Choose Life![1]

A Discussion Paper on the

World Summit on Sustainable Development

by the Alliance for Justice & Peace in Southern Africa[2]

11 June 2002

Contents

1. A Lost Decade
2. The Causes of Un-sustained Development
3. Our Vision for a Better Life

3.1.  Fair Trade & Food Security

3.2.  The New Partnership for Africa’s Development

3.3.  Sustainable Financing for Sustainable Development

4. Sustainable Development

1. A Lost Decade

A decade after the Rio Earth Summit the condition of the global human community has not changed much. The world is still divided between over-consumption and underdevelopment[3], between those who have too much and those who ‘have not’, taking the Earth and the global human community on a destructive path to disaster. It is estimated that more than 1.4 billion people live in dire poverty. Many more live in underdeveloped conditions, trapped in a vicious circle of deprivation[4]. Yet, a few people and nations are extremely wealthy and still want to multiply their use of the earth’s resources.

The 1992 Earth Summit considered plans to promote sustainable development and adopted Agenda 21, a plan of action for sustainable development in the 21^st century. The 1997 Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly reviewed the implementation of Agenda 21 and other agreements reached subsequently. The general conclusion was that the progress in implementing Agenda 21 has been sluggish. In some respects, conditions have deteriorated from where they were ten years ago.

The Alliance for Justice and Peace in Southern Africa presents this discussion document on the World Summit on Sustainable Development as our contribution to building a better future for the world. We are convinced that human progress must be informed by core values that include a deep respect for the integrity of the earth and all creation, and by a firm commitment to ensure the full human development of all people equally according to their inherent human dignity. Our assessment is inspired by the Gospel of Christ and by the social teaching of the church. It is informed by our experience of impoverishment and environmental destruction that is rife throughout the Southern African region.

We have hope for a better future. God equips us to be co-creators of life. God calls all the earth’s people to a radical reorientation for a better life. Both personal conversion and a collective global commitment to sustainable development are required to build a better world. Sustainable development demands that we integrate rather than separate the economic, ecological, and social aspects of the life of the world. This is a matter of justice. The interrelationship between human society, the economy and the environment must be taken into account in determining how the global human community will live together on this one, finite earth as a just, caring, and dignified community.

Under the theme People, Planet, & Prosperity, the World Summit on Sustainable Development proposes to do this. However, the Summit will be ineffective without also addressing the power relations that control the interrelationship between human society, the economy and the environment today.

This integration requires an acknowledgement that economic profit cannot be the only end of our endeavours. It requires that we emphasise our quality of life rather than the quantity of materials we amass to make ourselves more powerful. Without an earth to sustain our life, we would have lost everything. And ‘what benefit is it to anyone to win the whole world and lose his/her very self’?[5]

DISCUSSION QUESTION: Why is it important for us to address the power relations controlling the social, economic, and ecological life of the world today?

2. The Causes of Un-sustained Development

The 1992 Rio Summit marked the global recognition that we must reflect anew on our relationships with each other and with the earth. Little has been accomplished since 1992. However, as the peoples of the earth try to achieve a truly sustainable path of development we grapple with the following issues: unprecedented levels of impoverishment and inequality, depletion of non-renewable resources, unsustainable harvesting of renewable resources, damaging levels and methods of waste discharge, and many others. Something is very wrong with the way we are living as a global human community and something must be done to change our ways.

Firstly, there is need for strong political will to bring about truly sustainable development. If, as the evidence suggests, in the latter years of the twentieth century there was very little development, the reasons are not only economic. Political considerations are of primary relevance, ‘for the decisions which either accelerate or slow down the development of peoples are really political in character’.[6] Unfortunately, after analysing the situation we must conclude that this political will to ensure even, effective, and sustainable development is lacking.

                  However, an analysis limited to the economic and political causes of underdevelopment and over-development would be incomplete. It is necessary to uncover the moral causes that, with respect to the behaviour of individuals who are the agents of development, retard human progress. While the financial, scientific, and technical resources are available which, with the necessary concrete political decisions, ought to help lead peoples to true development, the primary obstacles to real development will be overcome only by means of good moral choices.[7]

The greatest moral crisis in the world today consists precisely in this: that the ones who possess much are few and those who possess almost nothing are many. This represents the moral failure to justly distribute the goods and services originally intended for all.[8]  A few wealthy individuals and nations control the global financial and trade markets to their own benefit and the detriment of the earth, neglecting millions of people living in poverty. A new moral framework that puts people and the earth above economic growth and wealth accumulation is required if we are to achieve sustainable development.

