August 04, 2002

Sachs says: "Johannesburg has come not at a time of triumph for the world community," Jeff Sachs tells Earth Times, "but at a time of continuing failure to come to grips with fundamental issues that we face."

Like many others, Sachs is quick to blame American myopia. "We were shocked when we were hit from the outside," he says, "because there is so little appreciation in the United States, among those who could make a difference, of what the real situation in the rest of the world is."

He claims that the United States has no systematic blueprint for dealing with any major global issue apart from terrorism. But he also socks it to the international organisations.

UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan does speak for the world, but he has few resources and no mandate to tackle problems on his own. The World Health Organization, meanwhile, has no clear plan of action for tackling the global health crisis. And there is a similar vacuum in the summit's other priority areas: energy, agriculture, health and biodiversity.

Sachs believes he now occupies a pivotal position in global politics. Chinese, Indian and African governments continue to call him regularly and are transferring programmes from Harvard to Columbia. He also believes there is an expectation that he can help the global system emerge from crisis.

"People are actually turning to Jeffrey Sachs at Johannesburg to be that one clear voice to untangle this mess. So how are you going to be at Johannesburg and basically say to them, 'Boys and girls, your hearts may be in the right places but your hands are not or your wallets are not. Given what has been already achieved, are we talking about starting from ground zero here or do you want them to develop a new course of action and this is what it is going to have to be?'"

Monterrey Bridge: Partnership will be a catchword at the World Summit - and already new partnerships are beginning to form.

One is the puzzlingly named Monterrey Bridge, which aims to ensure that projected increases in food demand (40-60%, they say, in "just the next few decades") can be met without loss of habitat and biodiversity.

A major player at the coalition launch was Jeff Sachs, who recently gave Harvard the elbow - moving to New York for a job with Kofi Annan and a plethora of roles within Columbia University.

"We call upon participants at the WSSD to ensure that the needs of feeding the world’s poor are integrated with efforts to protect biodiversity," said Professor Sachs. "There are examples from around the world illustrating how this can be done effectively. World leadership must allocate the resources committed at the Monterrey Conference to expand upon these success stories and apply their learnings globally."

It's not clear from the launch materials what the Bridge will do after the summit, though Sachs does call for more funding of CGIAR - an international agricultural research network regularly cited as one of the most successful global projects.

More from Professor Sachs above...

Inevitable holocaust? Finally, from Radio Earth Summit, an interview with novelist and activist Arundhati Roy and a message from Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke.

Arundhati is most worried by big companies building infrastructure. Corporations such as Siemens and Enron are "more invisible and more dangerous" than consumer-facing companies like Nike and McDonalds. Rules are needed to prevent companies owning "the rivers and the mountains and the roads and the skies, just to make money."

Although Arundhati praises the protest movement ("so much more fun than the other side"), her vision is ultimately apocalyptical.

"I see corporate globalisation, religious fundamentalism and nuclear nationalism marching arm in arm through the next century. So the sound I hear in my head is the sound of a nuclear bomb, which will surely drown us all."

Thom, meanwhile, describes the summit as "the only opportunity we have left to address the hijacked free trade agenda of the WTO, to make the environment inextricably linked to poverty and the global divide of 1st and 3rd world, to make corporations accountable for the environmental effects of their business, wherever they choose to hide, and to make wealthy countries take responsibility for the impact their over-consumption has on the rest of the world."

"It is not good enough to preach about the trickle down effect of economic growth," he says, "if your house is being washed away, your child has skin cancer, you can't get clean water and the weather is changing beyond recognition, forever."

Jonny Corporate Tony Juniper was speaking to Radio Earth Summit, which is Friends of the Earth International's hard hitting contribution to the summit.

Radio Earth Summit is "primarily focused on gathering stories from people who have been affected by the activities of multinational corporations." (It goes without saying that only negative impacts figure on the site).

Radio Earth Summit also invites you to play tricks on Jonny Corporate - a flash animated "virtual pet", who lives in a world where money rules and people mean nothing.

JC (a fat, pink, suit-wearing, cigar smoker) spends his time on the mobile phone, waving bills. You are then invited to "make sure he knows his place," by crashing the stock market, regulating his company, and pelting him with custard pies.

The coup de grace? You explode his cigar to kill him off, of course.

Greens dead, says Browne Anthony Browne, writing in the Times, hails the death of the green movement.

"The environment is just not in bad enough shape," he writes (subscription needed). "In fact, unfortunately for green groups that raise funds by outraging people about the sins of humanity, it just keeps getting better, at least in the West. The frightening future for environment groups is not that the end of the world is nigh, but that the end of environmentalism is nigh."

The greens, says Browne, have achieved what they wanted, as "one of the most successful global campaigns in history has transformed the behaviour of humanity."

But this has left environment groups in a pickle. Greenpeace, for example, now has two agendas. In public, it keeps trying to drum up scare stories. Behind the scenes, however, it is "working in very sensible ways with corporations to do sensible things such as developing renewable energy."

Browne reckons that most groups will now concentrate on international development or anti-capitalism. In the same way, the global political focus has shifted. At the Rio Earth Summit, we heard a lot about biodiversity, extinctions, and deforestation. Joburg's concerns will be with poverty, safe drinking water and basic healthcare.

Back on the streets Tony Juniper, soon to be Director of Friends of the Earth England, Wales and Northern Ireland, has warned of the danger that the World Summit will turn out to be Rio minus ten, rather than Rio plus ten.

"Even some of the basic agreements made at Rio are under attack from some governments," he says, identifying the US as the biggest offender.

"If we don't see a recommitment to sustainable development," he warns, "then the street protests that have characterised the last couple of years will be back big time."

Listen to his remarks here, here, here and here.