The Blog of Harald

From Spin of the Day:

Sustainable Development: R.I.P.
“Sustainable Development is dead. It’s demise came, ironically, at the World Summit on Sustainable Development,” CorpWatch’s Kenny Bruno writes in his report from the UN meeting in Johannesburg. “It’s not that the phrase wasn’t invoked. It was, ad nauseum. But it was hardly discussed. Instead, sustainable development was deemed to be whatever compromise governments happen to reach on trade, subsidies, investment and aid, and whatever projects corporations see fit to finance. ‘Sustainable Development’ is now officially meaningless.” Source: CorpWatch.org, September 4, 2002

I don’t think it’s as bleak as all this. Several world governments are now fighting back against The Evil Corporate Opressors with internal policy initiatives. Some examples: Peru’s OpenSource debate; Brazil’s take on patent medicines; Zimbabwe’s ban on genetically engineered crops. I think there’s a growing catalogue of individual actions that are supporting sustainable development. It may be 0.5%, but growing.

Still, we have a very long way to go, and the nonsense in Johannesburg certainly didn’t help things. I blame George Dubya; it’s fashionable, after all.