With discussions on the verge of meltdown and amidst a last minute scramble to formulate meaningful agreements, the Johannesburg Summit on Sustainable Development finally drew to a close this week. The event promised to focus on ‘people, planet and prosperity’, but against a backdrop of the world’s worst food crisis in over a decade, a no show from the US President and faltering negotiations on climate change, there were grave doubts that real consensus would be reached on any important issues.

Typically, the summit was met with damning criticism and wholehearted praise in equal measure. Many delegates were quick to call the meeting a success, while environmentalists and NGOs saw it as simply the latest chapter in a catalogue of missed opportunities at world summits. The overall impression was one of mixed messages, with back-pedaling in one direction compromising positive initiatives in the other.

One crucial struggle saw the United States and the European Union locking horns over the issue of agricultural subsidies. Western agricultural subsidies amount to almost $1 billion per day – more than six times as much as is given to the developing world in direct aid. Whist many delegates sided with Ian Johnson, the Vice President of the World Bank, who described current levels of subsidization as ‘untenable’, the US was firmly against setting any definitive targets on alleviating the problems of agricultural protectionism.

Some groups have argued that wholesale dismantling of agricultural subsidies would be dangerous, but a recent report by Oxfam maintains that the subsidies of the West are making it impossible for poorer countries, like Swaziland, to gain a much needed foothold in world food markets. The EU gives handouts to farmers to grow sugar, which could be produced at a third of the price in southern Africa. Swaziland, South Africa, Malawi and Zambia are all capable of producing low cost sugar for the world market but all are effectively priced out by subsidized European producers, leaving them unable to break into potentially lucrative markets in North America and the Middle East. “This means that an agricultural commodity that could play a real part in poverty alleviation in southern Africa does not do so.” Oxfam said. “European consumers are paying to destroy livelihoods in some of the world’s poorest countries.”

The involvement of multinational corporations in the summit was another matter of contention, and one that many NGOs believed threatened to undermine the entire event. Most leaders backed the view voiced by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, that progress on global issues can only be ensured if business works in partnership with groups protecting the environmental and social interests of the developing world. But the scepter of trade liberalization and privatization of services, under the auspices of the World Trade Organization, the World Bank and the IMF, loomed large in the background. Whilst some progress was made towards a declaration making businesses accountable to a set of ethical regulations, these proposals were blocked and watered-down. The Eco Equity Coalition of NGOs (which incorporates Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and the WWF) dubbed the summit agreement on trade and globalization as “abysmal”. There was, however, one positive note in a decision to block a sentence ensuring international agreements such as the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change, would be subservient to WTO decisions. Most significant for Swaziland was an agreement to prevent a WTO accord on patents stopping poorer countries providing medicines for all – a move that keeps open the potential for the introduction of cheaper retroviral AIDS drugs.
The Business Action for Sustainable Development (BASD), a new group representing hundreds of transnational corporations set up in preparation for the summit, constituted a powerful new force in negotiations. The group’s proposals encouraged further broad and rapid liberalization and public-private partnerships, which pose a significant threat to the ability of poor countries to ensure the provision of their most basic services such as health, water and education. Such privatization has already begun in Swaziland after Prime Minister Sibusiso introduced the Economic Social Review Agenda (ESRA) in 1998. Sibusiso’s framework has seen a deterioration of labor rights and working conditions. Many fear that, with the enforced opening up of crucial public services such as health and education to multinational companies, the needs of the poorest sectors of the population will become increasingly neglected.

Perhaps most alarmingly, privatization of services threatens the supply of water in many poorer countries. At a speech in the conference Nelson Mandela stressed the importance of the water issue - "In impoverishment it is the absence of clean water that strikes me most strongly." In Swaziland, Ghana and DR Congo, countries among the first in Africa where user fees replaced free water services, studies have shown the introduction of fees has reduced utilization. After Guinea privatized its water sector in 1989, water prices nearly doubled. A report on water privatization in Africa undertaken by Public Services International Research Unit (PSIRU) in May 2001 concluded, "The main winners from the contracts seem to be the private companies whose investments are focused on revenue raising such as meter installation. Private firms are in a powerful position as it is them who receive tariffs and then decide what to pay the government.”

Despite the threat posed by privatization, perhaps the most significant success of the summit came on the issue of water with world leaders agreeing to halve the number of people without access to clean water or sanitation by 2015. In addition, a new initiative called the Africa Water Facility was launched at the conference. It aims to reduce number of Africans who do not have access to clean drinking water by providing funds to water projects. There was also an agreement to establish a permanent African Ministers Council on Water (AMCOW) which would meet regularly "to find ways of providing water to all Africans".

There were muted celebrations as rich countries agreed to cut some of their rising subsidies for energy. OECD countries currently subsidize their fossil fuel energy by over $50bn (£32bn) a year and, in the same way as agricultural subsidies, this hinders the economic development of poorer countries by dumping subsidized surpluses abroad while protecting their domestic markets. An ambitious Brazilian plan to set a target of increasing the proportion of renewable energy to 10% by 2010 was blocked by the US and other OPEC countries. Instead an agreement which called for countries to "substantially increase” renewable energy was implemented. Steve Sawyer, a spokesman for Greenpeace, said the agreement was “worse than we could have imagined”.

There was also concern over a biodiversity deal, which marked a clear reverse on some clauses signed at the Rio summit in 1992. At the same time, a target of 2010 was pushed through to halt loss of biodiversity, but no figures on the extent to which this would be enforced were set out. Swaziland is facing the twin environmental problems of deforestation and overgrazing which have done much to threaten biodiversity in the country in recent years. In addition, it has failed to meet the Agenda 21 resolutions set out at the Rio summit in 1992, and the chances of building on the successful agreements at Johannesburg must be viewed with skepticism.


The summit mood has fluctuated between high optimism and sneering despondency. Whilst agreements on energy, biodiversity and international aid have promoted doom laden rumblings in some quarters; progress on water, fish stocks and chemical emissions have marked some definite successes. Perhaps most significantly, the summit has forced dialogue between rich and poor countries. As Jan Pronk, the special envoy to the UN secretary-general, told the summit: "We must stop this trend in inward-looking values, because if we fail to include everyone we will breed resentment, which may also breed violence." Johannesburg has fallen well short of the expectations of some, but in its capacity to encourage joined up thinking on a truly global scale, it can be said to have succeeded. What is important now is for all countries to treat poverty and the environment as global issues, and to ensure this dialogue continues.