JOHANNESBURG - Civil society and environmental and community development activists remain divided about how best to alleviate world poverty and protect the environment, as they head into the Global Forum of the World Summit for Sustainable Development (WSSD).

The Global Forum is an opportunity for non-governmental and civil society organizations from around the world to meet and sketch their vision of how global poverty can be erased while still protecting the environment and natural resources of the world.

With about 40,000 delegates - optimistically - expected to attend the gathering, it will be the largest of the WSSD meetings. The forum runs from Aug 19 to Sep 4 in the South African city, Johannesburg.

AIDS sufferer Linah Maziya, lays in the sun for warmth outside her home, background, near Magomba, Swaziland, Sunday, Aug. 11, 2002. Health issues and poverty will be points under discussion at the upcoming Word Summit for Sustainable Devlopment being held in Johannesburg August 26 to September 4. (AP Photo/Schlak van Zuydam)

The Global Forum is meant to submit a declaration to the heads of state meeting of the WSSD, for them to consider when they draw-up the official political statement and plan of action for the UN summit.

”It is early days and very difficult to see if we will be able to reach agreement,” says Victor Munnik, a policy analyst with the Civil Society Secretariat, which is charged with organizing the forum. ”The immediate challenge is to overcome the physical fragmentation between delegates, and then see what of their differences are tactical - and can be overcome - and which are principled.”

Because of political differences and practical difficulties, different organizations have set-up camp in different places. Right next to the venue for the UN-endorsed Global Forum, the Social Movements Indaba has set up its own meeting place.

The Social Movements Indaba is a grouping of organizations that do not want anything to do with the official UN process as they believe it is dominated and controlled by governments and big business and will not be able to come up with solutions to the challenge of sustainable development. They are planning their own meetings and protests.

A bit further down the road, the South African-based Landless People's Movement (LPM) has set-up camp for those who want to focus on a single issue - the right of ordinary people to have access to land. They are trying to keep both the Global Forum and the Social Movements Indaba at an arm's length to prevent them taking the focus off the land campaign.

Sounding slightly bemused, Munnik appealed for ”diversity in solidarity, and solidarity in diversity” and for organizations to compromise ”as much as they can live with” so that the Global Forum could come up with a united, broadly supported political declaration.

Munnik sees some chance of the diverse collection of non-governmental, environmental and community development organizations, attending the summit, reaching an agreement. He points out the environmental organizations as politically diverse as Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Fund and the Environmental Justice Network to be overcoming some of their differences ahead of the Global Forum.

”They are working together in a way that I have not seen before,” he comments.

Important groupings like youth, women and indigenous peoples have been meeting ahead of the Global Forum, to come up with positions that will reflect their common interests and concerns. These will be tabled at the forum for inclusion in its political declaration.

The big issue, facing civil society at the Global Forum, is deciding if they can work with global political and financial institutions like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF). Then they have to find ways of defending existing agreements on the protection of the global environment and the alleviation of world poverty; and pushing for increases in international development aid and environmental protection standards, say some activists.

There are also divisions between those organizations who want the forum to rally to the cause of protecting natural resources, while others believe that the only way to protect the environment is to prioritize the social and economic development of communities.

Community and environmental activists also point out that even if civil society manages to hammer out a broadly acceptable political declaration, it is likely that it will demand more in terms of development and environmental protection programs than governments attending the WSSD are going to be ready to concede.

Despite the divisions and the difficulties, World Conservation Union (IUCN) South African representative, Saliem Fakir, says the Global Forum and other events being held around the WSSD will give activists a chance to debate issues in a way, which the diplomatic protocols of the official meetings will not allow.

That alone makes the gathering vital to coming-up with solutions to the challenges of sustainable development, he observes.

Copyright 2002 IPS

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