In addition, the US administration wants to roll back the principle of "common but differentiating responsibilities" – the idea that those countries that are most responsible for harm to the environment should also play the biggest role in dealing with the problem. This is not only obviously just, it is also the only practical way to deal with the issue, since poor developing countries simply do not have to resources to even begin to tackle the problem. The refusal last year by George Bush to sign the Kyoto Protocol to deal with climate change was one way of scuttling this, but the US administration has even undermined other international efforts to fund poor nations’ implementation of Rio agreements.
 
But the US government is not the only culprit, of course. The governments of developed countries together have forced some crucial changes in the draft text, such as the commitment to develop a framework for transnational corporate accountability. That has been watered down and put very low on the agenda. Instead, what has been given great prominence is the extension of corporate opportunity – by allowing for private involvement and control of crucial areas of service delivery, including water; and by pushing for "public-private partnerships" in all the important priority areas. Since such partnerships are now known to be little more than yet another means for public subsidising of corporate profitability, they may well aggravate existing problems.
 
All this reflects changes in international power relations, whereby large corporate capital in various manifestations has become disproportionately potent, typically with the active connivance of the elites and ruling groups in both developed and developing countries. That is why conference after international conference, that has the potential to push for genuine alternative policies, has been hijacked by these interests. The Johannesburg Summit currently looks set to go the same way.
 
But of course this should not be allowed to happen without a fight. Corporate capitalism now faces a worldwide crisis of legitimacy. The alienation and despair of large populations in developing and poor countries, as well as in economies ridden by financial crisis, is well known, even though they seem not to matter so much in international policy making. But surveys show that even the majority of people in the US now feel that corporations have too much power and need to be curbed. This is clearly even more the case for issues with long-term significance such as environment. As Victor Menotti of the International Forum on Globalisation put it "If you can’t trust them with your pension, how can you trust them with the planet?"
 
After a long time, therefore, the current world system looks not only unsustainable but also unstable, unable to control the spasmodic particular crises which are breaking out all over the place. This also means that the potential for real change is greater. So, along with the noise made by the other parallel meetings in Johannesburg - the NGO Summit, and the gatherings of all those who could not pay the fees for the NGO Summit – there has to be much more noise made by all of us domestically in our own context, to force changes in current government policies which ensure neither democracy nor sustainability, and to control and limit the power of large capital which currently destroys both.