WSSD: CORPORATE RULES LIKE ‘PUTTING THE FOX IN CHARGE OF THE HENHOUSE’

WSSD: CORPORATE RULES LIKE ‘PUTTING THE FOX IN CHARGE OF THE HENHOUSE’

Patrick Burnett
Fahamu

JOHANNESBURG - People from across the world - mainly from Africa - stood up in front of thousands at a meeting on corporate accountability at the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) and faced the television cameras to voice their anger at how the negative impacts of globalisation resulted in their continued poverty and disempowerment.
“Globalisation is painful,” one delegate told thousands during a Global People's Forum Event at the WSSD, “It exploits people across the world and is nothing more than US-sponsored terrorism.” Another delegate told the audience: “We are here on behalf of the grassroots and we feel strongly that globalisation is nothing more than a means of dispossession and instrument to dehumanise our people.” Speaking at the meeting, Bobby Peek, from the organization Groundworks, said South African industry was not being held accountable for pollution. Regulations, he said, had failed to enforce available law and what existed was a state of “negotiated non-compliance”.
Despite rights in the South African Constitution to clean air and a healthy environment, government was failing to deliver corporate accountability. Globally, this represented a situation where, instead of holding corporations accountable, governments of the south - influenced by the north - were allowing industry to be self-regulating.
Peek stressed that voluntary agreements did not suit the south as it resulted in the situation where “the fox was put in charge of the henhouse”. He said in this situation a greater role fell to civil society, but this was not a satisfactory solution for regulation as the scale and power of multi-national corporations reduced the ability to react.
He said 51 of the top 100 economies were corporations who had a major influence in regulatory agendas of countries, while the trend towards privatisation meant that corporations took control of areas that were previously the domain of the state.
“This must be rolled back so that rights are not threatened,” he said.
“The imbalance must be corrected. Communities must be granted rights over corporations.”
Eric Mann, author of the book 'Dispatches from Durban' about the World Conference on Racism held in Durban last year and an anti-racist, civil rights, environmental, and labour organizer for 35 years, said the key to sustainable development was self-determination for the third world, represented by the ability to stand up to United States corporations.
“We need a substantial anti-US protest at the WSSD. There will have to be an organized no vote against the outcome of the WSSD. We have to exercise political power against the hegemony of the US. We should not be forced out of the process.” - ENDS