DISCUSSION QUESTION: How do moral choices shape our sustainable development plans?

3. Our Vision for A Better Life

True development is not simply about the accumulation of wealth and the greater availability of goods and services. It must also give attention to enabling the poor to benefit from the availability of goods and services, as well as to the social, cultural and spiritual dimensions of human development. True human development includes a fresh awareness that we are part of the earth and we must therefore adjust our behaviour and systems to care for the earth.

            We want a development that works to overcome the scandal that humanity is still unnecessarily split in two by poverty and that the whole creation is split between the human and non-human. There is an urgent need to reconsider the models that inspire our current development policies. This includes both a revision of the values and priorities that our development model sets, and consequent changes to the systems and structures that give expression to our development model.

We want a development that ensures international cooperation not only in terms of development aid, but more as an expression of global social solidarity. Human solidarity recognises the poor as the agents of their own development and enables the greatest number of people to exercise their human creativity, their agency, on which the wealth of nations is dependent.[9] Global human solidarity leads us to a greater respect for our earth environment. It also transforms the nature of the power relations that currently limit the possibilities for real development.

We want to be part of a development that will address both the supply and demand sides of production and consumption; will promote the use of renewable resources; will give back to the earth what we have taken from it by recycling and replenishing resources. We want to be part of a world that gives protection to the diversity of species that maintain our ecosystems.[10]

DISCUSSION QUESTION: Why do we need to rethink our current development model?

3.1. Fair Trade & Food Security

The area in which the interrelation between our social, environmental, and economic relations is most apparent today is international trade, especially agricultural trade.

Rich countries give $1 billion each day in subsidies to their agricultural products[11], leading to massive over-production of agricultural products that are dumped on African economies. This drives down prices for agricultural products so that underdeveloped countries get far less for their products than their actual worth. In addition, when poor countries export products to rich countries they face high trade tariffs designed to protect rich country industries. In a classic example of double standards, this causes poor countries to lose more than $100 billion a year – double what they get in development aid from rich countries. At the same time underdeveloped countries are under strong pressure from rich countries in the World Trade Organisation to rapidly remove trade protections from their vulnerable industries such as agriculture. This is the kind of development model that is currently being promoted.

However, even though market access for African products is a big problem for under-developed countries, the focus on access to European and North American markets is an inaccurate identification of the central problem for poor countries in the global trading system. The real problem is the indiscriminate removal of protections on trade in industry, services, agriculture and agro-genetic resources enforced upon Africa in the WTO, leading to increased food insecurity, the closure of small-scale farms in favour of big agribusiness monopolies that pollute and over-work the land, job losses by farm workers and the conversion of permanent jobs to seasonal work.

Sustainable development requires the reorientation of production from export agriculture led by big corporate interests to small-farm based production primarily for the local needs and protected by tariffs and quotas from unfair competition by subsidized products dumped by the Northern countries.[12] A real development framework should protect the rights of small-scale African farmers to access, save, use, exchange, sell and breed their seeds, plants, food crops and other agro-genetic resources as envisioned, for example, in the Africa Model Legislation.[13]

International trade is today presented as the key to sustainable development, but it is characterized by double standards and unfair terms. Sustainable development requires fair trade that recognises the moral imperative to give greater protection and food security to those who are most vulnerable.

Twelve million people today suffer from famine in Southern Africa. This is not simply an unpredictable natural disaster. Food shortages in the region were predicted almost two years ago. Starvation in Southern Africa is also about the unjust distribution of resources in the world and about global pollution-related climate changes that affect the poor first.[14]

DISCUSSION QUESTION: Why should we give special protection to small-scale farmers today?

3.2. The New Partnership for Africa’s Development

Africa’s social, economic, and political relations urgently need to be transformed through a focused and determined international effort if Africa is to be lifted out of the poverty trap. The New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) presents itself as a visionary and dynamic initiative by a core group of new generation African leaders to reconstruct and develop the continent. NEPAD gives some attention to environmental concerns, mostly in the areas of water affairs and counteracting desertification, conservation of natural heritage sites, and monitoring the impact of climate change.

