Over the past week, Sydney turned to a ghost-town. APEC rolled into town, along with 21 world leaders, including George W. Bush, and rolled out again as quickly as it came. 3 metre high security fences were erected around the city, 3500 police were deployed to the areas that the APEC summit was being held, and helicopters and fighter jets fly across the Sydney sky, albeit very low across the sky.
So all-in-all, the summit has been hailed as a success. At least, it was a safe success. No major incidents, and “only” 88 arrests, most during the protests that happened on the Saturday of the summit, and the overwhelming majority for minor offences, with some specifically created the APEC summit.
But even if you personally think that the security for the APEC summit was a little heavy-handed and over the top, there is another issue to address. What was actually talked about in the summit, and what was achieved?
Saying what was achieved is a hard task. If talking in a diplomatic sense, a hell of a lot. America and China were at the same table addressing Climate Change, attention turned to the Doha round of WTO negotiations, and a “Sydney declaration” was issued on Climate Change. But...
In the declaration that Australian PM John Howard released, we see the word “aspirational” more times than the average university academic would use the word in a lifetime of publications. Goals were set, yes, but they are “aspirational.” Targets were agreed upon, but are “aspirational” instead of binding. Essentially, the Sydney Declaration is a declaration stating that the 21 APEC nations will aspire to, sometime in the future, to set aspirational, non-binding targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, among other things, with the penalty for non-compliance being... what?
I do not wish to dive into the deep and often unforgiving world of global warming politics. However, when 21 world leaders gather and can only agree on aspiration goals, aspirational targets, with no fixed numbers on these targets themselves, I believe it shows the attitude that John Howard, and many other world leaders, are taking towards important global issues.
John Howard hasn’t used the world aspirational just with the issue of climate change, either. He has referred to the Millennium Development Goals, themselves taking in environmental sustainability and responsibility, as aspirational goals as well. Under his logic, and so many other world leaders, he sees them as goals that, in an ideal world, would be great to aim for, but we don’t live in an ideal world, do we?
That logic doesn’t work. The MDG’s are 8 goals, with 18 targets, and 44 indicators as to the progress of those targets. They are measurable, and they are real. They are economically viable, so there’s no need to worry about hugely adverse effects on the economy, as John Howard, and others, so desperately tries to argue about setting binding targets in the case of climate change. They are just not aspirational.
Sure, we may argue over the wording of the Millennium Declaration, in which it states that the governments of the world will “spare no effort” in achieving the MDGs, but the fact is that the MDGs go beyond being “aspirational.” Idealistic? Maybe. Huge? Yes. Achievable? Very much so.
Today’s world leaders need to look beyond national borders in their thinking. They need to address the pressing issues of our time, such as poverty, HIV/AIDS, climate change and unfair trade barriers. Going beyond vague declarations that amount to ink on a page, and a few good thoughts, but nothing binding, is desperately needed. As time goes by, it is the world’s poor that will be affected the worst, yet they have contributed the least to the problems that we see today. Climate change will affect the world’s poor the most, yet they contribute the least to its effects. Unfair trade barriers are imposed by developed western nations, leaving the world’s poor with poor access to the world’s markets and the advantages of globalisation. HIV/AIDS antiretroviral drugs are available in developed countries at any pharmacy, yet in developing nations, people die due to expensive drugs, or no access to life-saving drugs at all. Poverty kills millions, yet developing countries continually refuse to raise Official Development Assistance levels to just 0.7% of GNI.
The UN Millennium Summit in 2000, and again in the Monterrey Consensus in 2002, and yet again at the Millennium +5 Summit in 2005, world leaders showed that they can agree to enact change n the world, and move beyond the vagueness of many world summits and agreements. In 2005, civil society showed that the world does care about these issues, with a passion that goes deeper, at least in many people, than a passing fad, contrary to what many choose to believe.
Meaningful action seems to be hard to come by these days, but this something that is needed more than ever. The public want action, civil society continues to put pressure on governments to act, yet it seems that the political will is still not there. What will it take to get our leaders to act?