Tens of thousands of people around the world are expected to join a Global Day of Action Saturday to protest the growing power of corporations and how multinational companies are using the ongoing United Nations World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg, South Africa, for public-relations purposes.

A stream of campaigners march Aug. 31 2002 from the impoverished township of Alexandria to nearby Sandton, Johannesburg, where the UN World Summit on Sustainable Development is taking place. An estimated 10,000 people took part in two marches on anti-globalization, environmental and political issues. (AP Photo/ Saurabh Das)

The protesters are also coming together to highlight the increasingly cozy relationship between the UN and multinational firms which, according to the activists, have become a growing source of partnerships, financing, and other support for the world body.

A recent endorsement by the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) of McDonald's "World Children's Day," November 20, for example, has drawn scathing criticism from prominent public-health professionals and activists who say the fast-food giant is responsible for soaring rates of childhood obesity and cases of diabetes.

"What we're worried about is that many business are draping themselves in the blue of the United Nations in order to get themselves some brownie points to look good to governments, to look like they're doing the right thing around the world, when in fact their actual practices on the ground may be very different to those they profess on paper," Matt Phillipes of Friends of the Earth told an interviewer from the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) at the WSSD this week.

Between 10,000 and 50,000 protesters are preparing to participate in a march from the township of Alexandra to the heavily-restricted WSSD site itself, three miles away in Sandton, where they hope to be received by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. Observers are concerned that the march could result in a confrontation with police despite organizers' assurances that no one with any violent intent will be permitted to take part.

"The global people's march will be a political protest to send a clear and unambiguous message to our leaders that ordinary people can no longer tolerate the current environmentally destructive practices," said Abie Dithake, executive director of the South African National NGO Coalition, which is sponsoring the march. "We can no longer tolerate the continued neglect of the needs of the poor by our political leaders."

Demonstrators are also expected to show up at related events in Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Bogota, Accra, and Tokyo, among other major cities, according to Action for Solidarity, Equality, Environment, and Diversity (ASEED), one of the main sponsors of the global protest.

Corporations and their business associates have shown up at the Johannesburg summit in large numbers, with about 700 companies and some 50 industry chiefs were attending the proceedings, according to Business Action for Sustainable Development (BASD), an association of international chambers of commerce.

Civil society organizations like Greenpeace International have charged that the companies have received preferential access to both the conference site--where they have set up information booths touting their contributions to sustainable development--and to delegates who, as the meeting reaches its final stages next week, will include some 100 heads of state.

On Wednesday, BASD launched a new program to promote more investment by multinationals in poor countries and to press governments in developed countries to lower tariffs and other barriers to exports from developing countries so that they can earn more through trade.

"Business is pushing very hard to bring the barriers down in northern countries," Lord Richard Holme, a former director of Rio Tinto, a leading multinational mining company, told the Financial Times newspaper. "We are absolutely committed to increase access for developing countries into the developed world."

BASD is also helping showcase so-called "partnership initiatives" between multinationals and local governments and community groups, such as a recent campaign involving France's Elf Petroleum company to promote modern farming practices with local community groups in the impoverished but oil-rich Delta region of Nigeria and another partnership between Unilever and the World Wildlife Fund that certifies sustainable fishing practices.

But many groups charge that the companies' presence at the summit amounts only to "greenwash." The companies, they say, are opposed to mandatory international regulation of industries--such as mining, energy, and biotechnology--that environmental groups say are necessary to ensure compliance. Instead, the companies, to the extent they support any international monitoring at all, favor voluntary codes of conduct.

At the summit, for example, the UN will launch its "Global Reporting Initiative" which will call on companies that subscribe to it to report periodically on the environmental sustainability of their operations. Participation in the Initiative by companies will be entirely voluntary, however.

"Corporations are using the WSSD to portray themselves as part of the solution and not the problem," said a statement by ASEED issued Thursday. "The protesters believe that corporations are in fact incapable of being committed to social and environmental change."

Copyright 2002 OneWorld.net

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