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THE EARTH BROKERS
After decades of failed development plans for the South and the mounting
pressure of the environmental crisis all over the planet, the Earth Summit was
billed as a dramatic new approach to solving the planet's problems because, for
the first time, it was recognized that environment and development were
inseparable and thus needed to be tackled together. The recognition of this link,
however, turned out to be a double-edged sword, as development quickly became
much more important than environment. There was little recognition of the
underlying cause of today' s crisis - the unsustainable economic models that most
of the world is currently follOwing. Free trade, multinational corporations,
militarism - some of the biggest contributors to today' s crisis - were deliberately
left off the agenda . Instead, the Earth Summit attempted to 'green' development
and its major promoters by pushing the environment to the top of the agenda. UN
and government agencies adopted this new green solution without questioning
the assumption that growth and further development were necessary, let alone
the assumption that they were pOSSible. Because of this, the Summit was flawed in
both conception and execution. As a result, the new order that is emerging after
the Rio de Janeiro conference is identical to the old one. If this new order were
merely a warmed-over version of the old, things might be expected to continue
deteriorating at the current pace, if not accelerate, since the new mantra is that
the environment may even be a profitable enterprise that will stimulate
development . What is more, the new order is slowly creating a global
management elite that is coopting the strongest people's movements, the very
movements that brought the crisis to public attention.
Pratap Chatterjee is Global Environmental Editor of the Inter Press Service,

Washington, DC. Matthias Finger is Associate Professor at Teachers
College, Columbia University, New York.
This page intentionally lefi blank
THE EARTH BROKERS
Power, Politics and World

Development
PRATAP CHATTERJEE and
MATTHIAS FINGER
First published 1994
by Routledge
Published 2013 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Part. Abingdon, Oxon OX 14 4RN
111 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10011, USA
Roulledge is On imprim o/Ihe Taylor & Froncis Group. on in/orrna businCJS
10 1994 Praup Chatterjee and Matthia. Finger
TypeMlt in Pcrpetu~pectuaby
Solid u. (Bristol) Umited
All rights rue rved. No part of this book may be reprinted or

reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, Or other means, nOw mown or hcr e~tcrfter
inv~nt"d, nted, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information .to.... ge or reO'k,"'} .)"'tem, without penniuion in
writing from the publi. hers.
B,;IJ.h LJbnll)' C'JI<li"fjuJng in PubhuJI;on DaUJ

A catalogue record for this book i. available from the British Library
Lib ...,! 4CongtetS Calalagmg in PubliC<llioa Dalo

Chatterj"'", P",tap.
n.., ~arth rth broh.. , power, politics and world devdopment I PTatap
Chatterjee and Muthiu Finger.
p. em.
Indud"" bibli ographical references and index.
[SBN 918-0-415-10963-5 (Pbk)
I. Environmental policy. 1. En,ironmental degrad~tion
radation- Govemmentnment
policy. 3. Environmentalism. I. Finge r, Matthias. 11 . Title.
GEI10.C"8 1994
363.T056---<i<:10 93-413-46
CW
CONTENTS
List of Acronyms and Abbreviations viii
INTRODUCTION 1
The Development Paradiom 3
The Cold War 4
Third World Development 5
The Social Movements if the 1960s 6
The Green Critique if Development 7
The New Cold War and Global £Colooy 8
The Challenoes if Global Ecolooy 9
Part I: The Documents

1 WHOSE COMMON FUTURE? 13
Population 14
Food Security 17
Species and Ecosystems
Eco~ s tems 19
Sustainable Industrial Development 21
From Military to Environmental Security 23
The Commons 25
Conclusion 27
2 SOUTHERN ELITES 30
Economic Growth - The National Perspective 32
South- South Cooperation 35
North-South Relations 37
v
CONTENTS
3 RIO AND BUST 39

What was Missinn? 39
The Biodiversity Convention 41
The Framework Convention on Climate Channe 44
The Anreement on Forest Principles 46
Steps Towards a Convention on Desertification 48
The 'Rio Declaration ' 49
Anenda 21 S3
Conclusion 60
Part II: Non-Governmental Organizations

4 TELLING 'GREENS' APART 6S
The Green Movement in the North 66
The Main Trends if the Green Movement in the North 69
The Green Movement in the South 73
Rio and the Various Shades if Green 77
5 FEEDING THE PEOPLES INTO THE GREEN MACHINE 79

The Official Vision ifNGO Participation in UNCED 79
NGO Accreditation 81
The CenterJor Our Common Future 84
From the Paris NGO Meetinn to the International NGO Forum 87
Cooptation 89
6 WHAT DID ENVIRONMENTAL NGOs ACHIEVE? 92

NGO Access to UNCED 94
Did Environmental NGOs Make a Difference? 97
The End if Protest? 101
Part III: Business and Industry

7 PROMOTING BIG BUSINESS AT RIO 109
The UNCED Process Favours Poweiful Lobbyists t t2
Business Gets OrnanizedJor UNCED 1t 4
The 'Sustainable CouncilJor Business Development' 115
Money Matters 117
8 CHANGING WHAT? 121

The Core: Mananinn Ornanizational Channe t 23
The Discourse: Economic Growth and Free Trade 127
'Channinn Labels' - A Critique 130
Conclusion 134
vi
CONTENTS
Part IV: Finance and Institutions

9 CAN MONEY SAVE THE WORLD? 14-1
The Rio Chequebook 14- 2
The World Bank 14-3
Aiding the North 14-8
10 INSTITUTIONAL OUTCOMES 151

The Global Environmental Facility 151
The Commission on Sustainable Development 157
The Earth Council 160
Conclusion: Was it Worth the IifJort? 162
Part V: Conclusions
11 WHAT NOW? 167

Summary 168
Balance Sheet and Challenges 172
Notes 174-
Bibliography 182
Index 184
vII
ACRONYMS AND
ABBREVIATIONS
ABB
Asea Brown Boveri
ACORD
Agency for Coordination and Development
ANEN
African NGOs Environmental Network
ANGOC
Asian NGO Coalition
APPEN
Asia Pacific People's Environmental Network
ARCO
Atlantic Ritchfield Oil
ASCEND21
Agenda of Science for Environment and Development into the 21 st Century
BCSD
Business Council for Sustainable Development
Big 10
The major US environmental lobbying organizations
CONGO
Conference ofNGOs (in consultative status with the UN Economic
and Social Council)
CNN
Cable Network News
CFC
Chloro- Fluoro-Carbon
CSD
Commission on Sustainable Development
ECOSOC
Economic and Social Council to the General Assembly of the United Nations
vIII
ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS
EC
European Community
EDF
Environmental Defense Fund
EEB
European Environmental Bureau
ELCI
Environmental Liaison Center International
ENDA
Environment and Development Action in the Third World
FAO
Food and Agriculture Organization
FoE
Friends of the Earth
GATT
General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
GDP
Gross Domestic Product
GEF
Global Environmental Facility
GM
General Motors
GNP
Gross National Product
G-77
Group of 77
IBRD
International Bank for Reconstruction and Development
ICC
International Chamber of Commerce
ICI
Imperial Chemical Industries
ICSU
International Council of Scientific Unions
ICVA
International Council for Voluntary Agencies
IDA
International Development Agency
IEB
International Environmental Bureau
IFC
International Facilitating Committee
INC
International Negotiating Committee
Ix
INGOF
International N GO Forum
IPCC
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
ISMUN
International Youth and Student Movement of the United Nations
ITO
International Trade Organization
IUCN
International Union for the Conservation of Nature (now World Conservation Union)
LDC
Less (or least) developed country
MIGA
Multinational Investment Guarantee Agency
NATO
North Atlantic Treaty Organization
NGO
Non-governmental organization
NRDC
National Resources Defense Council
OECD
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
PrepCom (I- IV)
Preparatory committee meetings held prior to UN CED
TFAP
Tropical Forest Action Plan
TNC
Transnational corporation
TQM
Total quality management
TWN
Third World Network
UNCED
United Nations Conference on Environment and Development
UNCSD
United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development
UNCTC
United Nations Center on Transnational Corporations
UNESCO
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
UNDP
United Nations Development Programme
x
UNEP
United Nations Environment Programme
USAID
US Agency for International Development
WICE
World Industry Council for the Environment
WICEMI
First World Industry Conference on Environmental Management
WMO
World Meteorological Organization
WRI
World Resources Institute
WWF
Worldwide Fund for Nature
3M
Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing
xl
INTRODUCTION
In New York in December 1989, the member states of the United Nations
agreed on Resolution 44/228 - the 228th decision of its Forty-Fourth General
Assembly. The Resolution noted with concern that the world's environment
was deteriorating rapidly and recommended that the UN General Assembly
convene a conference of national leaders of the highest level to save the planet
from catastrophe. Officially, this was to be called the United Nations
Conference on Environment and Development - UNCED for short. Unoffi-
cially it was dubbed the 'Earth Summit' by the man who was chosen to put
it together, Maurice Strong, a Canadian businessman and diplomat.
Six months later, the first of four major preparatory committee meetings (the
meetings were called PrepComs I to IV) to thrash out conventions and
agreements for the leaders to sign at the Summit was held in Nairobi. A member
of a non-governmental organization (NGO) attending it sent out a memo by
computer to hundreds of other NGOs following the talks describing his own
reactions to the name 'Earth Summit'. 1 To him, he said, it conjured up the image
of a steep mountain with the heads of state gathered at the summit from where the
planet would be saved. The people of the planet were waiting below for the
agreements to be signed at the top and brought down to them. In between them
and the leaders, bearers toiled, carrying proposals up the mountain.
The next three preparatory meetings were held in Geneva (II and III) and
New York (IV). Many NGOs were actively encouraged, and some even
financially supported, to attend the meetings. And by the fourth meeting about
1,400 NGOs had officially registered with the UNCED secretariat as observers
and lobbyists in the process. Many more followed the negotiations by
computer, fax, and regular mail.
INTRODUCTION
After the meetings and the lobbying were finished, the two of us sat down
to review what had been achieved over the course of almost two years. This
was about two months before the Earth Summit itself was held in Rio de
Janeiro in June 1992. We concluded that, as a result of the whole UNCEO
process, the planet was going to be worse off, not better. We wrote a short
paper on the subject and sent it out to hundreds of people to solicit their
opinions. 2 Readers wrote in from Massachusetts and Michigan to Mongolia,
and others translated our paper into French, Spanish, and Swedish. Almost all
agreed with our critical assessment, but said that they had not seen anyone else
actually put such a strong thesis on paper. We decided that we needed to set
out our thoughts in much more detail for other people who did not have the
opportunity to participate in the two-year process that led leaders of
governments, industry and NGOs to Rio, but actually failed to take them to
the summit of the mountain from where to save the planet. This book is the
result.
In it we offer a comprehensive and critical overview of the entire UNCEO
process. We look at its origin, its context, and the major agents involved, as
well as its outcomes. But because UN CEO is at the core of the recent
developments in the environment and development arena, this book actually
reaches beyond UN CEO. And because UNCEO occurred at a crucial moment
in environmental and developmental history, this book also helps readers
understand the transformation of 'development' and the recent quite profound
changes in North-South relations, as well as the deep changes the Green
movement has undergone.
In the first part we highlight the context and the process of UNCED. We
present and critically analyze the main documents that have been written in
preparation to that process, as well as the ones that have come out of it. Parts
II and III look at the main non-state players in the UNCEO process, i.e. non-
governmental organizations on the one hand, and business and industry on the
other. Indeed, traditionally everybody has been looking at governments as
being the major agents . However, as we hope to show, governments are only
part of the picture: the corporate sector and some NGOs have come to be
equally important agents in the UNCEO process. Part IV looks at the financial
and institutional outcomes of the UN CEO process, and assesses what, on that
basis, we can expect for the future . Finally, we conclude with an analysis of
what that means for the planet.
2
INTRODUCTION
Throughout this book we show how UNCEO has promoted business and
industry, rehabilitated nation-states as relevant agents, and eroded the Green
movement. We argue that UNCEO has boosted precisely the type of industrial
development that is destructive for the environment, the planet, and its
inhabitants. We see how, as a result of UNCEO, the rich will get richer, the
poor poorer, while more and more of the planet is destroyed in the process.
THE DEVELOPMENT PARADIGM
In order to understand the UN CEO process, it must be located in the larger

