Examination of Witnesses (Questions 127
- 139)
WEDNESDAY 12 FEBRUARY 2003
MR JONATHON
PORRITT, PROFESSOR
TIMOTHY O'RIORDAN
AND MR
SCOTT GHAGAN
Chairman
127. Good morning and thank you for being so
prompt. A distinct improvement on Clare Short's timekeeping, who
once kept this Committee waiting about half an hour. I thought
you might be interested to know that.
(Mr Porritt) I was hoping you were not
going to mention that last encounter, Chairman!
128. Thank you very much for the little booklet
of evidence you sent us which includes some of your press reports
and so forth both before and after the Johannesburg Summit. Is
there anything you would like to add to that before we begin to
cross-examine you?
(Mr Porritt) No, not really, Chairman. W e tried to
show in that the way in which the Commission, predominantly back
here in the UK, was seeking to reflect the Johannesburg agenda
to a more domestic audience and trying to persuade the UK media
to take on that particular part of it. I am assuming that we will
deal with some of the issues regarding both the run up to some
of the stuff going on in the Summit itself and afterwards.
129. Yes, particularly the implementation. The
Government's approach to implementation is a very much a part
of it and your role in that.
(Mr Porritt) Yes. My colleague Tim O'Riordan was actually
in Johannesburg, unlike myself—Tim was one of our two formal
representatives on the UK delegation; Maria Adebowale was also
on the delegation—so I shall certainly defer to Tim regarding
anything that was actually going on in Johannesburg itself.
Chairman: Thank you very much indeed Joan, the
Vice-Chairman of the Committee, was also at the Summit, unlike
myself, so I will ask Joan to lead off on this.
Joan Walley
130. Thank you, Chairman. Thank you for coming
along to our meeting at such an early start this morning. The
Committee did send three people out to the Summit because we felt
it would be important for us to be there in order that we could
then monitor more effectively what happens afterwards. I wondered
what role you felt the six commissioners who represented your
Commission played out in Johannesburg.
(Professor O'Riordan) Since I was there,
may I speak to begin with. First of all, we kept a watching brief
on all the discussions and particularly the way in which the British
delegation was moving the case for sustainable development in
the various arguments and particularly again associated with the
plan of action. But also we were acting as intermediaries between
large numbers of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and the
various official delegations. In my personal case I was very interested
in the role of science in sustainability and the relationship
between science and the so-called type 2 partnerships, the business/government/civil
society partnerships which, in my view, need to be underpinned
by very strong and reliable environmental science in order for
them to work. So we were doing a lot of things in the form of
monitoring, connecting, keeping people informed and keeping a
watching brief on how the British delegation was working.
131. If I can just press you a bit further on
that, because in some of the evidence you have given to the Committee
you talk about how it was a "unique opportunity for sustainable
development to be grounded within the domestic UK political agenda."
Do you feel, in terms of your watching brief of the UK delegation,
that that was actually grasped by the British delegation out at
Johannesburg?
(Professor O'Riordan) As you know, the British delegation
was very much driven by trying to get the plan of implementation
into a form that would be acceptable to the British Government's
view. This was a constantly difficult thing to do because of the
huge cross-currents of different points of view in international
negotiations of this kind and because the plan of implementation
was covering a massive array of material which could not be easily
bottled into a week's negotiations. But, in terms of your question,
I think the British delegation was so much involved with getting
the agenda established that it may not have always taken into
account the possible implications of trying to achieve what it
was seeking in the plan of implementation back in the domestic
scene—and that, I think, is part of our evidence to you
this morning.
132. Did you see that, trying to achieve what
was needed, as something that would be set in place during the
stay in Johannesburg? Do you feel that the way in which the Government
delegation was forcing the agenda out there had one sight set
on what would happen afterwards, or do you feel that it was just
about being out there at the time?
