World Summit on Sustainable Development Department of Public Information - News and Media Services Division - New York
	Johannesburg, South Africa 26 August-4 September 2002	28 August 2002

PRESS CONFERENCE ON 'ETHICS FOR SUSTAINABILITY'   "A Voice for Justice and Solidarity: Ethics for Sustainability" was the subject of a press conference at the World Summit for Sustainable Development, today, sponsored by the delegation of Norway. Participating were: General Secretary of the South African Council of Churches, Molefe Tsele (for the Ecumenical Team for the World Summit); Demba Moussa Dembele of Jubilee South, Africa; and Ivonne Yanez of Friends of Earth International. Explaining the link between justice and sustainability, Mr. Tsele said that major current events, which ranged from a drought in Malawi to floods in China, were signaling a greater catastrophe waiting to happen, unless action was taken. The irresponsible conduct of multinational corporations, social exclusion, reckless policies and blatant disregard for environmental justice were causing irreparable damage to our planet. Global financial institutions must bear responsibility for the looming disaster threatening some 15 million people in southern Africa. It was a human-produced disaster, caused by the policies of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other institutions. "In pursuing short-term political and economic gains, we are putting at risk the future of our common economic space," he said. "We need to put justice back at the heart of sustainability." Mr. Dembele stressed the need to put in place a number of procedures to hold corporations accountable, particularly in developing countries. Corporations should be held financially and legally accountable for the damage they caused in the countries where they operated. Interfering with trade and environment, corporate giants exercised disproportionate power in the global economy, he said. Liberalization, privatization and deregulation in recent years had led to their impunity. Nationally, governments must reassert control over corporate activities. Also needed were actions on behalf of the United Nations to reign in multinational corporations. It was necessary to establish an international regulatory regime to cover corporate activities, which were increasingly transboundary or global. He advocated creation of a transnational corporations commission within the Economic and Social Council, which would make corporations abide by all human rights conventions and protect the environment. Ms. Yanez said that the concept of "ecological debt" referred to the debt owed by northern industrial countries to third world countries on account of resource plundering, environmental degradation and disproportionate appropriation of environmental space to deposit toxic and nuclear wastes. Among the consequences of developed countries' industrial activities were global climate change and other ecological damage. External financial debt owed by the countries of the South to northern creditors was much smaller that that ecological debt. She proposed recognition of ecological debt and recovery of what was owed. All economic and international relations should be altered in order to incorporate that concept. Immediate cancellation of the financial debt owed by developing countries was an obvious starting point. However, ecological debt could not be reduced to a financial equation. It also had historical, political and ethical dimensions. Responding a question regarding unjust land-related laws, Mr. Tsele said that land ownership in southern Africa was extremely distorted, with some 20 per cent of the population owning 80 per cent of the land. In some parts of the region, people were driven off the land and resettled forcefully. Land issues were very sensitive, and a large majority of people remained landless. Any agricultural sustainability was unreachable if the majority of the population was forced to squat illegally. That was an injustice. To a related question, Mr. Dembele replied that justice should always guide policies at the national and international levels. What was happening in Zimbabwe was a question of justice. Was it just and moral to let some 10 per cent of the population own most of the land? That explained the necessity of land reform. While there could be a better way of implementing it, there were no easy solutions. What specific outcomes would you like to achieve at the Summit? a correspondent asked. Mr. Tsele replied that much of the outcome text was still in brackets, and corporations made it hard to include anything that could lead to legally binding clauses. The people and public opinion at large had a strong support for corporate accountability, however. Recent events in the United States demonstrated the fact that voluntary corporate accountability was not working and that binding regulations were needed. Press Conferences Summit News