context of the development paradigm and it therefore must be looked at from
a broader historical perspective. Most important of all, UN CEO must be seen
in the context of industrial development, a process that can be traced back to
the Industrial Revolution and beyond . Indeed, the idea of development is
rooted in the Enlightenment ideal of a rational society of free and responsible
citizens, i.e. ultimately a society governed by scientific principles and managed
accordingly. The emergence of industrial production in the nineteenth century
was rapidly incorporated into this development paradigm: industrial develop-
ment came to be seen as a means - so to speak the motor - of making this
modern and rational society come true . Unfortunately, the means turned into
an end, development became a goal in itself. This is what we call the
development ideology or paradigm.
Marxists have criticized industrial development since its social effects started
to be felt in the late nineteenth century. They criticized it on the grounds that
it produces injustices, enhances unequal power structures and exploits people.
However, Marxists have never questioned the underlying idea that industrial
development will free society from the constraints of nature, and thus
ultimately liberate people altogether. The main obstacle that prevented this
process from happening was not to be found in the development process itself,
Marxists argued, but rather in the political power structures, which were
perpetuating inequities and oppression. Marxists, therefore, remain caught in
the development paradigm.
After the experience of the First World War, and even more so after the Second
World War, isolated individuals expressed their doubts as to whether there was
not something fundamentally wrong with this industrial development process:
3
INTRODUCTION
were the two wars simply accidents of history or were industrialization and
modernization leading to precisely the type of barbarism seen in the two
conflicts? Marxists of a new kind - the so-called Critical Theorists - rapidly took
the upper hand in voicing these doubts. Though they questioned whether the
declared emancipation of humankind, promised since the Enlightenment, was
ever going to be realized, they attributed this failure to politics, rather than to the
development paradigm. Basically they thought that advanced capitalist societies
were developing particularly vicious and hidden ways to oppress men and
women . As a result, humanity would miss the unique opportunity to liberate
itself that industrial development offered. Thus, even after the Second World
War techno-scientific industrial development remained an unquestioned tool
even for the most vocal critics of modern society.
What is more, in an effort of collective denial promoted by a massive public
relations campaign, further industrial development was declared, in the
aftermath of the Second World War, to be also the means of bringing about
peace among nations. As a result, the United Nations was set up with the
mission to promote 'peace through development'. No longer was industrial
development simply going to lead to a modern and rational society, it was also
going to bring peace to the world . With the United Nations promoting it,
industrial development progressed exponentially and planet-wide. What is
more, the aggressive reconstruction of Western Europe became the model for
the industrialization of the entire world. Development was now clearly the
goal, and the development process of the North, spearheaded by the USA, was
to be replicated by the South. The rare humanists who feared that the human
side would get lost in the process were silenced, as the 'cultural subsystem'
was singled out and declared to be the realm of truly human aspirations. Thus,
culture became a luxury that was made possible by continuous industrial
development.
THE COLD WAR
The Cold War is the next important element to consider in order to

understand the process of industrial development. First, the Cold War became
one of the driving forces of industrial development, because it stimulated
scientific and technological progress on the one hand, and promoted military-
4
INTRODUCTION
induced industrial production on the other. Second, the Cold War cemented
the nation-state system and thus reinforced the idea that nation-states were the
most relevant units within which problems had to be addressed. Therefore, the
nation-states were also seen as the primary agents of development, the
'development agencies', so to speak.
Indeed, because of the Cold War, the nation-states continued to be seen as
the units within which development occurs and must be promoted, because it
is economic and military strength that defines each nation's relative power. In
promoting the Cold War, nation-states remained the key agents for at least
another forty years . Again, industrial development carne to be seen as a means
to enhance national power, thus hiding the fact that the means had overtaken
the ends.
THIRD WORLD DEVELOPMENT
The development paradigm was further strengthened by the political independ-

ence of many Third World countries. Indeed:
Truman [had) launched the idea of development in order to provide a comforting vision of a
world order where the US would naturally rank first . The rising influence of the Soviet Union
- the first country which had industrialized outside capitalism - forced him to come up with
a vision that would engage the loyalty of the decolonizing countries in order to sustain his
struggle against communism. For over 40 years , development has been a competition between
political systems. 3
With the Cold War solidly established and entirely embedded in the post-war
reconstruction and the Third World build-up, the development paradigm
became institutionalized in the very structure and nature of Third World
nation-states. Thus these countries started to enter the industrial circuit by
borrOWing money and exporting raw materials. Given Third World indepen-
dence and the context of the Cold War, the nature of industrial development
was not questioned until the late 1960s. Only then did social movement
activism begin to raise serious doubts as to whether industrial development
would really lead to the type of society promised by Truman and others.
5
INTRODUCTION
THE SOCIAL MOVEMENTS OF THE

1960&
In the North, the social movements of the late 1960s emerged within the context
of already high levels of industrial development . The main critique they voiced
was the oppressive and technocratic tendencies of development, i.e. the danger
that the people, the human side, would get lost and forgotten. One must
distinguish between the American version of social movement activism and the
European one . If the American version is a product of the counter-cultural
movement, the European movement is a product of the New Left. Both agree that
the process of development has got out of human control and does not serve the
majority of the people. The counter-cultural movement formulates a cultural
critique: it is concerned with the values brought forth by the development
process and seeks to substitute these with more human values. The critique
formulated by the New Left, in contrast, is in essence political. It is a critique of
oppression, domination, and exploitation. Consequently, more participation,
more democracy, and more involvement of the citizens in decision-making are
seen by the New Left as the answers to the shortcomings of industrial
development . During the late 1960s, however, neither the counter-cultural
movement nor the New Left questioned the process of industrial development,
though both were unhappy with its inhuman consequences.
The political critique formulated by the New Left in the North is actually
quite similar to the critique voiced in the South, where social movements were
also calling for a more participatory form of development. Development, in
the South, attracted criticism in the late 1960s and the 1970s on the grounds
that it was top-down, exploitative, and oppressive. The national and local elites
in the South were mainly seen as the longer arm of the North, of Northern
governments, and of Northern multinationals. Opposing this, the social
movements in the South were advocating 'another', i.e. a more participatory,
more human-centred, and more indigenous form of development. Some went
as far as to suggest breaking links with the North and promoting self-reliance.
However, for all the radical critiques of Northern-centredness and Northern-
drivenness, development was being questioned in the South by only a very few
people in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s. It was not until the advent
of the Green movement in the North, in the 1970s, that a new argument was
added to the critique of industrial development.
6
INTRODUCTION
THE GREEN CRITIQUE OF

