Editorial

The Fourth World Summit on Sustainable Development Will Solve Nothing

The Fourth World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), being held in Johannesburg, South Africa, is alternately being described as the rebirth or the death of the Kyoto Accords. It is a summit which is supposed to bring together the collective will of all countries to solve the looming environmental disasters awaiting humanity. However, even before it convened it had become clear that it is a summit at which the most powerful corporations and governments will impose "solutions" which will only make matter worse.

The declaration of the leader of the American delegation set the tone for the conference. With a straight face she declared that: "No nation has made a greater contribution and a more concrete commitment to sustainable development [than the United States]." This from the country which has not only unilaterally withdrawn from the Kyoto Accords, but is responsible for greater environmental destruction than any other country on earth.

The main activity of the United States and the European Union at this and previous summits has been to ensure that environmental protection does not restrict corporate freedom or free trade. Even the Kyoto Accords are widely recognized as being inadequate and a major concession to corporate interests. Despite the fact that the Americans were the most aggressive in watering down the effectiveness of the Kyoto Accords, the Bush regime has declared that it will not recognize any international agreements which impinge negatively on the profits of its corporations, especially its oil companies. In Johannesburg, the Americans and their European counterparts are, among other things, advocating the privatization of the earth's water supplies as the "solution" to the problem that over half of the world's population does not have access to adequate supplies of clean water.

The experience of the past two decades of neo-liberal policies, including the privatization of water and other public utilities in many countries, proves that the greatest threat to the natural environment is monopoly capitalism. The alternatives being presented, both by the poorer countries at the World Summit and by those participating in the people's summit, demonstrate that solutions to environmental degradation can be found. However, as long as monopoly capitalism controls the world's economies and the imperialist countries are permitted to dominate the world, not only is it impossible to implement those solutions, but the environmental crisis will continue to to intensify.