wfn.org | WCC Update: WSSD PrepCom in Bali (2)

["Sheila Mesa" <smm@wcc-coe.org>]

World Council of Churches
Update 02-16
For Immediate Use
29 May 2002

"It's all about power":
Ecumenical team at WSSD PrepCom underscores the need to regulate
corporate power 

cf WCC Press Update PR-02-15 of 27 May 2002
cf WCC Press Release PR-02-04 of 29 January 2002

As the negotiations at the 4th Preparatory Committee to the
World Summit on Sustainable Development (PrepCom4 WSSD) proceed,
one issue takes centre stage: the consolidation and expansion of
political and corporate power. "It is time to acknowledge this,"
says Wendy Flannery from the Sisters of Mercy. 

An ecumenical team of more than 15 people from World Council of
Churches (WCC) member churches and associated ecumenical
organizations is attending the PrepCom taking place in Bali,
Indonesia from 27 May to 7 June. The Summit itself will take
place in Johannesburg, South Africa, in August. Sr Flannery was
speaking as a team member at a 29 May press conference jointly
organized by the Government of Fiji, the WCC, the South African
Council of Churches, Christian Aid and the ecumenical team. 

The debt issue, as seen from an ecological perspective, is high
on the team's agenda. Martin Robra from the WCC's "Justice, Peace
and Creation" team, explains: "People and Jubilee movements call
for the cancellation of foreign debt. But we should not only
question the legitimacy of the foreign debt of indebted countries
in the South. We should also recognize what the North owes the
South after centuries of colonialism, slavery and exploitation of
natural resources, as well as the resulting ecological debt - a
debt that accumulated over the centuries and continues to do so
at an ever-accelerating speed."

The ecumenical team recommends the identification and
quantification of the historical, social and ecological debts
owing to the peoples and countries of the South, not only in
monetary terms, but in terms of the contamination and destruction
of the affected communities' sources of life and sustenance.

Shanthi Sachithanandam from Christian Aid in the UK takes a
critical look at the issue of energy: "Low-cost energy and cheap
access to resources are seen as fuelling economic development.
Highly industrialized countries gave those 
providing energy and other essential resources of industrial
production special privileges and power. The lessons learned in
the past about the dangers of global warming and climate change
and measures taken, such as the Kyoto Protocol, are being taken
off the agenda. They have been replaced by the naive promise of
"energy for all" without sufficient consideration for the need to
move away from the carbon- and nuclear-based development path. 

Regarding energy the ecumenical team recommends:
- ensuring Indigenous Peoples' communities access to and control
of their land and resources, including the repeal or reform of
unjust mining policies and laws, and a moratorium on new
applications for large-scale extraction activities and land
acquisition in Indigenous Peoples' territories;
- a global moratorium on exploration for new oil and coal
deposits;
- phasing out of nuclear energy plants everywhere in the world;
- adopting and implementing the recommendations of the World
Commission on Dams with regard to hydro-power projects involving
large-scale dams;
- giving priority in the generation and use of energy for
appropriate, affordable, ecologically-sustainable and accessible
energy for the world's poorest people, reaching a level of at
least 10% of sustainable renewables in 2007 and 25% in 2012.

Looking ahead from Bali to the Summit in Johannesburg, Sipho
Mtetwa of the South African Council of Churches asks: "While we
are here negotiating text in Bali, the questions being asked back
home in Africa are: Who is the World Summit going to benefit?
Will it benefit the people of townships like Soweto and Alexandra
outside Johannesburg?"
 
Communities in the global South have been and are continually
being plundered through various forms of extraction and
exploitation. Extractive systems, economies, social processes and
methodologies from the North have grossly undermined these
communities' sustainability, and that often in the name of
sustainable development. Currently unequal power relations, the
expansion of corporate power and corporate-driven globalization
based on greed and profit motives have engendered abject poverty,
social disintegration, economic fragmentation and environmental
degradation.

More and more, the WSSD process is using the rhetoric of
partnership, a concept that is of value within the lives of
families and communities. True partnership is a relationship
between equals. The first day of the multi-stakeholder dialogue
in Bali saw the confrontation between those who promote
privatization of services and social and public goods, such as
water, and others opposing it. The latter point to exclusion and
marginalization as detrimental consequences of privatization. And
they oppose the expansion of corporate power into even more vital
areas of life. Accountability to the public at large, and
regulative frameworks for corporations are required before
genuine partnerships can be formed.

Regarding corporate power the ecumenical team recommends:
- a regulatory framework for transnational corporations, as
proposed in the vice-chairman's implementation text, including
mandatory compliance of transnational corporations with
principles of corporate social and environmental responsibility,
operational transparency, accountability, allowing access to
information, and conformity with enforceable codes of conduct;
- re-institution of the UN Commission on Transnational
Corporations.

Regarding climate change the team recommends:
- ratification of the Kyoto Protocol by the time of the
Johannesburg Summit and implemntation thereafter;
- initiation at the earliest possible date of a new round of
negotiations on the reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

For further information contact:

Dr Martin Robra or Sister Wendy Flannery
At the Bali Gardenia Suites, Bali:  Tel: +62 361-773 808; fax:
+62 361-773 737
Mobile phone for Dr Robra: +62 812-367-9578
Email: baligardenia@bali-travelnet.com , marked "for attention"
of either Robra or Flanagan.

WCC Media Relations office (Geneva) : Rev Bob Scott : Tel:
41-22-791 6166 or 41-79-304 7612

**********

The World Council of Churches (WCC) is a fellowship of churches,
now 342, in more than 100 countries in all continents from
virtually all Christian traditions. The Roman Catholic Church is
not a member church but works cooperatively with the WCC. The
highest governing body is the assembly, which meets approximately
every seven years. The WCC was formally inaugurated in 1948 in
Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Its staff is headed by general
secretary Konrad Raiser from the Evangelical Church in Germany.

World Council of Churches
Media Relations Office
Tel: (41 22) 791 6153 / 791 6421
Fax: (41 22) 798 1346
E-mail: ka@wcc-coe.org 
Web: www.wcc-coe.org 

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