DEVELOPMENT
Before the early 1970s it is difficult to identify a coherent Green critique of

development. Of course, since the end of the nineteenth century there have
been various nature protection organizations. Since the 1930s some scientists
and engineers have focused on natural resources conservation and environmen-
tal management, starting with forestry and specific ecosystems. After the
Second World War two big international organizations were created along such
conservationist ideals - the International Union for the Conservation of
Nature, now called World Conservation Union (still referred to as IUCN), and
the World Wildlife Fund, now called Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF).
Within the UN system the environment was equated with science and
attributed to UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and
Cultural Organization. One can say that until the late 1960s (scientific)
environmentalists hardly questioned development. Rather, they were con-
cerned with species conservation and rational resources management in line
with the overall development paradigm .
But in the early 1970s, in the context of the social movements, one can
detect, in the North, the replacement of conservationist ecology with political
ecology. It was under the influence of the New Left, in particular, that
environmental problems become politicized and prominent. In addition to
natural resources issues, this politicization focused primarily on pollution
problems such as oil spills, chemical hazards, and nuclear pollution. In 1972
the Club of Rome, a group of concerned leaders from bUSiness, academia and
government, published its Limits to Growth, highlighting in particular the
possible input limits to further industrial development. In the same year the
UN held its first Conference on the Human Environment, in Stockholm .
Again, the focus was on natural resources management and, to a lesser extent,
on pollution control, as both resources depletion and pollution were seen as
potentially jeopardizing development.
Within the intellectual context of the New Left, environmental problems
remained mainly political problems. Resources depletion and pollution were,
it was argued in the 1970s, the result of existing power structures, which
oppressed nature and people alike. Because of this political framework,
political ecologists remained uncritical of many of the destructive forces of
7
INTRODUCTION
industrial development, in particular of modern science, high technology, and

the nation-state. Indeed, their markedly Northern-centred view led political
ecologists to propose scientific progress, better technologies, and especially
better policies as the answers to resources depletion and pollution problems.
The nation-state remained, in their view, the most important, if not the only,
relevant unit of action.
It was at this time, within the context of political ecology, that most
environmental agents emerged. Be it Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth (FoE) ,
the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) in the USA, or many more,
they all refer to this framework of political ecology within which they operate
and which they perpetuate. Later in the t 970s Green parties used this Green
movement in Western Europe while simultaneously strengthening the purely
political approach to environmental issues and problems. Therefore, because
of the political ecology framework, the nation-state remained the focus of
environmental activists . The causes of environmental degradation were thus
localized in politics and not, for example, in the dynamics of the industrial
development process. Yet this analysis not only ignored the root causes of the
development crisis, it also suggested that further scientific, technological,
social, and political development would help solve the problems. In short,
though it added some arguments to the critique of development, the Green
movement of the t 970s did not identify industrial development as being the
problem for the planet and its inhabitants.
THE NEW COLD WAR AND GLOBAL

ECOLOGY
With the emergence of the New Cold War in the late 1970s, fear and anxiety
about a possible nuclear holocaust overshadowed environmental concerns in the
North. But interestingly, the New Cold War prepared the ground for global
ecology, for which the so-called theory of the nuclear winter was probably a
trigger. First put forward in 1982, this theory states that a nuclear explosion
anywhere on this planet has the potential to induce climate change planet-wide.
Rather than being about the nuclear threat, this theory is in fact about global
environmental change. As such it was symptomatic of a whole new approach to
environmental problems emerging at the beginning of the 1980s: global ecology.
8
INTRODUCTION
Ozone depletion and global warming, in particular, along with other global
environmental issues such as deforestation and soil erosion, became the focus
of this new global ecology. Global ecological problems were no longer simply
resources depletion or pollution issues. Indeed, in addition to pollution
problems and input limits to growth, global ecology now also pointed to
potential global output problems of industrial development . It now appeared
that such output limits might actually be far more serious than the input limits
and the pollution problems, for which there are, to some extent, technological
and political solutions. We think that the global ecology of the early 1980s was
actually a far more serious challenge and critique of industrial development
than anything else that came before .
THE CHALLENGES OF GLOBAL

ECOLOGY
The real effects of global ecology only became apparent when the Cold War
ended in 1986 with Gorbachev coming to power in the Soviet Union. It was
at this time that the possible consequences of global ecology really hit home :
global ecology questions the very essence of industrial development, and
therefore also the agents that live off this process. Among the first major agents
to be challenged are of course business and industry, especially big business
such as multinational corporations. Indeed, if the challenge of global ecology
is taken seriously, there are now serious output limits to further economic
growth and industrial development. Promoting such massive industrial
development, as most of these multinational companies do, amounts to
promoting accelerated destruction of the global environment.
A second type of agent whose pursuit of industrial development is being
challenged are nation-states. Protected by the Cold War and legitimized by the
social and environmental movements of the late 1960s and the 1970s, in the
age of global ecology nation-states not only have a legitimation problem, they
also now have to demonstrate that they are still relevant agents when it comes
to the new challenges of global ecology. Are they indeed able to address the
challenges raised by global ecology successfully?
The role of the military is of course brought into question in a very similar
way by global ecology. Indeed, in the light of the new global environmental
9
INTRODUCTION
changes and challenges, issues of national security increasingly seem to be

irrelevant. As a result, the military-industrial complexes of the world are now
figuring out ways and means to make sense of themselves in the eyes of an
increasingly critical public.
And if industrial development, business and industry, nation-state struc-
tures, national governments, and military-industrial complexes are increasingly
brought into question by global ecology, Southern elites are hardly better off,
as they basically derive their power and privileges from imitating the North and
its industrial development model. If further industrial development is made
impossible by global change and challenges, Southern elites are threatened. A
similar threat extends to the UN system whose aim, as we have seen, is to
promote development - not to mention the fact that over the past forty years
the UN system has created a development elite of its own, whose very
existence is now brought into question by the global ecological threat.
And finally, the Green movement, too, is brought into question by global
ecology and its challenges. Having its roots in either conservation or political
ecology, the Green movement needs to redefine itself, as it is no longer obvious
that the traditional problem-solving approaches it promoted are still valid when
applied to the new global environmental challenges. Moreover, the Green
movement also has to find a new acceptance in the eyes of a concerned public
as a relevant agent in this new global environmental arena.
In this book, we show that UNCED offered a unique opportunity to all these
different agents to redefine and relegitimize themselves in the new age of global
ecological changes and challenges. Some have done better than others. But
overall, as we argue, the outcome is not a better way to address the global
ecological crisis. Rather, the outcome is a new push for more environmentally
destructive industrial development.
Two publications have become particularly important, as they try to reassess
some of these agents' roles in the light of the new challenges. Both are the
products of international commissions: the so-called 'Brundtland report'
entitled Our Common Future is the outcome of the World Commission on
Environment and Development, created by the UN in 1983, while the report
entitled The Challenge to the South is the product of the South Commission,
established in 1987. Both were written in time for the Rio conference. Let us
look at them first.
10
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1
WHOSE COMMON FUTURE?
The essence of the philosophy of the World Commission on Environment and

