THE ART of protest has many exponents, and environmental and aid activists are among its masters. Most of the pressure groups in this arena were born to protest, and they have done a grand job of alerting the world to environmental degradation and injustices in development. However, the world is changing, and protest is no longer the only path to progress. In many cases it may even be its undoing. If the activists are not to become irrelevant, they are going to have to change their approach.
The World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg this year showed how things now stand in the battle against poverty and pollution. Right on cue, international pressure groups dismissed the summit as a failure. Andrew Hewett, executive director of Oxfam in Australia, described it as 鈥渁 triumph for greed and self interest, a tragedy for poor people and the environment鈥�. Charles Secrett, director of Friends of the Earth in Britain, called it 鈥渢he worst political sell-out in decades鈥�. He declared himself appalled that governments 鈥減ublicly preached the message of sustainable development but instructed their negotiators to do trade deals above all else鈥�.
But while these organisations are right to demand that governments do more to promote sustainable development, they are wrong to assume that only governments can deal with the problem. They missed one of the most important contributions of the World Summit: the transition from global agreements to national and local actions. Diplomats, think tanks and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have helped develop excellent policies, but the time has come to move on and focus on the work on the ground. Partnerships between governments, business and community are now the key to a sustainable future. Yet at Johannesburg the pressure groups hammered them as if they were bringers of doom.
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The politics of environment and development have never stood still. International activist groups came of age in the 1960s and 1970s, when the public was utterly ignorant of the worsening worldwide environmental degradation. They were highly successful in promoting awareness of the world鈥檚 plight, often spectacularly so. Their campaigning helped to shape the agenda of the 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm, which gave us a world that was as informed about the environment as it was incapable of agreeing how to preserve it. Then came the age of consensus-building, to which NGOs contributed immensely and which culminated in 1992 in the adoption of Agenda 21 at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro.
Today, the challenge is more a practical one. It demands different skills, organisation and policies. For a start, implementing programmes for sustainable development requires heavier investment in scientific and technical skills, and this in turn demands a change in the way young people are trained. Hence the World Summit鈥檚 call to 鈥渋ntegrate sustainable development into education systems at all levels鈥�. No single institution will be able to solve all the problems in areas such as water and sanitation, health, agriculture and biodiversity. These will need the resources and technical expertise of many people in government, industry, academia and civil society. The key to this is networking and partnerships. Are pressure groups going to help with this, or are they going to continue disrupting progress?
The private sector is emerging as a significant player in this process, not least because of the central role it plays in transforming natural resources into goods and services. But just as importantly, it is also a major source of scientific and technical knowledge. So far only a minority in the private sector has embraced sustainable development and the need to invest in changing the way it exploits the environment. But campaigners鈥� sweeping condemnation of private companies alienates those who have taken the lead and discourages others from joining them. In Johannesburg, fear of bad publicity forced some businesses and community groups to meet in private houses on the margins of the conference. This deprived the summit of crucial opportunities to learn from these agreements.
There will always be a place for activists, but raising awareness and pressing for global consensus are no longer enough. We have to start tackling the problems on the ground. I envisage a new model for NGOs, bristling with technical know-how, that could play a major role. The Equator Initiative () of the UN Development Programme, which promotes partnerships in conservation between communities, civil society, the private sector and government, is a good example of what such an organisation might be like.
Rather than punish governments for encouraging partnerships with business, pressure groups should be pressing them to do more in this area. The future for the reduction of poverty and protecting the planet now lies in cooperation, not in conflict.