A Rio Disappointment

Editor's Note: Bob Russell recently returned firom Rio and filed this report. Reports from the mainstream corporate media coming out of Rio's United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), commonly referred to as the Earth Summit, were mixed. They ranged from hopeful observations that at least the leaders were meeting about environment and development as connected issues and beginning to talk about solutions, to disappointed reflections that the governments were completely failing to make any serious commitments to deal with impending ecological catastrophes. Most of the establishment reporters were making a fundamental mistake. Thinking that the governments of the world are going to look honestly for new, progressive and innovative way s to address our ecological crises is like expecting the American Medical Association and the medical insurance industry to deal honestly with the health care crisis in the United States. Like these two bureaucracies, the national governments are stuck in the paradigm of greed, growth and more technology as the solution, to any and all problems. By being the only country out of 172 not to sign the Biodiversity Treaty, the U.S. showed how much corporations are calling its shots. In Rio, Bush claimed the treaty would be too costly, but that wasn't the real reason. According to a June 12 article in the San Francisco Chronicle, 'The biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries have been a driving force behind the administration's impopular position." Jenentech's chief executive G. Kirk Raab minced no words. In a letter to Bush hedeclared that the biodiversity treaty "runs the chance of eroding the progress made in protecting American intellectual property rights." The concern over biodiversity for corporatíons is to protect their "right" to own the DNA sequences of life. The biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries are only interested in preserving biological diversity long enough to discover, extract and learn to replícate DNA sequences for profit. Once they have discovered the most profitable genetic information from nature and figured out how to reconstruct those DNA sequences in their laboratories to make products, they will want to elimínate biodiversity from the natural world. For then, they will own all the patents on genetic materials, giving them exclusive "intellectual property rights." They will make even more profit because they will be the only ones manufacturing products based on genetic resources that will no longer exist in the natural world. The next frontier for corporate conquest has begun - life itself. The most hot air occurred on Friday, June 13, when 57 of the 1 16 heads of state that were attending the Summit spoke in a plenary session. Bush was most quoted for saying, "I didn't come here to apologize," and received polite applause. Allen Meyer, from the Union of Concemed Scientists, responded to Bush's speech by saying, "The best you can say about the speech is that the U.S. delegation spent a week and a half lowering expectations - and the President met them." The head of state that got the most applause, and even a standing ovation in the areas where delégales were watching on closed circuit TV, was Fidel Castro. He looked across the room at President Bush, and said, "When the assumed threats of communism no longer exist and there are no pretexts for cold war, arms races and military expenditures, what is it that prevents the immediate use of those resources to foster development in the Third World and to avert the threat of the planet's ecological destruction?" U.S. citizens should be asking this question, as 50.2 cents of every federal income tax dollar is still spent on the military, even though the cold war is over. '92 Global Forum Some positive things happened in Rio, just not at the official Earth Summit. The Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) had a parallel meeting called the '92 Global Forum where over 17,500 registrants representing 7,462 institutions from 167 countries met to address many of the problems causing excess suffering on and with the Earth. The forum was a physical, philosophical and political space created for people, representing civil society (as opposed to government officials). It was a meeting to envision a world that is more just, more equitable and more secure for all and to begin work on fulfilling that visión. Headquarters for this event was the Gloria Hotel. Adjacent to the hotel was Flamengo Park where 35 temporary meeting structures and 600 exhibitors had displays. A special award, the Ostrich Prize, was gi ven by a group of NGOs to the governments that had the worst performance at the Summit. NGOs are considered by the United Nations to be any organization that is not govemmental and even includes the International Chamber of Commerce. The NGOs that were giving this award, however, were grassroots community organizations andnonprofit organizations like the Northem Peoples' Alliance for the Environment, Forum of Brazilian NGOs, Greenpeace, and Friends of the Earth. At fïrst the NGOs were looking for constructive actions by governments, but, finding none, they came up with the Ostrich Prize. The U.S., represented by George Bush, won top honors as a democracy representing corporations, not citizens, by opposing, blocking, and undermining all the initiatives on climate change, biodiversity, biotechnology, models of consumption, weapons of mass destruction and elimination of nuclear waste. Saudi Arabia came in second as a monarchy representing pure greed by opposing any development of renewable energy sources and energy efficiency, by having a destructive attitude in the contact group on the atmosphere and climate, and by cooperating with regressive industrial groups. Americans might want to remember this award as we spend billions of dollars toprotect the oil interests in the Mideast. One of the main mechanisms for NGOs to work together at the Global Forum was the International NGOs and Social Movements Forum: Commitments for the Future. The objectives for this forum were: to develop global mechanisms for NGO cooperation through treaties, altemative institutions, and resource exchanges; to organize responses to Government Organization agreements or non-agree ments of the intergovernmental meet ings; and to respond to needs of NGOs at Rio to teil their stories, raise issues, and share their lessons; to monitor government proceedings and lobby for the posiü'ons of the NGOs and Social Movements on the issues being discussed; and to créate space for the participants to organize their own meetings and dialogues among themselves. During the forum the NGOs finalized over 30 treaties to sign. The treaty making (cm "RMT paga 8) REPORT FROM RIO (f rom page 7) process was designed for NGOs to reach agreements on actions that they were prepared to carry out in their own communities. General Observations The deterioration of the planet will continue to escálate for some time - yet the turn around is not in sight, not in my eyes anyway . It makes one really wonder what is the right thing to be doing. Is it working on a visión of the future and how you would like to see the world healed? Or working to stop the current destruction of the planet by the corporate-multinational-governments? Or do you work on both? And is there energy to work on both? One is really a battle in defense of Earth, the otheris aboutchanging yourself and your community, but they are inseparably related. Perhaps if the NGOs of the world had the time, the resources, the skills and the communication links, strategies could unfold. The Global Forum was an attempt at such a meeting. Was it successful? I don't think any one person knows the answer. Perhaps in a few years positive events will unfold as a result of the meeting, but nothing will happen quickly. Torn Princen, an assistant professor of International Environmental Policy at the University of Michigan, compared this global movement of NGOs to what happened in Eastem Europe. He contends that before things broke loose there, a social movement of people existed who were planning for the future after their governments collapsed. This movement and the coming collapse was invisible to the CIA, the KGB, universities' studies, the think tanks and the main stream media. If one wanted to know about this major historie movement one would have had to look hard in the altemative media and underground press. The same may be true of the global ei vic society forming anew visión around the issue of sustainable development. As I look at the stories in the mainstream press about the events in Rio, the Global Forum ís almost absent from their coverage; yet that is where the hope for a sustainable future may emerge for life on Earth. There is a global crisis in governments because, for the most part, they do not represent the people they claim to represent. Instead, in both the developed nations and the de veloping nations, the heads of govemments are usually a group of elite rich men who are doing the bidding of corporations or sometimes of their own family interests. The official UN conference was a demonstration of how firmly the multinational corporationsareincontroloftheworldeconomy. It is clear that the current leaders of the world's nation states are not about doing what is right, but about extracting the most for the corporations they represent. Russell is the co-director of the Neahtwanta Research and Education Center, housed at the Neahtawanta Inn in Traverse City. The Center is a community based, non-profitorganization working on issues of environment, peace, justice and personal change. This article is excerpted from Synapse, Slimmer Issue 1992, a quarterly publication of the Center. 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