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Notable absences at the
6th Desertification Conference
• Heads of state and government
from 11 African, Latin
American
and Caribbean countries participate in roundtable
BY
MIREYA CASTAÑEDA—Granma International
staff writer—
THE UN
Convention against Desertification is known to many
as the Convention of the Poor, probably as it is
perceived as an issue affecting the underdeveloped
nations. One more error that has been rectified
during the sessions of the 6th Conference of Parties
to the UN Convention against Desertification and
Drought, which has been meeting in Havana since
August 25.
Or perhaps
that nomenclature is being used because of “notable
absences” at the meeting, as President Hugo Chávez
of Venezuela noted in the first part of the
roundtable convened in the context of the conference
under the title “The UN Convention against
Desertification as a instrument to reach the
objectives of the millennium development.”
Presiding
over the roundtable, Fidel Castro, head of state and
government of Cuba, introduced the 10 presidents and
prime ministers from Burkina Faso, Grenada, Jamaica,
Lesotho, Mali, Namibia, St. Vincent and the
Grenadines, Venezuela and Zimbabwe, and the head of
the South African delegation – all present – and
Hama Arba Diallo, executive secretary of the
Convention; Ibrahim Gambari, the personal
representative of the UN secretary general; and
representatives of the African Union and the Andean
Parliament.
The Cuban
president felt that the roundtable would allow for a
frank and open exchange on Conference issues that
“directly or indirectly are affecting humanity to a
dramatic degree.”
Referring to
desertification, Fidel noted: “Other specific
issues are derived from it, such as fighting poverty
and hunger, contamination, and for access to water,
education and healthcare.”
Sam Nujoma,
president of Namibia, was the first to speak, and
did so with extensive reference to the importance of
education, and how African peoples have been denied
access to it for centuries. He affirmed that today,
education is their priority of priorities, as is
health, and in the latter field thanked Cuba for
sending 200 doctors to work in the most isolated
regions of that country. He noted that this is
South-South cooperation, which needs to be
reinforced in the social, political and economic
contexts.
Nujoma
emphasized that Africa is a rich continent, but
lives in evident poverty, as its raw materials go to
Europe and are returned as extremely high-priced
goods and services. That is colonial backwardness.
The Namibian
leader affirmed that unity among the nations of the
South is indispensable to shake off that
exploitation, to avoid being manipulated, and to
stop resources being exploited without any benefit
to those nations.
It was Ralph
Gonzalves, prime minister of St. Vincent and the
Grenadines, who introduced the issue of the “notable
absences,” without giving them this description. He
noted that the roundtable was composed of four
Caribbean, one Latin American and six African
nations, and that during the morning session (the
opening of the high-level section of the
Conference), only one European had spoken. He
referred to that fact as “significant.”
Gonzalves
gave a thorough explanation of soil degradation in
his country, using banana cultivation and sales of
the fruit to Europe, which translates into a
high-quality banana requiring large amounts of
fertilizer, and the low prices imposed by a U.S.
transnational like Del Monte.
That aspect
of damaging nature “is obligatory because people’s
subsistence depends on it, “ affirmed Blaise
Compaoré, who spoke of his own country’s protest to
the World Trade Organization over EU- and U.S-imposed
quotas on cotton that are ruining producers.
For his
part, the Prime Minister of Lesotho, Pakalitha
Betheul Mosisile, drew attention to the nickname
“Convention of the Poor,” and observed that the
greatest challenge was to gain acceptance of the
fact that ecological problems have no borders, and
that planet Earth is one sole entity.
Premier
James Patterson of Jamaica agreed with his colleague
from St. Vincent and the Grenadines and posed a
similar question: Why have issues as important as
the ones covered at the conference received such
little support from the international community. He
spoke of his mental image of a desert, and thus the
need to emphasize that the problem has to do with
the whole universe, with both the developed and
underdeveloped countries.
Amadou
Toumani Touré, president of Mali, tackled the
problem of the need to raise awareness, inform and
explain that desertification is not the only issue,
but that there are other problems that need to be
taken into account, given that “whilst we are losing
the battle as the desert advances” (referring
specifically to the Sahel desert area), “we are also
losing important fluvial sources.”
The Andean
Parliament representative called for the need to
reflect on the codification of regulations within
international law; and that just as the
International Court of Justice stipulates crimes
against humanity, “crimes against the earth should
likewise be stipulated, and international sanctions
established.
The final
contribution of the first Round Table session came
from President Hugo Chávez who dealt with several
issues, including that of the wealth of natural
resources that have been plundered from the
countries of the South – as in the case of Latin
America – over the last 500 years.
He observed:
“We are here at this roundtable to think and to
learn and the first thing that we see are the
notable absences. There is no top-level
representative from the European Union or the United
States. This is the sixth conference of its kind. We
could get to the one hundredth and they still won’t
come. They’re not interested. What interests them is
profit, money. If we were discussing oil prices,
they’d be here in a flash.
“How can we
make them listen to us?” asked the Venezuelan
president. “By lifting up our voices to be heard
together with the countries of the Third World. We
must use our voice, that of this conference, to
assume a position of protest on behalf of our
peoples.”
After four
hours of work, President Fidel Castro commented that
the first part of the roundtable had served to
reflect on the magnitude of “the difficulties that
lie ahead” and convened a further session for
September 2, where it is thought that government
leaders and heads of state will approve a
declaration.
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