Development can actually be found on the very first page of the Brundtland
report. This report, the Commission says:
is not a prediction of ever increasing environmental decay, poverty, and hardship in an ever more
polluted world among ever decreasing resources. We see instead the possibility for a new era
of economic growth, one that must be based on policies that sustain and expand our
environmental resource base. And we believe such growth to be absolutely essential to relieve
the great poverty that is deepening in much of the developing world .. . . We have the power
to reconcile human affairs with natural laws and to thrive in the process. In this, our cultural
and spiritual heritages can reinforce our economic interests and survival imperatives . ... This
new reality, from which there is no escape, must be recognized and managed . I
We cannot in this book go into the history of how the UN system created the
World Commission on Environment and Development. Nevertheless, let us
briefly recall here the context within which the Brundtland Commission
emerged. It is the context of the New Cold War and the re-emerging East-
West conflict at the beginning of the 1980s. It is against this threat to 'our
common security' - highlighted by the debate about the Eurornissiles, as well
as by the nuclear winter theory - that the Brundtland Commission was created.
Not surprisingly, the title of the Brundtland report, Our Common Future, is very
similar to the title of the Palme report, Our Common Security, whose main
concern was the nuclear threat. 2 As a matter of fact, the Brundtland report
devotes an entire chapter to a quite radical critique of the arms race, to
conclude that 'the nations must turn away from the destructive logic of an
"arms culture" and focus instead on their common future' . 3 We also note that
13
THE DOCUMENTS
the Brundtland report actually remains the only document in the entire
UNCED process that explicitly deals with the military as a problem. This can
be explained by the fact that the Brundtland Commission was born in the
context of the Cold War.
What is more, the Brundtland Commission sees at least part of its role as
helping to break out of the international deadlock caused by the Cold War. In
her preface, ex-Premier Brundtland says: 'After a decade and a half of standstill
or even deterioration in global cooperation, I believe the time has come for
higher expectations, for common goals pursued together, for an increased
political will to address our common future '.4 It might well be that in the initial
phase of the Commission the environment was actually more of a rallying point
to foster cooperation among nation-states than the real common challenge.
In the process of its work, the Commission identified the real challenges as
population and human resources, food security, species and ecosystems,
energy, industry, and the urban challenge. But by breaking down the
environmental question into these six challenges, the Brundtland Commission
managed to redefine the global environmental crisis in terms of a problem that
can be solved by nation-states and their cooperation in promoting economic
growth. And such growth, the Commission says, can essentially be achieved by
manipulating and improving technology and social organization. 5 Overall, one
can say that not much thinking seems to have gone into the analysiS of the real
causes of today' s crisis. The major concern does not seem to be the crisis , but
the potential conflicts between nation-states that could arise because of a lack
of development. Let us now look at each of the six challenges the Commission
has identified in more detail.
POPULATION
In the beginning of its section on population, the Brundtland report states that
'present rates of population growth cannot continue'.6 And: 'Nor are
population growth rates the challenge solely of those nations with high rates
of increase . An additional person in an industrial country consumes far more
and places far greater pressure on natural resources than an additional person
in the Third World'. 7 Despite these statements, the analysis put forth by the
Commission on population issues is, in our opinion, basically flawed . It rests
14
on the assumption of two fundamental relationships, both of which must be

balanced: there should be a balance between population size and available
resources on the one hand, and between population growth and economic
growth on the other.8
Population is basically seen as an input problem at the national level. The
question is whether there are enough natural resources to sustain a certain
number of people within given national boundaries. There is also mention, in
the report, that people should have equitable access to the overall resources
pool, as such equitable access as well as further economic growth are both
important means to get fertility rates down . Says the Commission: 'sustainable
economic growth and eqUitable access to resources are two of the more certain
routes towards lower fertility rates' .9 In other words, lowering fertility is seen
by the Commission as being achievable through social and economic
development alone .
Since 'almost any activity that increases well-being and security lessens
people' s desires to have more children than they and national ecosystems can
support' ,1 0 the second strategy envisaged by the Commission is to balance
population growth rates with economic growth rates. Starting with the realistic
assumption that populations will continue to grow, the Commission advocates
higher economic growth as well as better education - called 'improving the
human potential' - and technological improvements in order to make more
efficient use of the available natural resource base, or even enhancing this
natural resources base. Again, this is achievable through economic growth.
Overall, then, the Commission's main recommendation for dealing with
population growth is more development : 'A concern for population growth
must therefore be part of a broader concern for a more rapid rate of economic
and social development in the developing countries.' 11
While the Commission certainly pursues the laudatory aim of prOViding
equitable access to resources, this is combined with advocating further growth
in order to raise the poor to the levels of the rich. Yet, this is a dangerous idea
because the Commission's own figures show that the rich are consuming the
vast bulk of resources, which is the major reason for the present crisis to begin
with . The Commission's own figures show, for example, that the populations
of the Northern countries, with a quarter of the world's inhabitants, consume
fifteen times as much paper as their counterparts in the South . Demand from
the poor for fuelwood is another major cause of deforestation, but given that
15
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the numbers of people consuming trees for paper, furniture and construction
purposes are much smaller than those felling them for fuel, and the proportion
of wood used is considerably higher, it would surely be more effective to act
in the North first.
N one of these ratios is at all new. The economist E. F. Schumacher used
similar figures in his famous book Small is Beautiful, published in 1973 . 12 He
showed that the United States with 5.6 per cent of the world's population was
consuming 63 per cent of the world's natural gas, 44 per cent of the world's
coal, 42 per cent of the world's aluminium, and 33 per cent of the world's
copper and petroleum, all non-renewable resources. He said:
It is obvious that the world cannot afford the USA. Nor can it afford Western Europe or Japan.
In fact, we might come to the conclusion that the Earth cannot afford the 'modern world' . . ..
The Earth cannot afford, say, 15 per cent of its inhabitants - the rich who are using all the
marvellous achievements of science and teclmology - to indulge in a crude, materialistic way
of life which ravages the Earth. The poor don't do too much damage; the modest people don't
do much damage . Virtually all the damage is done by, say 15 per cent ... The problem
passengers on spaceship Earth are the first class passengers and no one else.
In the Brundtland report and in many other reports similar ratios can be found
for the consumption of most resources and for the production of most
pollutants. But, after quoting such figures, the Commission fails to draw the
logical conclusions. It even misses the real point, since it concludes that
poverty is the cause of environmental degradation and that higher living-
standards will therefore reduce population growth and wasteful consumption.
The Commission clearly does not seem to understand that economic growth
leads to more consumption and that more consumption leads to more
pollution. Even the currently accepted indicators of national income show that
those activities that lead to the quickest economic growth cause an increase in
pollution. For example, the World Bank reports that 'environmentally benign
activities usually contribute a smaller portion to national income than do
environmentally malignant ones' . \3 Had the Commission realized this and not
been blinded by the development myth, it might have concluded that
redistribution and de-industrialization would serve the global environment
better than further economic growth.
16
FOOD SECURITY
Under this heading the Brundtland Commission expresses its concern about
how to feed the planet's growing population. The report goes through a wide
variety of statistics to show that most of the world has too little to eat despite
the fact that food production has continuously outstripped population growth.
It also discusses a series of environmental problems impacting negatively on
global food production, such as soil erosion, soil acidification, deforestation,
and desertification, as well as soil and water pollution. Yet, very optimistically,
the report states that 'global agriculture has the potential to grow enough food
for all' . 14 Let us see how the Commission comes to such a conclusion and how
it conceives of global food security.
Given the Commission's assumption that there is enough food, it sees food
security baSically as a distribution problem. And such a problem can, of course,
be solved by better management, especially on the 'ultimate scale of
distribution', i.e. the global scale. In addition, food security is also seen as a
traditional political problem, especially on the level of national agricultural
policy. The argument of the Commission is in fact very close to the argument
we can see in GATT: it is specially subsidized production which is seen as being
environmentally (and economically) damaging, since subsidies (in the North)
lead to surpluses, which depress international market prices , which in turn
'keeps down prices received by Third World farmers and reduces incentives
to improve domestic food production' . 15 In short, it states that it is 'the short-
sighted poliCies that are leading to degradation of the agricultural resource
base' . 16 There is no mention of the skewed system offood production such as
monocultures, the loss of seed varieties, multinational control, land owner-
ship, and much more.
Cursory mention is made in the report of the fact that most of the planet's
scientifically stored genetic material is in the hands of Northern laboratories
and that private companies are increaSingly seeking proprietary rights to
improved seed varieties while ignoring the rights of the country they were
imported from . Only a few years ago, India for example still had some 30,000
varieties of rice, all of which had different functions and were adapted to
different climatic and other conditions. Today, only fifteen varieties cover
three-quarters of the country.17 If the native crops are slowly destroyed or
forgotten, and the world's poor have to depend on expensive, less robust and
17
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imported seeds, they will never be able to support themselves.

