Accusations that big business is hijacking the earth summit and pushing its own agenda of free trade and privatisation in developing countries overshadowed the first official day of the conference yesterday.
While Mr Thabo Mbeki, President of South Africa, was formally opening the summit, and welcoming the 189 participating countries, a fierce debate was erupting over the role of multi-national companies in delivering aid.
So concerned was Mr Mbeki, chairman of the summit, about the dispute that he called key environment and development critics to a two-hour meeting to hear their views. He had earlier in his opening speech referred to the unsustainable nature of a society "characterised by islands of wealth, surrounded by a sea of poverty".
He said: "The tragic result of this is the avoidable increase in human misery and ecological degradation. It is as though we have decided to spurn what the human intellect tells us, \ the survival of the fittest only presages the destruction of all humanity."
However, while welcoming his words, charities and pressure groups reacted angrily to the announcement of 192 partnerships involving big business in giving aid to developing countries.
The partnerships will see schemes involving water, sanitation and electricity provision being introduced but some only on the condition that public services are privatised to the benefit of big business.
British Prime Minister Mr Tony Blair is a keen advocate of the schemes and the UK is involved in 20 of them.
British officials were defending them yesterday saying that they were in addition to existing aid, not a substitute. Mr Tony Juniper, director designate of Friends of the Earth, and one of those summoned to meet Mr Mbeki, said:
"We told him of our fears over the corporate takeover of the summit and he listened. But how this will weigh against the might of the US and big business is anyone's guess."
Mr Juniper said the crux of the argument was that the free market had not protected the environment or eradicated poverty and would not do so in the future unless there were robust international treaties regulating industry.
These partnership agreements must not be used as camouflage for introducing dubious technologies to developing countries which did not want them, he said.
Cherry Farrow, of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, said: "Our concern is that these partnerships do not divert funding from existing local schemes and must not be seen as a substitute for proper international action at government level."
However, Sir Mark Moody-Stuart, former chairman of Shell, who is chairman of the Business Council for Sustainable Development, and whose members are the architects of many of the agreements, said big business was being misrepresented.
"There is a great deal of mutual distrust, which we have to get over. We believe in good international governance for issues like climate change and trade. It is a myth that we are not in favour of regulation," he said.
Mr John Hilary, trade policy adviser for Save the Children, said there was a possibility of a conflict of interest in, for example, vaccination programmes.
A company might wish to push a new vaccine for a not particularly serious illness and therefore divert resources and attention away from the more serious tasks of tackling polio, measles and tuberculosis, he said. - (Guardian Service)