(Professor O'Riordan) My own interpretation was that
it was primarily trying to get a plan of implementation that would
stick, that would meet the expectations of the Government and
of many non-governmental organisations. That was its primary focus
during the weeks it was there—and, indeed, ministers were
summarily engaged in this matter because it was a difficult plan
to put together in the last four or five days—but there
are implications for what was agreed and what people were discussing
which I think the Commission itself is now working on—and
Jonathon Porritt will say more about that—to draw the agenda
back out into the national scene. That, I think, is part of our
discussions today. I am happy to elaborate on that but, to be
precise in my answer to you, I think we were primarily concerned
with getting that plan of implementation into some kind of reasonable
shape rather than all the issues that might affect the British
agenda following this.
133. The Committee is interested as well for
your views in respect of the Prime Minister, who was widely praised
for going out there and showing leadership and being one of the
first leaders to sign up to go out there. Do you feel that the
leadership he provided while he was there was something which
helped progress to be made? How do you assess the leadership that
was taken by the UK delegation out in Johannesburg?
(Professor O'Riordan) If I can distinguish between
the UK delegation, led by two ministers, Mrs Beckett, in particular,
and also Mr Meacher, but other ministers were involved, I think
there was a heavy degree of commitment by the UK delegation to
getting the achievement of this Johannesburg Summit to work. They
and their officials worked tirelessly as a delegation, with an
exceedingly good integration of services and management. I was
very struck by their capacity to keep working away well into the
night, with virtually no food and no sleep, in order to try to
achieve British delegation objectives. Sometimes they succeeded—sustainable
consumption reduction was a notable achievement by the delegation—and
in other areas, they suffered—like in the area of renewable
energy—and I think it is one of these things that happens
in these big, international negotiations. But the heads of state
in general—the Prime Minister to some extent less so—gave
a very strong sense of being utterly disconnected from the whole
Johannesburg process. I think one of the things that was rather
unsatisfactory was that here we were talking about the well-being
of the planet, about the whole idea of earthly survival—and
the well-being of populations who are deeply impoverished and
socially mismanaged. Yet here were ministers who almost appeared
to begrudge giving a day of their time to talking about this when
they are grappling for months of their time on issues which arguably
are going to damage and worsen the state of well-being of the
planet and its peoples. I do feel there is a very strong sense
of disconnect between the heads of government and their ideology
for what they believe in and the way they approached that Summit.
From the point of view of the non-governmental people and the
civil society generally, apparent lack of enthusiasm and commitment
by heads of government right across the board is disheartening.
It gives the impression that it is not a matter that they care
about having a high profile on their agenda. We at this Commission,
and many other people with us, believe that this is actually the
most fundamental issue of the planet. Many of the questions that
Government ministers are talking about now, not least preparations
for war, are, in my view, very much bound up with a much more
survivable and democratic and just society settled on a living
planet. These matters are therefore deeply connected to the other
questions that ministers and heads of states are concerned about
these days.
134. I think we would be very interested to
explore that link between the situation in respect of Iraq and,
you know, the Johannesburg Summit which was only six months away.
Could I perhaps turn to you, Jonathon. You did not go out to Johannesburg.
(Mr Porritt) No.
135. You were here. I wonder what your assessment
was really of the press coverage. We feel the whole Summit was
not given the attention it deserved. We saw some of your press
articles in The Observer and I wonder whether that was
frustration on your part or just part of your communication strategy.
(Mr Porritt) It was very much part of our communication
strategy. We felt that it was important that the Commission spoke
out independently just immediately prior to the opening of the
Summit, to remind people that although the UK would quite rightly
be perceived as one of the leaders on sustainable issues out in
Johannesburg, that was a relative judgment they would be making,
it was not an absolute judgment, because leadership in this area
is, as we know, a relative thing. It is quite clear from the discussions
we have regularly on the Commission that what any government is
doing falls woefully short of what is now required to drive the
transition to a sustainable world. We wanted to make those two
points. We wanted to commend the UK for the things that it is
doing but to remind people that the likely outcome from the Summit
was still going to be very inadequate in terms of the gap between
what needs to be done and what is being done. As regards the media
as a whole, I can assure you that we shared your frustration absolutely.