Overall, the problem of Southern agricultural exports is badly fudged in the
Brundtland report. While the Commission spends a fair amount of time on the
subject of the North dumping subsidized grain in the South, there is hardly any
correlation drawn between hunger and poverty and the fact that large private
land holdings in the South are being used to grow cash crops for export to the
North, rather than feeding the people in the country. The one section on the
subject points out that during the 1983- 84 famine in the Sahel, Burkina Faso,
Chad, Mali, and Niger harvested record amounts of cotton, i.e. t 54 million
tons of cotton fibre, a sevenfold increase over the harvest in 1962. At the same
time, the Sahel region set a record for cereal imports, i.e . 1.77 million tons,
up almost nine times over a corresponding period of just over 20 years. The
Commission does not draw a conclusion from this, nor does it mention that,
Simultaneously, world cotton prices have been steadily falling.
The answer of the Brundtland Commission is to emphasize economic
growth, export diversification, commodity agreements, and other subsidy
policies so that people can actually afford food. As Brundtland points out, the
Southern countries cannot compete against Northern food exports because
their prices are artificially lowered by subsidies like the EC's Common
Agricultural Policy. But countries have to realize that they face a Catch 22
situation. They can only buy this cheap food with foreign exchange, which they
can only get by selling cash crops and natural resources at steadily falling prices,
thus accelerating the erosion of local self-sufficiency. Yet, would it not be better
to take a lesson from the decade-long nosedive in prices and stop depending
on exports? Why should a country spend its valuable foreign exchange buying
food and selling cash crops whose prices are falling? Does it not make sense
to grow the food for the local people first?
In short, the Commission regards the problems as basically technical and
political ones, such as the poor design of irrigation systems, the incorrect
application of agricultural devices, subSidy allocation , and so on . The problem,
however, is systemic. The report, moreover, takes population and its growth
as given. The challenge is not, as Brundtland suggests, 'to increase food
production to keep pace with demand '. 18 In doing so, the Commission
basically imagines a technofix: 'new technologies (will) provide opportunities
for increasing productivity while reducing pressures on resources' .19 To sum
up, the Commission envisages some sort of second Green Revolution, which,
18
this time around, will not only be managed globally, but moreover include local
people, especially women, in the overall management scheme. To recall, the
Green Revolution subsidized the buying of seed, fertilizers, and pesticides, but
of course the only people who could afford to buy these were the ones who
had access to capital and were then rewarded with large profits. The poor ones
who bought into this scheme were poorer as a result of it. In many countries
the Green Revolution failed completely because, in addition, the new crops
were totally unsuited to the land and caused further famine.
SPECIES AND ECOSYSTEMS
The way the Brundtland Commission talks about species and ecosystems is
actually symptomatic of the way it sees biological diversity, nature, and the
biosphere: nature is basically viewed as an economic resource to be used for
further development. Again, there is a big discrepancy between the diagnosis
and the proposed solutions.
The Commission recognizes the alarming rate of species extinction, which
is 'hundreds of times higher and could easily be thousands of times higher than
the average background rate of extinction' .20 But having diagnosed this, it
immediately downplays the issue - 'extinction has been a fact of life since it
first emerged,21 - and offers a highly unsophisticated analysis of the causes of
species extinction and, by extension, of environmental degradation. All
damage to the environment, it says, is caused by so-called 'human activities' .
The most sophisticated the Commission gets in identifying the causes of
environmental destruction is when it blames 'large populations', 'poverty',
and 'shifting agriculture'. It also mentions the role of logging policies of many
countries that encourage timber exports and livestock ranching.
As a conseguence of this very weak analysis, the proposed actions necessarily
remain guite general and ideological. For the Commission, the 'first priority
is to establish the problem of disappearing species and threatened ecosystems
on political agendas as a major economic resource [sic!) issue'. 22 In other
words, the priority is to reframe environmental destruction in terms of
national economic development policies. Thus, plants, animals, micro-
organisms, and the non-living elements of the environment on which they
depend become 'living natural resources', which are, moreover, 'crucial for
19
THE DOCUMENTS
development' . 23 Tropical forests, for example, become 'reservoirs of biolog-

ical diversity' waiting to be 'developed economically'. 24 In short, the answer
the Commission proposes in response to species extinction and habitat
destruction, for example, is basically to put species, biodiversity, and nature
overall on to the national and international development agenda, i.e. to make
them resources for development .
Consequently, species should be managed like all other natural resources,
possibly by making use of new technologies, such as bioengineering. The
Commission even goes as far as to propose a 'gene revolution' to succeed the
Green Revolution, which, as we have seen, was a disaster. Heavily inAuenced
by conservationist environmentalists, in particular WWF and IUCN, the
Commission proposes more parks and wildlife conservation areas as the
answer. However, in contrast to the 1950s and the 1960s, when species were
'parked ' in such areas, in today's new approach species protection must be
linked to development. Says the Brundtland report : ' ... governments could
think of "parks for development" [sid], insofar as parks serve the dual purpose
of protecting for species habitat and development processes at the same
time'. 25 To be sure, such species protection and development is, before all, a
national task.
It is clear that the Commission does not adequately analyse the causes of
species extinction in particular, and environmental degradation in general.
Therefore, many of the solutions the Commission proposes are, in our view,
still causes. For example, the Commission applauds the efforts of the World
Bank and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) in paying for
conservation, but curiously fails to mention that these are two major
subsidizers of timber and agricultural export as well as resettlement policies,
both leading to species extinction.
The main focus is on national and international management. Community
knowledge is basically ignored. Rather, the public needs to be educated, it says,
but it fails to notice that the public may once have known all of this or may
still know some of it. It suggests, instead, that these people should be required
to learn intensive agricultural methods using more fertilizers and pesticides,
ignoring the recommendations of the previous chapter on food security, which
pointed out that these chemicals were contributors to species extinction .
Overall, the Commission seems to ignore that there is such a thing as an
ecological rationality. It has no sense that this might contradict the economic
20
rationality which the Commission imposes upon everything, be it species,

biological diversity, ecosystems, or nature.
SUSTAINABLE INDUSTRIAL
DEVELOPMENT
The Commission seems to be perfectly aware of some negative environmental

consequences of industrial development, and related energy production. It
mentions in particular hazardous waste, chemical and nuclear risks, soil, air
and water pollution, as well as climatic change. On the other hand, the
Commission never mentions negative social and cultural consequences of
industrial development . Of course, for the Commission industrial develop-
ment is not only desirable, it is imperative. And industry is the key: 'Industry
is central to the economies of modern societies and an indispensable motor of
growth . . .. Many essential human needs can be met only [sic!] through goods
and services provided by industry. The production of food requires increasing
amounts of agrochemicals and machinery' . 26 In other words, there are growing
needs, and the growth of industry, so the argument goes, is the only way to
satisfy these needs . Sustainable development therefore means, in essence,
sustainable industrial development. An annual 3 per cent global per capita GDP
growth is 'regarded in this report as a minimum for reasonable develop-
ment' .27
Everything the Commission writes about - in this case waste reduction,
pollution control, risk management, and energy consumption and efficiency -
must be seen against the background of this industrial growth imperative. All
these measures should at least not cut into growth, but if at all possible enhance
growth. The main question for the Brundtland Commission, therefore, is how
to sustain industrial development without cutting into the resources upon
which future growth depends. This is the definition of sustainable develop-
ment: 'sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the
present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their
own needs'. 28 The main way to achieve this, according to the Commission, is
therefore increased efficiency resulting from technological improvements.
'The Commission believes that energy efficiency should be the cutting edge of
national energy policies for sustainable development' . 29 But even this efficiency
21
THE DOCUMENTS
argument must be seen against the background of the growth imperative: the
argument says, in essence, that the same or more economic and industrial
growth can be achieved with less energy (and material input). The goal
therefore is growth and not an ecologically sustainable level of industrial
production.
If in relative terms the energy input per capita GNP increase diminishes,
absolute consumption of energy therefore will still grow. The following quote
illustrates this argument: 'The woman who cooks in an earthern pot over an
open fire uses perhaps eight times more energy than an affluent neighbour with
a gas stove and aluminum pans . The poor who light their homes with a wick
dipped in a jar of kerosene get one fiftieth of the illumination of a 100-watt
electric bulb, but use just as much energy' . 30 However, this whole efficiency
argument developed against the background of the growth imperative is
basically flawed: of course a 100-watt light bulb is 50 times more efficient than
a wick dipped in kerosene . And of course a gas stove is about eight times more
efficient than cooking over an open fire. However, the argument does not take
into account all the energy that was needed to build and is still needed to
maintain the entire natural gas and electric infrastructure to begin with . Not
to mention the fact that the efficiency argument only refers to technological
improvements, neglecting social and cultural consequences of such industrial
development.
In short, the efficiency argument developed by the Brundtland Commission
- be it technological, economic, or organizational efficiency - only makes
sense against the background of sustained industrial development. It is indeed
questionable whether at a given level of industrial development substantial
resource and energy saving technological improvements can actually be made,
and whether in a pre-industrial society, for example, cooking over a woodstove
is not the 'most efficient technology'. In any case, the Commission considers
that technological improvements leading to more efficiency can only be made
by further industrial development, and not by looking at past experiences.
22
FROM MILITARY TO ENVIRONMENTAL

