Recap of CSD19: Part I

The heat here makes my writing bland. I just re-read my inaugural post, and realized how hard it is to write compound sentences with words-with-lotsa-syllables when your body's store of water is oozing out your every pore. Even Sri Lankans feel that these days have been hotter than average. Welcome to the equator, white boy!

Anyway, in trying to recap CSD amidst a ton of other things, I need to keep it short and be done with it, so as to be able to move on to reporting more interesting things, like learning to shovel really spicy food into my mouth with my fingers, and buying a sarong to (hopefully) escape the awful clutches of sweaty underwear.

Upon arriving at the UN complex in New York City (42nd St.), I was struck at how bad it looked while under construction. The complex is being heavily renovated and right now has little going for it in the way of aesthetics. I shuffled through security, scooted past hoards of noisy, uninterested American schoolchildren in the visitor's center, obtained my NGO pass, and headed to the North Lawn Conference Building. This is where many UN negotiations take place, and where I'd spend the bulk of the next six days.

I found Uchita in the masses of people occupying the "Vienna Cafe" on the second floor of the building, which, as I would soon learn, is where the real work takes place at the UN. I was introduced to a number of people who were sitting with him and was warmly brought into the conversation as if they assumed I had any idea what was going on. It took me a few minutes to get tabs on who everyone was, but I was struck that they were all very high-ranking members of civil society organizations, mostly NGO's, which I hold in high regard. And here I was, yellow-bellied student-intern, speaking with them about the status of the negotiations as well as the civil society initiatives they were launching independently. I was operating at the most-global level I had ever been.

Uchita thought it would be a good idea for me to spend "some time" watching the official negotiations. I was at first confused by this; I'd assumed most of my time would be spent in this manner. He told me to go and watch, and that we'd discuss my place in the machine afterwards. I went and sat in on Working Group 2's negotiations on the text of the chairman's draft proposal on Waste Management. (For those who are unfamiliar with the format of CSD, they were set up in two-year segments to work on specific clusters of issues by negotiating statements towards a 10-Year Framework of Programmes, 10YFP. The issues on the plate for CSD19, in the second year of one such cycle, were transport, mining, chemicals, and interlinkages & cross-cutting issues (all handled by Working Group 1) and SCP (sustainable consumption and production), waste management, and the Preamble of the policy recommendations, handled by Working Group 2.)

I was entertained by the negotiations for about 30 minutes, whereupon the "new" wore off and I realized I was not in the presence of brilliant statesmen and stateswomen, or even particularly efficacious diplomats. To make a long story short, I very quickly realized that the mechanisms for this kind of negotiation are horribly broken. And the American delegate sounded like Ben Stein. I observed this session for about two and a half more hours, and then for a few more in the afternoon, and altogether, the negotiators navigated through about two paragraphs of text. For reference, the chairman's draft (unedited) text is twenty-five pages.

When I emerged from the chambers between the two sessions, I found the Vienna Cafe to be stuffed of civil-society members, most crouched around laptops in groups or otherwise discussing their own plans for advancing sustainable development. I found Uchita again and expressed my dismay that the negotiations were so ineffective. I had witnessed the delegates from the United States and the G-77 go back-and-forth for a few hours over some minor points of verbiage, and to no avail, and I was skeptical any of the real concerns of sustainability would ever be discussed in those halls. "You will learn this," he said, "that the UN is the Palace of Bullshit." I learned it well, and thereafter spent only a few minutes each day observing the official negotiations.

Here's what I learned: The UN is NOT a place for developing the mechanisms that will advance the causes of environmental, social, and economic sustainability. It is not even a place where nations discuss, in good faith, what the world community can do to live more equitably on this planet. It is, rather, a bargaining table at which national interests pay lip service to social and environmental justice while negotiating a (non-binding) agreement that enables them, as far as possible, to continue with business as usual. Or, as the case turned out to be for UNCSD19, they will reach no agreement whatsoever and countless hours of hard work by many parties will result in naught but deadlocked negotiations.

From what I observed, the UN negotiations on sustainability are being smothered by selfishness, greed, and lack of wisdom on the part of many of the developed nations and bitterness and obstructionist-foot-stomping from many of the developing nations. The truth is, the forum is not conducive to keeping humanity's best interests at heart, and until we develop such a space, the outlook is bleak for any really worthwhile solutions to be put forth in the international-public sector. We cannot wait for governments to codify sustainability; as I saw at UNCSD19, they move too slowly, if at all.

This leaves civil society. My hopes now lie here, and in my next post, I hope to recall some of the more positive lessons I took from the week.