"Business is happy to work with others to deliver and make sure we address
the environment issues and we look at the social side," said Mark Moody-Stuart,
former chief executive of Shell and head of Business Action for Sustainable Development.
BASD represents about 200 corporations in Johannesburg, including automakers,
chemicals groups and oil majors.
The summit is expected to bless partnerships between governments, companies
and other groups to get together to solve problems including access to clean water,
energy or healthcare or to improve policies on green agriculture or biodiversity.
Many environmentalists are skeptical, saying the partnerships could be a backdoor
way for governments to shirk responsibility and give big business opportunities
to profit from expensive, privatized services ranging from water supply to electricity.
Delegates from poor nations at the summit, which focused on environmentally
friendly agriculture on Tuesday, say the United States is leading resistance to
their calls for more aid and new timetables to meet goals of halving poverty and
hunger by 2015.
NO BLIND MARKET
Poul Nielson, the European Union's Commissioner for Development and Humanitarian
Aid, denied that the 15 nations were pushing rampant capitalist remedies: "The
EU is not blindly accepting the market is the only way to do things," he said.
Inside, many delegates at the World Summit on Sustainable Development blasted
rich countries for giving about a billion dollars a day in subsidies to their
farmers -- six times aid handouts to poor states totaling about $54 billion a
year.
"We're subsidizing farmers in the north to the tune of $1 billion a day to
preserve some very valid goals like a way of life," said University of California
professor Pedro Sanchez.
"Can we take a piece of this billion dollars a day that European and North
American farmers are getting...and put it toward ending hunger and poverty in
the developing world?" he asked to loud applause in the plenary hall for negotiations.
An end to farm subsidies in rich states would also enable poor countries to
export more products -- ranging from textiles to cocoa -- and earn more foreign
exchange to help development.
But the United States recently increased agricultural subsidies while the European
Union is bitterly divided over French-led resistance to cuts in its massive subsidy
program.
Noting World Bank figures calculating that giving them more access to Western
markets could benefit developing countries to the tune of $150 billion a year
-- almost treble what they get in aid -- British Environment Secretary Margaret
Beckett told delegates that London strongly favored reform of EU subsidies.
Members of non-governmental organizations accused organizers of changing rules
to restrict their access to the heavily guarded convention center in Johannesburg,
forcing them to queue while corporate delegates swept past.
Summit organizers denied tightening up access to the plush, marble-floored
conference center in Sandton, an area ringed by slums, saying they were struggling
to manage about 16,000 delegates for a building that can take only about 7,000
people.
"We have tried not to close the doors to anybody who has a legitimate reason
to be here," said Susan Markham, spokeswoman for the organizers. NGO delegates
had to get special tags, as well as passes, to get in. Some grumbled that the
neighboring mall was dominated by a huge display for German BMW luxury cars.
NOT HOT AIR?
But summit Secretary General Nitin Desai rejected widespread predictions that
the meeting's draft 77-page conclusions will be mainly hot air. "This conference
will be different," he told South African public radio. "The focus is very much
on action."
Desai said the summit had a better chance of success than a landmark summit
in Rio de Janeiro a decade ago because it was building on U.N. agreements made
in 2000 such as halving hunger and poverty by 2015. Though not legally binding,
the U.N. hopes governments feel obliged to honor pledges made so publicly.
More than 100 world leaders are due in Johannesburg for next week's finale,
hoping to sign up to a plan to revive the spirit of Rio that led to projects to
protect the planet from threats including global warming and the spread of deserts.
But criticisms of watered-down proposals and President George Bush's absence
has raised fears the summit could result in little more than a rehash of the pledges
made in recent years.
South African newspapers, meanwhile, focused on a planned crackdown by South
African police on any demonstrations with one editorial saying that the roughly
10,000 extra police drafted into one of Africa's most crime-ridden cities should
stay.
"We need these police full time," the Citizen said. "Our needs are not less
than those of pampered VIPs." Police have clamped down hard on small protests
but organizers said they still planned to go ahead with a big, banned march on
Saturday.
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