SECURITY
Of all the agents involved in the UN CEO process, the Brundtland Commission
is the only one to have explicitly addressed the military. This can be explained
by the fact that the Commission took as a reference point the Brandt report
on North-South relations and the Palme report on the nuclear predicament.
As a matter of fact, there is no doubt that the Brundtland Commission and its
mandate are heavily conditioned by the overall East- West context of the early
1980s, i.e. by the so-called Euromissile crisis. The Palme report discussed the
resulting threat in Our Common Security,31 and the Brundtland Commission was
actually much influenced by the same threat, as the title Our Common Future
suggests. It was against this threat - perhaps best exemplified in the theory of
the 'nuclear winter' , which also appeared for the first time in 1982 - that the
Brundtland Commission emerged. Since then the global environmental
questions have remained focused on this nuclear threat. As the Brundtland
Commission says, its work occurred against the background of a 'widespread
feeling of frustration and inadequacy in the international community about our
own ability to address the vital global issues and deal effectively with them' . 32
Indeed, the Commission was above all concerned that environmental
degradation could become an additional source of political conflicts. Says the
Commission:
Nations must turn away from the destructive logic of an 'arms culture' and focus instead on their
common future. The level of armaments and the destruction they could bring about bear no
relation to the political conflict that triggered the arms competition in the first place. Nations
must not become prisoners of their own arms race. They must face the common danger inherent
in the weapons of the nuclear age. They must face the common challenge of prOViding for
sustainable development and act in concert to remove the growing environmental sources of
conflict. 33
We fully agree with the Commission in its OpInIOn that war and security
problems have created major environmental stress by, for example, displacing
people from their homes. We note with equal discomfort the fact that military
spending equals the income of the poorest half of humanity and that more than
half of the world's scientists are engaged in research for this. We laud the fact
that the Commission has pointed a finger at the 'military-industrial complex'
23
THE DOCUMENTS
and at the fact that military expenditure is more 'import-intensive' and creates
few jobs.
But we also note that the 'arms culture' as the Brundtland Commission calls
it is not analysed. The financiers and profit-makers of the arms race are not
mentioned. Given that the military is one of the largest polluters in the world
in the amount of toxic waste it produces, the energy it consumes and the pain
and death that its products cause, surely the Commission should have also
talked about the importance of regulating the military industries . Instead, it
hands the issue over to international agreements and cooperation to create
more security and reduce the need for weapons, certainly a must, but much
less effective than committing national governments to stop encouraging the
production, the import, and the export of weapons.
As a result of this lack of analysis of the military-industrial complex and its
role in industrial development, the chapter of the Brundtland report on peace
and security turns into a way of redefining environmental problems in security
terms. By considering environmental degradation as yet another cause of
conflict among nation-states - which is the basic political unit the Commission
considers - the concept of security is enlarged and applied to the environment
as well. Says the Commission: 'Action to reduce environmental threats to
security requires a redefinition of priorities, nationally and globally. Such a
redefinition could evolve through the Widespread acceptance of broader forms
of security assessment and embrace military, political, environmental, and
other sources of conflict' . 34-
Political and environmental sources of conflict are therefore put on the same
level and made comparable which, of course, they are not . But by considering
the environment as a security issue along with other political issues, the causes
of such environmental conflict can be acted upon, it is argued, in the same way
as the causes of political conflict, i.e. among others through more develop-
ment. As a result, military spending is weighed against spending for
development . Says the Commission:
The true cost of the arms race is the loss of what could have been produced instead with scarce
capital, labor skills, and raw materials . ... Nations are seeking a new era of economic growth.
The level of spending on arms diminishes the prospects of such an era - especially one that
emphasizes the more efficient use of raw materials, energy, and skilled human resources. 3S
In short, in this analysis the military is simply an impediment to future
24
development. It is basically for this reason, not for its environmentally and
culturally destructive consequences, that the Brundtland Commission criticizes
the military. Common environmental security therefore becomes an issue of
redirecting the money from the military to development, especially sustainable
development. Striving for common security therefore becomes identical to
striving for sustainable development.
Not to have analysed in depth the status and the role of the military in the
global environmental crisis has yet another consequence: the management of
environmental problems is seen by the Brundtland Commission in very similar
terms as the management of military and political conflicts. Though the
Commission notes that 'there are, of course, no military solutions to
environmental insecurity', 36 it nevertheless proposes to deal with environmen-
tal insecurity in the very same way as international conflicts have historically
been dealt with, i.e. through the 'joint management and multilateral
procedures and mechanisms'. 37 This approach - sometimes also called
cooperative management, among nation-states of course - is how the
Commission proposes to deal with the environment as a security issue. The
Commission says:
It would be highly desirable if the appropriate international organizations, including appropriate

UN bodies and regional organizations, were to pool their resources ~ ~ and draw on the most
sophisticated surveillance technology available to establish a reliable early warning system for
environmental risk and conflict. Such a system would monitor indicators of risk and potential
disputes, such as soil erosion, growth in regional migration, and uses of commons that are
approaching the thresholds of sustainability. The organizations would also offer their services for
helping the respective countries to establish principles and institutions for joint management. 38
In short, not properly analysing the military leads the Brundtland Commission
to propose a military kind of international management of environmental
problems and resources, the so-called commons.
THE COMMONS
Potentially, for the Brundtland Commission, the commons include all the
planet's resources, since these are in common to all people and do not just
belong to nation-states. However, the idea of the commons is thought of from
25
THE DOCUMENTS
the perspective of what nation-states currently do manage in common, i.e.

deep oceans, Antarctica, and space. The dangers of over-exploitation of the
oceans through the fishing of coastal and deep sea areas, pollution from toxic
dumping or run-off from land-based development into the oceans, and careless
disposal of nuclear waste in the space orbits are expounded by the report. The
importance of international cooperation is stressed and the dangers of national
self-interest is cautioned against.
However, the traditional meaning of the term 'commons' is quite different
from the m eaning the Brundtland Commission assigns to it. 39 The commons
are usually managed by people - not nation-states - at a local and not at a global
level. The commons are providing livelihoods for the people directly managing
them . Basically, the commons refer to traditional communities who own their
resources jointly and distribute their wealth wisely. By referring to the same
term, 'the commons', the Brundtland Commission wants to make us believe
that the planet as a whole can be managed in the very same way. However, this
use of the term should not make us forget that the Commission effects two
fundamental transformations here. First, the global commons are, in its view,
no longer managed by traditional communities and their members, but by
nation-states . Second, managing the global commons is not about the wise use
of the wealth locally produced. Rather, global management of the commons is
simultaneously resource and risk management.
The idea of global management hands over the policing of the commons and
their sustainable development to a global establishment, its institutions and
agreements. Global management means global policing and therefore a
militaristic model of fighting for 'freer' and more 'competitive' markets that
will supposedly distribute things more equitably without examining the
inherent nature of enclosure, export, and community destruction in these
methods . Quite logically, the recommendations of the Commission for legal
and institutional change all pertain to global resources and risk management.
Community groups have received little support from the Commission apart
from that given to NGOs. But this support is interesting, because it mentions
them mostly in the context of their ability to reach groups that government
agencies cannot and taking on jobs that need to be done . Note that the
orientation is top-down : priority goes to governmental and international
institutions and when they are not able to solve the problems from above,
NGOs are given this task!. The idea that community groups might know more
26
than governments, and that they might be better suited to support the
commons, is not considered.
CONCLUSION
To sum up the discussion of the Brundtland report we can conclude that the
Commission basically reformulates the by-now old development myth, i.e . the
myth of unlimited industrial development . It is the old idea of stages in the
development process where, in a first stage, a given society draws from its
natural resource base in order to build up its own intellectual, economic, and
technological capacities. The second stage of development is then said to draw
upon these capacities, rather than on the natural resources base . This model
is based on the idea that gradually a society can make itself become independent
of nature. 'Sustainable development', then, is just another word for an
economic process that is drawing on a society's techno-economic capacities,
rather than on the natural resources base. Of course, there are 'no limits to
growth' in this model, given that the more developed a society is, the less it
depends on resources that are external to it, i.e. the more it can develop
sustainably. It is with this prospect of achieving independence from nature that
most natural and engineering sciences are developed . And it is with the
complementary prospect of optimizing a society's management capacity to
sustain such development that the social sciences are pushed forward.
Therefore, sustainable development becomes a matter of financial and human
capital, technology, and organizational capacity. If some societies have not
achieved sustainable development yet, so goes the argument, it is basically
because they lack the financial, human, technological, and organizational
capacity to do so. If other, more developed, societies do not do well in terms
of sustainable development, this, so goes the argument, is due to a lack of
economic, technological, and organizational efficiency.
So far the discourse of the Brundtland Commission is, therefore, hardly
new. The only new element is that development is now looked at from a
planetary or global perspective. Instead of stressing the development of a given
society or country, the stress is now on the development of the planet as a
whole . In that sense, the Brundtland Commission has succeeded where GATT
has failed. It has managed to make the development discourse universal. One
27
THE DOCUMENTS
of the key tools in doing so has been the ambiguous use of the term' commons'
or 'global commons'. From the Commission's perspective, the commons are
the natural resources available planet-wide. These resources are needed in
order to move societies to the second stage of industrial development, i.e. to
sustainable development. Also, looking at these resources on a planetary scale,
the Commission at least implicitly admits a certain finiteness of these
resources. However, the Commission still thinks that the major limits to
growth are not the natural resources, but the state of technology and social
organization. Output limits - such as pollution - are only of interest to the
Commission if they risk damaging the resource base . Says the Brundtland
report:
The concept of sustainable development does imply limits - not absolute limits but limitations
imposed by the present state of technology and social organization on environmental resources
and by the ability of the biosphere to absorb the effects of human activity. But technology and
social organization can both be improved to make way for a new era of economic growth."'"
The commons are, in the eyes of the Commission, the natural resources on
which all societies need to draw in order to get them to the second stage of
sustainable development. Using the idea of the commons in this global context
is, as we have shown, a perversion of the original meaning of the term. The
commons are the common land used by a local community for activities that
benefit the entire community. Commons were therefore managed by the
community. Referring to the planetary resource base in terms of 'commons'
suggests that the 'human community' is to manage these commons. However,
the crux is that on a global level the Commission is not thinking of the
community of individuals, but of the community of nation-states. The
Commission refers to the oceans, space, and Antarctica as examples of a
common management of common resources, as well as risks affecting these
resources. Implicitly, however, the Commission thinks that all resources should
be managed in common, i.e. between nation-states. Note the shift from
communities of individuals managing their commons to the community of
states managing the global commons.
In short, the Brundtland report strengthens the old development discourse
by lifting it to a planetary imperative. As in the original development paradigm,
sustainable development - which is but another term for 'modernity' - is to
be achieved in the second stage of development. From a planetary perspective,
28
which is the only novelty the Brundtland report proposes, we are currently in
transition from the first stage (pillage of natural resources or pre-modernity)
to the second stage (sustainable development or modernity) . This process, the
Commission says, has to be managed on a global scale, and its managers are
the existing nation-states.
29
2
SOUTHERN ELITES
The report of the South Commission entitled The ChaJ/en8e to the South is
another important document to put in the context of the UNCEO process.
Although the origin of the South Commission is unrelated to that process, the
political positions articulated in the report became increasingly important as
the UN CEO negotiations unfolded. The Commission was set up in 1987 by the
non-aligned movement on the initiative of Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir
Mohamad and headed by the former President of Tanzania, Julius Nyerere. Its
role was threefold: to investigate the common problems of the Southern
countries; to examine the possibilities of their working together to solve these
problems; and to develop a new dialogue with the North.
It was set up at just about the same time that the Brundtland Commission
delivered its report, but was originally concerned with very different
problems. Indeed, 'for most countries of the South, the decade of the 1980s
came to be regarded as a lost decade for development' . I The South
Commission identified in its report various aspects of this 'development crisis
of the 1980s' . In the beginning of the 1980s economic activity in the
industrialized countries slowed down and reduced the demand for imports
from the South. Also, the 'debt-related transfers, normally from North to
South, were reversed and became a major drain on Southern economies as
from 1984'.2 This was, moreover, aggravated by the fact that almost all
commodity prices fell in the second half of the decade. Finally, 'direct foreign
investment in developing countries fell by about two thirds in real terms
between 1982 and 1985,.3
As a result, and after the development decade of the 1970s, many
developing countries experienced a crisis in the 1980s, not to mention the loss
30
SOUTHERN ELITES
of many illusions associated with the perspective of future development. On

