The Memorandum has been Heinrich Boell Foundation's contribution to the debate on both the desired outcomes of the Summit and the critical path for the sustainable development agenda in the next decade.
We published this Memorandum a few months before the Summit, at a critical juncture of renewed political momentum. The Jo'burg Memo was available as an input for the deliberations of NGOs, experts, and governments preparing for Johannesburg. With such a thought piece, the foundation hoped to foment self-reflection within the NGO community and to promote the dialogue between non-governmental activists, open-minded managers and political representatives. Last not least, the foundation wanted to offer a visible contribution to the formation of an informed and critical world public around the World Summit 2002.
The Memorandum raises the central but oft-forgotten question ”Development yes, but what kind of development and for whom?” Its recommendations are grounded firmly in the principles of ecological sustainability and equity. The text concentrates on elaborating on the mutual and intricate relationship of ecology and equity, while not pretending that it deals exhaustively with poverty eradication in all its manifold dimensions. It combines a critical account of the post-Rio decade with a rich set of proposals how to change the paradigms of unsustainable development and to promote civic, social and environmental rights. In spite of different views on the ongoing process of globalisation the authors agree about the urgent need to re-integrate markets in a framework of social and environmental regulations and limitations on a local, regional, national and global level. The demand for a redistribution of rights and resources stands in the very centre of the memorandum.
The composition of the Memorandum’s authorship reflects the diversity of our international network, from North and South, from East and West, from NGOs, science, politics, and business. The meetings of the authors were convened in both the venues of the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio and the forthcoming Johannesburg Summit, as well as Berlin, the capital of an EU Member State whose government has started to take serious steps towards translating sustainability into concrete policy. The work of the Group has resulted in the 84 page memorandum and has been presented to the international public at the PrepComm III in New York. Subsequently, the memorandum has been disseminated in several languages. In the months prior to the World Summit and during the Summit itself, the foundation used the memorandum as an instrument for launching debates in various places and contexts.
THE MEMO IN BRIEF
The UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio 1992 launched ”sustainable development” as a new name for progress. The idea caught on worldwide, but the results thus far have been mixed. After ten years, in August 2002, the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg will be an occasion for reflection and reassessment. At this occasion, the international community will try to address the challenges posed by chronic poverty and resource-hungry affluence.
This Memorandum suggests an agenda for equity and ecology for the decade to come. It has been drafted by a group of 16 independent activists, intellectuals, managers, and politicians who were brought together by the Heinrich Böll Foundation in order to contribute to the global debate from a civil society perspective. It is neither a political platform nor an expert study, but a ”memorandum” in the true sense of the word; it attempts to state what we feel must be kept in mind.
Southern countries – foremost the host country South Africa – intend Johannesburg to be a development rather than an environment summit. This is fully justified, given the systematic neglect of equity and fairness in world politics. Yet, it would be a regression of sorts, a retreat from Rio, if this were to result in further neglect for the state of the Biosphere. On the contrary, this Memorandum argues that it is high time that the South (along with economies in transition) embrace the environmental challenge. Environmental care is key for ensuring livelihood and health for the marginalized sections of the world’s citizenry. In fact, there can be no poverty eradication without ecology. Moreover, an environmental strategy is indispensable for moving beyond the hegemonic shadow of the North, leapfrogging beyond fossil-based development patterns which are now historically obsolete.
Part 1 -- Rio in Retrospect -- appraises the 10 years that have passed after the Rio Conference. It points out the paradox of how the Rio process has launched a number of successful institutional processes, without, however, producing tangible global results. In particular, economic globalization has largely washed away gains made on the micro level, spreading an exploitative economy across the globe and exposing natural resources in the South and in Russia to the pull of the world market.
Part 2 -- The Johannesburg Agenda -- identifies four background themes which ought to run through all the debates at the Summit. Above all else, this question is critical: what does fairness mean within a finite environmental space? On the one hand, fairness calls for enlarging the rights of the poor to their habitats, while on the other hand, it calls for cutting back the claims of the rich to resources. The interests of local communities in maintaining their livelihoods often collide with the interests of urban classes and corporations to expand consumption and profits. These resource conflicts will not be eased unless the economically well-off on the globe move towards resource-productive patterns of production and consumption.
Part 3 -- Livelihood Rights -- counters the conventional wisdom that poverty eradication is at odds with environmental care. On the contrary, livelihoods cannot be maintained unless access to land, seeds, forests, grasslands, fishing grounds, and water is secured. Moreover, pollution of air, soils, water, and food chronically undermines the physical health of the poor, in particular in cities. Environmental protection, therefore, is not a contradiction to poverty elimination, but its condition. With regard to the poor, there will be no equity without ecology. Given that resource conservation is based on stronger community rights, also the reverse is true: there will be no ecology without equity.
Part 4 -- Fair Wealth -- emphasizes that poverty alleviation cannot be separated from wealth alleviation. The global environmental space is unequally divided; obtaining more resource rights for the low-consumers in the world implies reducing the resource claims of over-consumers in North and South. The affluent will have to move towards resource-light styles of wealth. This is not just a matter of ecology, but of justice; otherwise the majority of world citizens remains deprived of their fair share of the natural patrimony. As both the climate and the biodiversity convention suggest with regard to nations, there will be no equity without ecology. Conversely, there will be no ecology without equity because agreements will
Part 5 -- Governance for Ecology and Equity -- proposes changes in institutional frameworks at the international level for strengthening environmental stewardship and livelihood rights.
- Rights. Democratizing governance systems is the best way to protect the environment. A framework convention on the resource rights of local communities would consolidate the rights of the inhabitants of resource-rich areas, whose livelihoods are threatened by mining, oil, logging, and other extractive industries. Furthermore, environmental rights – including the right to full information, consumer rights, and the precautionary, prevention and polluter pays principle – must be enshrined into law at all levels.
- Price Structures. Market prices must better reflect the true nature of environmental costs. Full cost accounting requires the removal of environmentally perverse subsidies as well as tax reform, where taxes are shifted from labor to resource consumption, pollution, and waste. Full cost accounting also requires user fees for the global commons, in particular the atmosphere, the sky and the seas. Full cost pricing will ensure that economic decisions are made with minimal environmental impacts.
- Market Governance. International trade regimes must foster sustainability and fairness, not just economic efficiency. From this viewpoint, WTO-style market liberalization threatens social coherence, undermines food security and threatens ecosystems everywhere. What is needed between North and South is not free trade, but fair trade. Free trade must be subservient to the larger causes of human rights and sustainability. This means that nations should have more opportunities to regulate trade for the protection of the public good. This also requires that environmental treaties must have priority over trade agreements. Furthermore, both trade relations and the conduct of economic actors must be adjusted to promote human rights and sustainability. Over and above verifiable corporate codes of conduct, a framework of socially accountable production is called for, whose principles apply to all commercial activities. Finally, the global financial architecture should be overhauled along with a speculative currency exchange tax, debt relief and expanded electronic cross-border barter trade.
- Institutional Innovations. A new historical agenda must be embedded in new institutions. First, UNEP must be upgraded into a World Environment Organization. Second, a decentrally organized International Renewable Energy Agency must be established. And finally, the Memorandum argues in favor of an International Court of Arbitration.
The Memorandum is available in fifteen languages available at the homepage of Jo’burg Memo.
Read the Jo’burg-Memo in English (PDF, 84 pages, 670 KB)
A printed Urdu version can be obtained from our office in Lahore.
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