Why is the European Union so
strongly in favour of a forest
convention? , I recently asked Jorgen
Steen Neilsen, the editor of Information,
a highly respected daily in Copenhagen,
and a highly respected environment
journalist himself. The issue of a forest
convention is being raked up again and
is certain to come up in the special session of the UN General Assembly
(UNGASS) to be held later in June. As the
UNGASS is scheduled to take place only a
few days after a G-7 (the Group of Seven
powerful industrialised nations) meeting in Denver, us, several leaders of the industrialised world, including us president Bill Clinton, are expected to attend the UN meeting and they will probably have a coordinated position.
But despite the high-profile character
of the New York meeting, Neilsen knew
nothing about the European Union's
(Eu) strong position in favour of a forest
convention. The idea of a convention
had been strongly rejected by developing
countries, including India, in the Rio
conference five years ago. I am intrigued
why countries like Finland, which have a
strong forest industry, are pushing such a
convention. Is it being pushed by some
shadowy countries like Finland and
Canada because they want to set up systems to protect their timber trade and forest industry, or is it truly to protect the
world's forests? If indeed the objective is
the first one, it should be taken up in the
World Trade Organization (WTO) and
not as a multilateral environment treaty.
The advantage that these nations would
get by setting up a multilateral treaty is
that its trade provisions would allow
sanctions against errant nations outside
the rules of the WTO.
Nobody really knows why this convention is being proposed by its protagonists. No position papers are ever put
out in international negotiations by
countries. Therefore, an observer has to
keep guessing the motivations. There is
a smokescreen around the forest convention issue because in NGO Circuits, the key issue discussed in the context of the forest convention is forest conservation, not trade in forest products.
Neilsen pleaded total ignorance. "We
rarely come t4'know what countries are
taking which positions and why," he said.
Neilsen and I then walked over to a meeting and met several Danish environmentalists. Again, there was considerable lack
of information. In fact, next day at a
meeting of 100-odd Danish environmentalists held to discuss the progress made in the five years after Rio, I had to point
out that the international negotiations
had become disempowering for the civil
society. Even though the Rio conference
has generally changed the rules of NGO
participation in the UN and made the system much more open, the vast distance between the negotiating capitals and the rest of the world means that the negotiations remain shrouded in mystery. And if Demmank's civil society, with its wealth
and access to Information systems, can
feel disempowered, one can imagine the
state of the South's civil society. The global civil society had put the environmental issue on the platter of international diplomacy. But now, the very nature of distance has disempowered civil society from intervening in this diplomacy -
except for few mega-NGOS in the North
and, even less so in the South.
Why is it so necessary to keep a watch on these negotiations? For two very simple reasons. These negotiations are the
result of the process of economic growth
and economic globalisation. Both together are not only linking the world economically but also taking production and consumption levels to a point that they are threatening the world's ecology.
Ecological globalisation is the direct result of economic growth and economic globalisation. Countries recognise that many ecological problems cannot be solved by one country alone. Others have to join in.
But a country's politicians are not interested in saving global ecology. There are no votes in that. Even in the industrialised world, very few. So governments come to these negotiations
with a single objective in mind: let us
negotiate in a way that our national
economy is least affected. So the governments gather to save their economies
rather than the global ecology. Developing countries then -throw a spanner
in the works by arguing that "we never
created the problem, you did". A point
that is often true. But transnational corporations of industrialised countries then tell their leaders that in an economically globalised world, they cannot act on their own. Everyone must join in.
The Business Council on Sustainable
Development played a key role in pre-Rio
days in convincing the transnational corporate community that environmental costs can be taken care of without losing competitiveness, if there is a level playing
field. So environmental constraints, they
argue, must be shared by all companies
across the world. Leaders of developed
countries then do their best to get leaders
of developing countries on board an
environmental treaty. The latter have a
simple response: We are prepared to do
anything as long as you give us additional
aid and new technology.
Then begin the true, behind-the-scene negotiations. Because in this scenario, governments and diplomats
quickly forget that they are building up
global environmental governance systems - on principles of governance, that is, democracy, justice and equality
- and quickly fall into a pattern of
'business transactions' - a mode of
cooperation in which two parties benefit
mutually while others can go to hell.
And with the negotiations so far off,
the civil society has no knowledge of the
politics of these negotiations, nor is it in
a position to intervene. Thus, there is an
urgent need to improve information
flow in this area, something like a global
environmental watchdog alerting the
global civil society to the designs of our
governments. It is a tough task but we
have to solve it nonetheless.
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