top of that, the end of the Cold War did not lead to renewed interest from the
North in the South. Rather, a situation arose where 'both attention and
technical and financial resources are being directed from development in the
South to economic reconstruction of Eastern Europe'.4 In short, the South
Commission emerged in the context of the betrayal of the hopes the South had
started to nourish in the 1970s. The' crisis of development' is, therefore, above
all a crisis of the perspective offurther development.
The environment is not really part of the considerations of the South
Commission. In fact, of the 300-page report, only a few pages are devoted to
environmental issues and problems. At the Least Developed Countries (LDC)
meeting in Paris in September 1990 of the 42 poorest countries of the world,
where the Commission presented the report, a Bangladeshi diplomat told a
press conference that they could not be bothered about the environment when
their people were starving to death. However, as the UNCED negotiations got
more serious in 1991, Southern governments stopped complaining that the
environment was a luxury of the rich, and started to get their act together.
Perhaps they began either to understand that food security, as the Brundtland
Commission had pointed out, was also an environmental issue, or they realized
that the environment was a bargaining chip for the South, an issue around
which they could rally and demand more help from the North.
As a result, the South Center (established in Geneva at the South
Commission's final meeting in October 1990) published a 20-page brochure
entitled 'Environment and Development: Towards a Common Strategy of the
South in the UNCED Negotiations and Beyond' . 5 As we will see later, this
brochure is more specific about the environment than is the South Commis-
sion's report. Yet, it is above all a strategy paper for the Southern governments
in order to get the North to give further support to Southern industrial
development, using Northern environmental concern as leverage.
To sum up, the South Commission's main and almost only concern is
industrial development and economic growth. This is not very surprising,
seeing that almost all of the Commission's 29 members have, at some point
in their lives, been either economics professors or ministers of economic
planning and development, or both. Needless to say, the South Commission is
baSically a reflection of the Southern countries' most Westernized elites. It
comes as no surprise that these Southern elites, as represented in the
31
THE DOCUMENTS
Commission, are most interested in the pursuit of development. They look at

it from a national, from a South- South, and from a North-South perspective,
a distinction we will follow here.
ECONOMIC GROWTH - THE NATIONAL

PERSPECTIVE
When it comes to development - and that is all their report is about - t.~e
South Commission is at least clear: no need to use such ambiguous terms as
'sustainable development'. Instead, the Commission talks about 'sustained
development' and 'economic growth', for which all national resources,
including women, must be ' mobilized' - note the military language . For the
South such growth is said to be 'imperative' . The basic unit for achieving it
remains the nation-state. Indeed, the state's role in promoting economic
growth and development is given much thought in the report. The South
Commission seeks to make clear that there is a need for state intervention in
order to promote the capacity-building that is normally neglected by the
market, such as education and scientific research and development. It also
points out that many Southern states have administrative systems that were set
up by their former colonial masters in order to serve their - the colonists -
best interests. And it makes some very valuable suggestions on the importance
of rethinking the state.
However, all this serves the purpose of making the state more fit to be a
development agent. It is from this perspective that the report encourages
public participation as well as scientific research and development . People need
to be ' mobilized ' in order to participate actively in the national development
endeavour. Appropriate political structures - such as democracy and public
participation - have to be allowed in order to promote economic growth. Says
the Commission:
Development can be achieved only if a nation's people - its farmers, workers, artisans, traders,
businessmen, entrepreneurs, and public officials - are able to use their energies creatively and
discharge their functions effectively. This in turn is critically dependent on the establishment of
efficient institutional mechanisms - both private and public - that enable all economic actors
to play their roles. 6
32
SOUTHERN ELITES
And appropriate political reforms - such as land reforms - have to be allowed

as well : 'Land reforms leading to more equitable patterns of ownership and
more efficient land use are indispensable for increasing agricultural production
and food security'.7 The same idea of 'mobilizing civil society for develop-
ment' applies also to women. Says the Commission: 'The mobilization of
women as equal partners in all development processes therefore needs priority
attention of policymakers' .8
In all fairness it must be said that the report does state that 'development
should be consistent with the evolving culture of the people' . 9 However, if one
examines in more detail what the Commission means by 'culture', one finds
a very Western definition, namely one where culture has no relationship with
nature, i.e . it is conceived basically as a luxury, a form of 'collective
entertainment'. 10 If the Commission is interested in culture at all, this is, above
all, because 'cultural values can produce social reactions, from apathy to
hostility, that hinder efforts to implement development strategies' .11 There-
fore, not surprisingly, 'development strategies ... must include as a goal the
development of culture itself' . 12 Although it is not said explicitly in the report,
popular cultures will have to evolve towards a 'scientific culture' if economic
growth is to be achieved successfully in the South.
The Commission does, however, say explicitly that the adoption of
Northern, Western, and modern science must be a stated goal of any
development strategy: The creation, mastery, and utilization of modern
science and technology are basic achievements that distinguish the advanced
from the backward world, the North from the South .... Thus, future
development policies will need to address with great vigor the closing of the
knowledge gap with the North'. 13 Therefore, there is an urgent need for
so-called 'human resources development' and 'capacity-building'. Says the
Commission: 'Progress in this field calls for the overhaul of educational
systems, in order that more attention may be given to education in science and
to training in engineering and technical skills'. 14
Capacity-building, democratization and political reforms are all seen by the
Commission as necessary prerequisites in order to embark on the path of
national economic growth. This is especially true in these difficult times when
such economic growth in the South can no longer be expected to result
automatically from the economic growth in the North through a trickle-down
effect, nor from Northern aid, given the East- West rivalry. Such 'self-reliant
33
THE DOCUMENTS
and people-centered' - substitute 'national' - development will have to focus,

according to the Commission, on four areas, namely agricultural development
and food security, industrialization, service industries, and trade strategies.
The Commission does analyse the complicated and increasingly difficult
trade situation for the South. Indeed, the South has always been at a
disadvantage in international trade treaty discussions, for example in places like
the GATT talks where it has few negotiators and often no expertise at all . Also,
both countries and multinationals in the North are undergoing further
consolidation into the unified North American and European Community
trading blocs that will strengthen their producers while impeding Southern
products, and making life very difficult for Southern producers unless they
band together in a similar fashion. But despite these observations, the
development ideology prevails over common sense, and the Commission
concludes that international trade - together with fast and strong national
economic growth - is the main 'tool of progress' .
In the same way as for the North, industrialization is a key part of the
Commission's development strategy. It recommends that attention be paid to
economic efficiency and technological dynamism . Once again , proper incen-
tives, subsidies, and taxes are discussed in some detail. The Commission is also
in favour of Southern countries' taking advantage of the new and fast growing
service industries like tourism and finance.
Under the heading of agricultural development and food security, the South
Commission discusses the issue of unequal distribution of land and the
dumping of cheap food from Northern countries. But, like the Brundtland
Commission, it largely ignores the fact that the best land in the South is often
engaged in producing export crops, although it is critical of government
policies that do not promote food production for local consumption and those
that encourage the consumption of imported foods. For Africa, the report says,
new crops need to be found that will suit the fragile soil. Particular attention
needs to be paid to post-harvest storage methods to avoid the 40 per cent loss
at that stage. Overall, the m essage of the Commission in this matter can be
summarized as the 'industrialization of agriculture'. Says the Commission:
'Particular importance needs to be attached to industry's link with agriculture .
The rapid expansion of the cultivation of food crops can be facilitated by
industrialization' .15 This is not surprising, since in the Commission's eyes the
environmentally and culturally destructive Green Revolution has actually been
34
SOUTHERN ELITES
a success to be replicated : 'The successful achievement by the Green revolution

