Issue of Today

Realizing Human and Ecological Security

By Maximo Kalaw

The World Summit on Sustainable Development (also known as Rio Plus 10) will be a summit gathering from September 2-11, 2002, in Johannesburg, South Africa, of governments, concerned citizens, United Nations agencies, multilateral financial institutions and other major actors to review and assess global change since the historic United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in 1992. UNCED, also known as the "Earth Summit," was held at Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and brought together policy-makers, diplomats, scientists and NGO representatives from 179 countries in a massive effort to reconcile the impact of socioeconomic activities on the environment and vice versa. It brought global attention to the understanding that the planet's environmental problems were intimately linked to economic conditions and problems of social justice. It showed that social, environmental and economic needs must be met in balance with each other: if people are poor, and national economies are weak, the environment suffers; if the environment is abused, people suffer and economies decline. It made clear that our continued survival would require new ways of looking at how we produce and consume, how we live and how we make decisions.  UNCED proclaimed the concept of sustainable development as a universal objective, and developed a broad-ranging program of action (Agenda 21) to help guide international cooperation and policy development in the direction of global sustainable development. The upcoming Summit will assess the progress made toward this objective over the last 10 years, as well as seek consensus on priorities for further action in new areas and on new issues, while strengthening the commitment of all parties to achieving the goals of Agenda 21. Further information is at www.johannesburgsummit.org/

Challenges Ahead

Regrettably for the coming World Summit on Sustainable Development/Earth Summit III, "sustainable development"--originally defined as development that meets the needs of the present generation without undermining the ability of future generations to meet theirs--has lost its conceptual currency and has slid off the political agenda of most countries. The Earth Summit is still remembered as an environmental summit instead of one focusing on sustainable development.

The integration of the economic and social engines of development has been made more difficult, and this further diminishes the potential political efficacy of the summit. To gain political relevance, it is imperative that the pressing needs of people be concretely addressed, through coherent commitments at all levels of governance.

We face an absolutely compelling situation:

Over 800 million people suffer from chronic malnutrition, including 174 million children. 36.1 million people are living with HIV/AIDS, and thousands are killed or maimed annually by land mines. 1.1 billion people do not have access to safe drinking water, and 2.9 billion do not have access to adequate sanitation. 1.3 billion people exist on a dollar a day. There are currently more than 10 million refugees displaced by war. 100 million children live or work on the streets. We are all exposed to sickness from chemical pollutants and threatened by around 36,000 nuclear weapons of mass destruction.

These are not new facts. Due to the efforts of major civil society advocacy groups, they have been in the awareness of our national and international governance institutions for many years. Over the past 30 years, the Stockholm Conference on the Environment (1972), the Rio Earth Summit on Environment and Development (1992), and the UN Social and Women's Summits (1995) and Habitat II Summit (1996) have led to a series of commitments by states to meet basic human and ecological security needs and promote sustainable development. But due to a lack of a people-based mass political will, these commitments have not been adequately met, and the cost in human lives and economic losses has been staggering. Any legitimate national, regional and global governance architecture must respond to the people's minimum needs, including:

food security; health security--specifically against persistent organic pollutants (POPs), nuclear contamination, HIV and land mines; ecological security--specifically against climate change (global warming) and for water security (including desertification); security against extreme poverty--against continuing poor country debts, trade regimes that marginalize people and create poverty, and for decent work; security against weapons of mass destruction; security for human rights.

These minimum people's security needs must be addressed at Earth Summit III if the summit is to gain political legitimacy at national and global levels.

They are the minimum needs for addressing extreme poverty and environmental collapse and therefore the minimum responsibility of any national or global governance regimes. In order to achieve them, fundamental changes are necessary in the structures which currently constitute that governance.


Global Governance Architecture

There are three major players in global governance. These can be thought of in terms of political, economic and civil societies. The dynamic relationships between these players can drive important processes of change and transformation.

Traditionally, the structure of political society has been the state system, and its main role has been to provide security, understood in terms of public order domestically and protection of territorial sovereignty against international challenges. In democracies, political society has relied on the electoral process as its nucleus of authority, legitimacy and accountability.
Economic society has developed into a main vehicle for the creation of private wealth, now mainly through corporations, and the nucleus of its legitimacy, authority and accountability has been the market and its stockholders' equity.

Civil society's growing role has come about primarily because of the vacuum that has been created by the strong partnership between political and economic societies. Civil society has assumed the role of a voice for the public interest or public good, more specifically the interest of communities and ecosystems, which are not market players in the present state of the global economy. Civil society's legitimacy, authority and accountability lie in the authenticity and value of the public interest issues it advocates. Issues that do not gather public support will be neglected and eventually forgotten. The financial accountability of civil society is to the donors who support its programs.

A New Political Sphere

The emerging politics of global governance challenges the traditional distinctions between domestic and international, and between territorial and non-territorial politics which have been embedded in our conventional notion of the "political." The emerging concept of global citizenship also crosses over the conventional separation between the personal and the political. These developments present the most challenging task for governance institutions. At the same time, they also provide opportunities for creative change.

Some emerging practices of transnational institutions, regimes and conventions are providing prototype structures for new models of global governance: the European Union's progress in getting member countries to cede portions of their autonomy to a higher order of shared values and interest; the unique tripartite decision-making process with government, labor and business at the International Labor Organization (ILO); the movement from international law to "cosmopolitan law" that transcends national boundaries and limits state sovereignty in human rights and war crimes, and specific mechanisms such as National Councils for Sustainable Development which bring government and nongovernment bodies together with business, aiming at integration of environment and development.

Past social movements generally relegated the personal to the family domain, separate from the political domain. The emergence of ethnic, cultural and spiritual movements has brought a new source of energy for development and governance by unleashing people's inner resources. Despite the inherent dangers, such as the political influence of extreme spiritual fundamentalism, the participation of the "inner self" is essential. In the final analysis, global governance must be based on personal self-governance.

It is time to put human and ecological security needs firmly in the political spotlight, and foremost on the Earth Summit III agenda. The only legitimate and effective way to do this is for people throughout the world to come together and take responsibility for meeting these needs and demand that their governments and international institutions refocus on these needs and take concrete action to fulfill them.

Maximo Kalaw was cochair of the International NGO Forum at the 1992 Earth Summit. He is executive director of the Earth Council.

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