The media coverage in the run-up to the Summit was disgraceful
really and I feel indicated an intent to do a pre-determined piece
of Government knocking that had nothing to do with the quality
of the debate, the inputs that were being made by the UK Government
and so on. They all fell into this utterly pathetic, childish
belief that the quality of the contribution from any delegation
could be measured by the size of that delegation and then proceeded
to have a wonderful time going after really microscopically unimportant
issues of that kind. Unfortunately, the Government offered them
a wonderful, juicy titbit in terms of whether No 10 was or was
not going to permit Michael Meacher to be part of the UK delegation.
I cannot imagine a more stupid way of giving the media precisely
the kind of irrelevant little story they love to play with so
they do not have to confront real issues, and I think that was
a piece of appalling press management by the Government. We made
that position very clear at the time. Once you get off on a bad
footing like that, all sorts of things go awry, and by the time
we actually got to the start of the Summit the media orientation
was very ill-disposed towards the kind of quality and depth that
was needed. One has to say, however, that when we got going on
the coverage it was okay during the Summit itself. We have not
done a precise word count but it is certainly our estimation that
the concept of sustainable development was used more in the 10
days of the Summit than in the preceding 10 months, and probably
even longer than that, so there was a real awareness of sustainable
development building up which I think was important. I feel the
cynicism that we felt would literally overwhelm the media coverage
tended to fade away as more serious reportage came back from Johannesburg
itself.
136. Just taking up Professor O'Riordan's previous
comments, how do you feel that that media coverage is now continuing
post-Johannesburg?
(Mr Porritt) I think this is a very interesting issue
and I am sure you will all be deliberating about this. I am extremely
sceptical, to be absolutely honest, that there is anything called
a post-Johannesburg agenda. Whereas, in my estimation, Rio and
the Earth Summit will continue to have resonance in international
debates for the definable future, as far as I can tell, because
it brought into being real hard-edged, new international instruments,
new treaties, very important broad-brush things like Agenda 21—however
much people might like to knock the outcomes from Rio, they were
substantive and they set in train international policy processes,
that, as we can see with climate change and others, have been
highly significant—
Chairman
137. Because they had targets presumably, specific
commitments.
(Mr Porritt) Indeed, specific commitments.
138. With deadlines attached to them, with years
attached to them.
(Mr Porritt) Yes, and a constant review process, so
that the committees, the parties to all these international treaties,
are on a meeting schedule which means they simply have to try
to move things forward time after time.
139. And that was absent, in your view, in Johannesburg.
Like motherhood and apple pie, a rather vague thing.
(Mr Porritt) Yes. I believe, Chairman, you have been
sent some interesting research which was done by David Collins.
I do not know if that has been put before you as yet, but he has
done a little analysis. It is fascinating. There were 531 commitments
made in Johannesburg—and he has done his analysis looking
at the DEFRA version of what a good target is, so they are using
the DEFRA smart target: "Specific, measurable, achievable,
realistic and timely". If you do the DEFRA analysis of what
a smart target is, out of the 531, only 17 lead to any demonstrable,
real process of change. Of those 17, 10 had already been said
and done—so the millennium development targets and so on—and
seven were new. So we are coming down from 531 to seven. Of those
seven, five were commitments to publish a document, and two out
of 531 were real commitments: one was the commitment to eliminate
destructive fishing practices by 2012 and the other was the commitment
to halve the number of people without access to basic sanitation
by 2015. When you look at 531 sort of "bits of process"
coming out of Johannesburg and then you think about a follow-up
strategy geared to the reality of those 531 outcomes, one really
does have to question whether you could talk about a post-Johannesburg
implementation strategy if we are being serious about it. There
are lots of things to be done still but the fact that Johannesburg
was there is not what makes them important. That is not what makes
them able to be implemented now.
Mr Ainsworth
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