several meanings and therefore withdrew the submission. That was a good example of helping make progress and ensuring that obscure terminology are not used to conceal hidden examples.

If it was just that a concept such as the ‘green revolution’ has become obfuscated, we would not have a reason to worry too much. But the CSD-17 has also revealed that there may not be unanimity of understanding of the very concept of sustainability. In a conversation on the lobby, a veteran participant said that she was always of the view that Rio 1992 outcomes were very tame, but now she can see that it was far more radical than what may be expected of CSD-17. And she asked the question: Are we making progress in reverse gear?

Delegates have the duty of giving an answer to this question next week. Already there are talks of a possible 20th anniversary session of the CSD in 2012, and Brazil may possibly be the host. Will this be a date to celebrate a revival, or one to place Rio 1992 on the funeral pyre?

* Nnimmo Bassey is executive director of Environmental Rights Action in Nigeria. Pambazuka Press is publishing his book To Cook a Continent: Destructive Extraction and the Climate Crisis in Africa in January 2010.
* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/.