But NEPAD’s vision is blurred by fixing its sights on increased global integration and rapid private sector growth as the answer to overcoming poverty, and by its failure to engage with Africa’s people to transform the continent. The remarkable political will generated by NEPAD must be focused into a participatory transformation of Africa through direct, immediate, and decisive action to overcome the causes of Africa’s impoverishment.

The church must participate with energy and commitment in Africa’s reconstruction and development. The church is committed to engaging with Africa’s legitimate political leaders in the interests of the common good of Africa’s development.  We are called by God, together with all people of faith and good will, to restore our collective vision for ‘a new heaven and a new earth’ no less than we are called to bring individual or personal healing and peace.[15]

DISCUSSION QUESTION: Why should the church participate with energy and commitment in programmes for sustainable development?

3.3. Sustainable Financing for Sustainable Development

Finally we want to be in a world where apartheid-caused debts in Southern Africa are cancelled. These debts block the achievement of sustainable development. The debt is immoral and illegitimate and should be cancelled as a precondition for sustainable development. Real debt cancellation will provide reliable and direct budget support to underdeveloped countries that require resources for sustained development. The current mechanisms for providing development financing are politically problematic and economically unreliable. They are not guaranteed to be sustainable. Nor are the current initiatives for debt relief delivering sufficient additional budget resources for sustainable development.

The current global financial system is characterised by highly unstable and unpredictable fluctuations, driven primarily by currency speculation that severely damages the development gains made by many underdeveloped countries to the extent that whole national economies can be ruined. International currency transactions currently amounting to $1.6 trillion a day should be controlled through the introduction of a minimal international currency transaction tax. Such a tax would raise sufficient resources to finance effective poverty eradication programmes and provide protection to vulnerable economies.

DISCUSSION QUESTION: Who should pay for poverty eradication programmes? Why?

4. Sustainable Development

Sustainable development demands a new commitment to global solidarity, not simply a feeling of vague compassion or shallow distress at the misfortunes of the poor and the earth. Solidarity entails a firm and persevering determination to commit ourselves to the common good because we are all responsible for all, based on the solid conviction that the all-consuming desire for profit and the thirst for power at any price are hindering full and responsible development in our world today.[16]

 Sustainable development cannot be exclusionary. It demands the full participation of civil society and especially local communities in development. Such participation not only appropriately informs development plans but is also necessary for the sustained success of development.

We therefore make the following recommendations for sustainable development in regard to the World Summit:

§         That foreign debts of under-developed countries should be cancelled outright as a precondition for sustainable development;

§         That the rights of small-scale farmers to access, save, use, exchange, sell and breed their seeds, plants, food crops and other agro-genetic resources must be protected by the agreements governing international trade;

§         That an international moratorium be declared on trade in genetically-modified agricultural products until the human health and environmental impacts of such products are thoroughly researched;

§         That measures be strengthened in the international trading system to give special protection to vulnerable agricultural and other industries in underdeveloped countries;

§         That an international currency transaction tax be implemented to finance poverty eradication programmes and protect vulnerable emerging economies;

§         That measures be introduced in all countries, especially those who consume the most, to promote the use of renewable resources as a substitute for non-renewable resources, and that incentives be introduced for the recycling of non-renewable resources for which there are no renewable substitutes;

• That quotas, coupled with strict penalties for those who exceed them, be introduced for the extraction and use of natural resources such as forests;
• That the building of nuclear power stations and the utilisation of nuclear power be banned. At present the inability to ensure the safety of the nuclear plants and to dispose of radioactive waste is posing a serious threat to the health of humans and to the whole environment;

§         That multinational companies and institutions be bound by protective labour, waste, and environmental laws as against the current trend where multinationals and their products are being given increasing exemption from such laws; and

§         That a global development model be accepted by the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the World Trade Organisation, the World Economic Forum, the G7[17] and all countries, that invests in sustainable human development rather than rapid economic growth to the detriment of humanity and the earth.

DISCUSSION QUESTION: Why should we ensure that workers and the environment are given greater protection against multinational corporation?

We believe that these are necessary measures for the World Summit on Sustainable Development to introduce, without which we would have little hope for a better world. However, we realise that even all these measures together are insufficient to guarantee sustainable development. Real development depends on us – the choices we make, our willingness to get involved in building a better world, the extent to which we engage with legitimate leaders to build transparency, accountability, and social trust, and the depth of our spiritual maturity in relating to each other and the earth. We are ready to meet these challenges. We equally implore the World Summit on Sustainable Development: Choose Life!