The View from Johannesburg

How can grassroots environmental leaders hold global corporations accountable for their impacts on local communities and the natural world? How are Goldman Prize recipients continuing to win environmental victories and build a global environmental community?

We are pleased to announce daily updates from Dr. Nat Quansah, our on-the-ground correspondent at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa from Aug. 26 to Sept. 4. He will be posting daily reports from the summit on this Web site as he joins more than 100 presidents and prime ministers and thousands of government delegates, NGOs and business leaders, all seeking to set the course of sustainable development and environmental protection for the next decade and beyond.

Quansah, a botanist-philosopher who lives and works in Madagascar, is no stranger to sustainable development. Since 1994, he has operated a health clinic which treats illnesses using traditional remedies based on plants found in Madagascar's tropical rainforests, 75 percent of which has been destroyed by logging and development. Quansah's eloquence and experience has inspired many of his fellow country people to take up the cause of environmental protection. We hope you will join us for his daily dispatches from the floor of the Summit.

August 23, 2002

Four days before the official opening of the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg, South Africa: Efforts are being made to get things ready. Tents are being erected. Security is cordoning off the Convention Center.

Meanwhile, NGOs, community activists and individuals are taking part in various pre-summit workshops to position the WSSD as not another "all talk and little or no action" meeting.

Very few summit documents are available, thus making it a bit difficult for delegates to participate in the pre-summit workshops going on. Of course, the bulk of information is 'supposed' to be on the website (the famous www) but the question is, how many people have access to the Internet?

For all intents and purposes, people want to see sustainable development become a reality, not rhetoric. Goldman Environmental Prize recipients have participated mainly in the groundWork 'People's Action For Corporate Accountability' workshop, held in the Protea Balalaika Hotel. Ten years after Rio, many governments and corporations have not lived up to expectations that they be responsible and accountable for their actions.

Double standards seem to be the norm. Corporations are doing things differently in the developing world, as opposed to the developed world. Example: dumping toxic waste that they dare not dump in the developed world into the ground and waters of the developing world. Sometimes this happens with the government's consent, but this isn't always the case. Often the corporations get away with toxic dumping because governments and people in the developing world are misinformed or have no access to the right information.

Better not to inform, than to misinform. Better not to be informed, than to be misinformed. Because knowledge based on misinformation leads to misunderstanding, which often leads to confusion, chaos, and conflict.

Prevention is better than a cure. Sustainable development means not transferring unsustainable technologies and industries to the developing world, after they have already proven to damage the environment in developed countries.

Even as we are calling governments and corporations to be accountable to environmental and safety standards, we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that it's individuals who make up governments and corporations. It is incumbent on us all, as individuals -- whether we are in league with government or corporations or not -- to be responsible and accountable to the natural world and the welfare of our fellow human beings in all our dealings.