Michelle Horvane, an activist from the Environmental Youth Alliance, was one of three Australian delegates to an international youth conference on "Environment and Development" held in Costa Rica March 22-29. The other Australian delegates were Hailey Iles from the Northern Land Council and Danny Kennedy from Green Youth Action. Some 250 delegates from 90 countries attended the conference, which was part of the official non-government organisation (NGO) input into the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) to be held in Brazil in June. Horvane spoke to Peter Boyle from Green Left Weekly in Melbourne.
What came out of the conference?
It was very inspiring and a marked contrast to the official UNCED process, which has been marred by deliberate stalling and avoidance of the main issues and any commitment to real action, mainly by a few governments led by the United States. People around the world are hoping that the Brazil conference will help solve the environmental crisis, but this handful of powerful and wealthy governments is refusing to recognise that poverty and Third World debt are major causes and consequences of environmental destruction.
The youth conference came to unanimous agreement around these very issues. It came up with five working papers, which its delegates will take to the Brazil conference. These papers place the blame for the environmental crisis squarely on the current international economic and political situation. They said global inequities must be addressed if the environment crisis is to be solved.
For example?
Specifically, they called for: cancellation of all Third World debt and payment of the "ecological debt" owed by the North to the South; recognition of the right of self-determination of Third World nations and indigenous peoples; the need for global demilitarisation; an end to driftnetting; the US government to ratify the Montreal Protocol on ozone-destroying CFCs; complete restructuring of the UN to make it more democratic; the scrapping of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund and its replacement with more democratic financial institutions.
They also specified a halt to all nuclear testing; removal of US bases from all territories except US territory; an end to the dumping of dangerous technologies and toxic wastes in the South: toxic waste should be stored and disposed where it is produced. US and Japanese dumping in the Pacific were condemned, as was the plan for Austria to broker the dumping of European munitions in Johnston Atoll; "appropriate development" to be used for all future industrialisation, with the multinational companies to be forced to install environmentally sound plant and to pay for pollution they cause; development programs should include all sectors of society, in particular women, indigenous people and those who work the land.
Given the criticisms of UNCED, what strategy was proposed?
Many delegates, especially from the countries of the South, thought oving a waste of time and that instead the focus should be on building grassroots and popular movements against environmental destruction. They saw the conference as a chance to make contacts and network to build the environment movement.
The conference called for an international day of protest on World Environment Day, June 5, to expose the official UNCED process.
Was there any pattern in the opinions raised in discussion?
There where poles of opinion in the debate about how much to criticise the UNCED process. The more radical view was around the Latin American delegates and the more conservative among the Europeans.
There was a dispute about process — whether to use strict consensus or to recognise a majority vote — which erupted over a recommendation to condemn the celebrations of 500 years of European settlement in the Americas. This had the strong support of the representatives from indigenous peoples, the South and most of the delegates from the North, but the Spanish delegates and a few other European delegates opposed it. This minority then tried to exclude any mention of the issue because there was no consensus.
The support for consensus came mainly from European delegates, with virtually all the rest, including the indigenous representatives, demanding that a vote be taken if there was no consensus.
But there was no problem obtaining consensus on most issues. There was consensus that social and human rights issues could not be separated from environmental issue. Environmentalists, particularly in the South, often had to struggle simply for the right to be activists. There was a duty, the conference decided, for environmentalists in the North to show political and material solidarity with the movements in the South.