When Johannesburg hosts the World Summit on Sustainable Development
(WSSD) next week, it will be hosting three conferences: one for
official delegates, one for "civil society," and one for those unable
to pay the US$150 registration fee to qualify for membership to
"civil society." This three-tiered arrangement of the conferences
tells an uncomfortable story of bureaucratic power, control and
resistance, one that is very much of our time.
To understand what's going on, it's worth reading between the lines
of the official pronouncements that have been published in the run up
to the Summit. And if we look at the bevy of press releases and
research findings from the World Bank, the WSSD secretariat and
others, we find that the Summit's sponsors have come up with an earth
shattering idea, one that diagnoses-and purports to
treat-environmental problems the world over. The idea is this:
special interest groups are bad for the environment.
Okay, so it's not such an earth shattering idea. But there's some
merit in it. Consider industrial lobbies. They are able to have their
way because they are small, well organised, and have every incentive
to avoid paying for costly environmentally-friendly change. One need
only look to the Bush administration's cosy relationship with the
U.S. energy industry for evidence. If only this unrepresentative
power of small groups could be managed, the environment would
flourish-or so the argument runs.
Have a look at that again. It's a magnificent piece of blamestorming.
This logic tars both industrial interest groups and small progressive
organisations with the same brush, not because of their politics,
power, or relationship to society or the environment but because they
are both small.
This couches environmental problems as a battle between small and big
groups. Political issues take a back seat. Size is the important
factor here. Thus, small groups such as Food First, the Environmental
Defense Fund, or Greenpeace, their massive subscriber base
notwithstanding, count as small special interest groups. As such,
they come in for the same policy prescription, the same levelling
discipline. Having diagnosed that only size matters, the
international institutions safeguarding the environment, together
with their corporate partners, present their cure: increase the
international policing of domestic politics. This focus on small
groups provides a license to fight not only the small but immensely
powerful industrial interest groups, but also the small and much less
powerful groups that constitute civil society at home and abroad. And
this strikes at the heart of democracy.
If this interpretation is correct, we might expect to see a schism in
the public sphere between those groups and agencies willing to
cooperate with corporate interests and those who are not. The word
for this process is "partnership." And there's a great deal of it
around. At the Johannesburg summit itself, the "civil society"
secretariat has sought corporate funding. The International Chambers
of Commerce and the World Business Council for Sustainable
Development for their part have been exceptionally promiscuous,
partnering with the UN, the World Bank, some NGOs and a smattering of
academic institutions to demonstrate that, if business is left free
from the shackles of state regulation, it can consummate its affairs
responsibly.
The orgy of partnerships at the WSSD (and almost every other major
multilateral event of late) might make us want to think again about
Margaret Mead's oft-quoted soundbite: "Never doubt that a small group
of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's
the only thing that ever has." Although this slogan has been recited
as a hard-times mantra by embattled progressives the world over, it's
a double-edged slogan. It provides too much succour to those whose
trust in people's ability to choose action rather than free-riding
wavers more than it ought. It is also incorrect.
Many of the finest moments in history have come not from a group of
well organised individuals, but the collective actions of hundreds of
thousands. Whether this action has been in the home, in the fields,
in the factories, or in the classroom, populism and mass action
remain important. In light of the large-scale mobilisations around
the World Bank, World Trade Organization and corporate rule over the
past five years, the most appropriate response to the corporate
take-over of the WSSD is also demonstrably feasible: a blaze of mass
politics.
Dr. Patel is a policy analyst at the Institute for Food and Development
Policy, also known as Food First, based in Oakland, California. http://www.foodfirst.org
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