South Africa's President, Mr Thabo Mbeki, officially opened the second Earth Summit here yesterday with a ringing declaration that a global society "based on poverty for many and prosperity for a few" was unsustainable.
Calling on world leaders to implement the decisions they had freely adopted at the first Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro 10 years ago, he said: "We do not have a new agenda to discover. We have no obligation to relearn what we already know about the parlous state of human society and the environment."
Mr Mbeki said the key task facing the summit was to negotiate "a credible and meaningful global plan of action for the realisation of the goals that humanity has already set itself" at Rio, Kyoto and other gatherings in order to lift "the dark shadow under which most of the world lives".
"There is every need for us to demonstrate to the billions of people we lead that we are committed to the vision and practice of human solidarity; that we do not accept that human society should be constructed on the basis of a savage principle of the survival of the fittest."
Mr Mbeki, who succeeded Mr Nelson Mandela, is known to be playing a leading role behind the scenes in drafting the text of a political declaration which is intended to be adopted by more than 100 heads of state or government at the end of the summit next week.
Yesterday he held separate meetings with lobbyists representing environmental groups, such as Friends of the Earth International, and those with often diametrically opposed views, such as Business Action on Sustainable Development (BASD), the corporate sector's principal voice.
Friends of the Earth is pressing for a global convention on corporate accountability, effectively designed to rein in what it sees as the worst excesses of globalisation. However, this is vigorously opposed by BASD, which maintains that it is up to individual countries to regulate the market.
Sir Mark Moody-Stuart, former chairman of Shell and now chairman of BASD, said yesterday that the issue of "global governance" should be confined to global issues such as climate change and world trade. It was not necessary for business because "all business is local" in the way it operates.
Sir Mark was championing the concept of voluntary partnership agreements between business and community groups as the most effective way to advance sustainable development. But Friends of the Earth remains deeply sceptical of such deals, insisting that only a small minority of corporations have taken up the challenge.