in Asia has lessons for countries with sluggish agricultural growth'. 16
It is only in connection with security and agricultural development that the
environment is actually mentioned by the Commission. Just as for the
Brundtland Commission, the environment is basically an economic resource .
As such it has to be rationally managed, while being furth er exploited. Says the
Commission: 'The countries of the South will need to make a concerted effort
to counteract environmental stress, as sustained development will require
preservation and development of natural resources, as well as their rational
exploitation' . 17 Overall, the message is that 'the South has no alternative but
to pursue a path of rapid economic growth, and hence to industrialize ' . 18 And
the Commission insists: 'This [industrialization and pollution] is just, as well
as necessary, given the enormous disparity in the levels of energy consumption
between the North and the South, and the indisputable right of the South to
develop rapidly to improve the well-being of its people ' .1 9
SOUTH-SOUTH COOPERATION
This part of the South Commission's report is perhaps a more Significant

contribution to the political debate than the previous part on sustaining
national industrial development. Indeed, all the Commission says about
development hardly breaks new ground. Almost all of it has been examined at
length by economists and other development thinkers over the past twenty
years. Much effort has been made over the years to implement these new
policies, generally with disastrous consequences for the people, their cultures,
and the environment, local and global.
Southern cooperation too is not a new idea, but has hardly ever been
implemented in any serious manner. So the South Commission ' s call for strong
collective action, such as the need for the South to speak together on issues
of common concern like debt, is still welcome. However, it is disappointing
to see that much of this discussion centres on creating Northern style
institutions in the South. Yet this is not really surprising, as Northern style
institutions are probably best suited to further the Northern style development
the Commission seeks to promote.
The Commission starts off by explaining the rigidities of a world organized
35
THE DOCUMENTS
along North- South lines where all the trading routes are directed northwards.
It notes the phenomenal economic success of oil production agreements and
argues that this should be extended to more of the commodities that the South
expo rts . Unfortunately, it hardly mentions the fact that UNCTAD has been
working on this issue for decades with a singular lack of success, mainly
because of the subordinate role that it plays to more powerful institutions like
GATT which have exactly the opposite interests. Attempts to shore up the
prices of several commodities like coffee and rubber by controlling production
have met with little success. UN institutions have also not had much success
helping countries diversify production after the collapse of prices of major
exports. Nor does the Commission address contradictions to its supposed
concern for the environment that may arise through creating a major demand
for importing toxic waste to the South, for example.
The Commission goes on to explain the necessity of creating Southern
institutions that will ensure Southern cooperation in a variety of areas. For
example , it thinks that it is very important to create Southe rn multinationals
and a South Bank that will take on the role of the World Bank, but for the
South. Multinationals and the World Bank are possibly two of the worst
examples of Northern development strategy, as they are two of the biggest
contributors to cultural and environmental destruction in the South in recent
years. It would be particularly disastrous to ape these institutions as part of a
strategy for South-South cooperation. More valuable ideas include Southern
institutions that would gather and exchange Southern knowledge such as a
proposed South Secretariat to organize Southern countries to speak with a
collective voice , the proposal for regional groups to help settle regional
conflicts, and the recombination to strengthen existing institutions like the
Third World Academy of Sciences. Perhaps the South Center, created in 1990
as the follow-up to the South Commission, is meant to be a step in this
direction. But why, then, is the South Center located in Geneva, Switzerland?
And then again, the South Commission does not have any particular concern
for traditional knowledge systems and local communities. All the suggestions
for the creation or support of Southern institutions are in fact directed at
copying Northern science, technology, education, and institutions in order to
boost trade and economic growth in the South.
36
SOUTHERN ELITES
NORTH-SOUTH RELATIONS
Quite logically, since the South and the North are basically aspiring to and
competing for the same goals, their relationship is portrayed by the South
Commission in terms of conflict, especially, as we shall see, when it comes to
the environment. Of course, the Commission does call for debt cancellation
in the vain hope that Northern multilateral and private banks will heed its
words. Like the Brundtland Commission, the South Commission also calls for
more loans as a way to build up the infrastructure of Southern countries,
emphasizing, as always, the need for the North to donate a minimum amount
of their national income. Once again, it is a statement that is, in our opinion,
hard to justify when it has become obvious over the years that more loans will
lead to more debt and, as a result, more environmental destruction. The
Commission also calls for more multinational investment as a way for Southern
countries to receive new business and technological skills. This is also a
position that is hard to justify when the Commission has spent such a lot of
time explaining that increased dependency on the North has led more and
more to the South being exploited by the North. To be fair, the Commission
does attempt to give this some balance by saying that foreign investment by
multinationals needs to be monitored for its impact on the South. But it is not
clear from the report who is going to do this monitoring.
Finally, the Commission also says that disarmament is an area that could
open up financing for the South, suggesting that part of the money saved by
a reduction in military budgets could be used to help meet Southern
technological needs. But the issue of militarization and disarmament stands out
largely by its omission. At the very beginning of the report the Commission
notes that Southern countries spend a large portion of their budgets on the
military. At no point does it mention the major role that Northern aid plays
in this, and at no point does it stress the need for disarmament in the South.
Instead, it calls mostly for new security arrangements in the South and stresses
the need for regional solutions to regional conflicts. Had the Commission
condemned the exploitation of people and the destruction of the environment
by both the North and the South through military spending, and called for the
regulation of the industries that supply military hardware, it could have made
a much stronger case for an alternative to current development strategies.
The major novelty in terms ofNorth~South relations is probably to be found
37
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Halliburton s Army How a Well Connected Texas Oil

The State and Development in the Third World A World

Maritime Power and the Law of the Sea Expeditionary

Pathways to Development From Politics to Power 1st

World Development Report 2008 Agriculture and

International Intervention in the Post Cold War World

The Politics of the Earth Environmental Discourses John

Rough Justice The International Criminal Court in a

Pratap Chatterjee is Global Environmental Editor of the Inter Press Service,

Power, Politics and World

PRATAP CHATTERJEE and

Roulledge is On imprim o/Ihe Taylor & Froncis Group. on in/orrna businCJS

10 1994 Praup Chatterjee and Matthia. Finger

All rights rue rved. No part of this book may be reprinted or

B,;IJ.h LJbnll)' C'JI<li"fjuJng in PubhuJI;on DaUJ

Lib ...,! 4CongtetS Calalagmg in PubliC<llioa Dalo

List of Acronyms and Abbreviations viii

Part I: The Documents

3 RIO AND BUST 39

Part II: Non-Governmental Organizations

5 FEEDING THE PEOPLES INTO THE GREEN MACHINE 79

6 WHAT DID ENVIRONMENTAL NGOs ACHIEVE? 92

Part III: Business and Industry

8 CHANGING WHAT? 121

Part IV: Finance and Institutions

10 INSTITUTIONAL OUTCOMES 151

11 WHAT NOW? 167

THE DEVELOPMENT PARADIGM

In order to understand the UN CEO process, it must be located in the larger

THE COLD WAR

The Cold War is the next important element to consider in order to

THIRD WORLD DEVELOPMENT

The development paradigm was further strengthened by the political independ-

THE SOCIAL MOVEMENTS OF THE

THE GREEN CRITIQUE OF

Before the early 1970s it is difficult to identify a coherent Green critique of

industrial development, in particular of modern science, high technology, and

THE NEW COLD WAR AND GLOBAL

THE CHALLENGES OF GLOBAL

changes and challenges, issues of national security increasingly seem to be

WHOSE COMMON FUTURE?

The essence of the philosophy of the World Commission on Environment and

on the assumption of two fundamental relationships, both of which must be

imported seeds, they will never be able to support themselves.

SPECIES AND ECOSYSTEMS

development' . 23 Tropical forests, for example, become 'reservoirs of biolog-

rationality which the Commission imposes upon everything, be it species,

The Commission seems to be perfectly aware of some negative environmental

FROM MILITARY TO ENVIRONMENTAL

In short, in this analysis the military is simply an impediment to future

It would be highly desirable if the appropriate international organizations, including appropriate

the perspective of what nation-states currently do manage in common, i.e.

of many illusions associated with the perspective of future development. On

Commission, are most interested in the pursuit of development. They look at

ECONOMIC GROWTH - THE NATIONAL

And appropriate political reforms - such as land reforms - have to be allowed