COP10.org

Subjective Reportback on the Japanese NGO network's
January 23-24, 2010 COP10 prep meetings in Nagoya

Prepared for the Kyoto Journal's biodiversity mailing list
by W. David Kubiak
Jan 28, 2010

The Jan 23rd meeting in Nagoya was the third quarterly gathering of the CBD Shimin Network (CBDSN), a formalized conglomeration of 53 Nature/indigenous rights/organic ag/sustainability-related groups and NPOs. It is currently co-chaired by Masahito Yoshida (Edogawa University & prez of IUCN-J) and Susumu Takayama (Mie University), two mild-mannered ecology professors; is recognized as an official COP10 participant at the discretion of conference managers, the Environment and Foreign Ministries; has a prospective 11 million yen budget (7 mill coming in dollops from the government's Chikyu Kankyo Kikin - Global Environment Fund); and hence is somewhat passive and even nervous about some of their wild card participants.

(Just as the US found in Baghdad that it is often cheaper to buy the opposition than to fight it, the previous Construction Ministry-driven administration finally discovered they could disable a lot of enviro protest organizing with generous grants with strings attached. The government and industry funded Chikyu Kankyo Kikin disperses that largesse to groups who are "constructive and positive" - as opposed to those who are obstructive and outraged - i.e., trying to stop some destructive debacle in their neighborhood. This keeps most groups focused on education and edifying "feel good" events, and out of obstreperous coalitions trying to thwart big dams, nuclear plants, chemical dumps or coastal cement attacks. As one life-long activist prof observed, "never have we had more groups, money or official support, and never have we had less action.")

Most CBDSN members also represent traditional eco-education, conservation and indigenous rights campaigns, but 15~20% or so are pretty radical veterans, some of whom have won big victories over some very expensive "development" plans. (Atsuo Tsuji was there from the Japan Wetlands Action Network and the Save the Fujimae Tidal Flats Association that fought a tough marathon battle against a huge garbage dump proposal, but finally got the city to back down. Ironically, Nagoya is now hyping the hell out of Fujimae's preservation as part of their COP10 eco-bona fides.)

CBDSN is in some ways quite shielded from long-term fiscal pressures as it has vowed to self-destruct as soon as COP10 is over. It may, like most groups, rethink such bravado, but one likes to dream it also could say, "Hell, why not speak truth to power? What have we got to lose?"

The first half of Saturday's program was devoted to organizational business: fiscal status, committee reports, relevant COP10 and ministry news, explaining their abstract logo, and lots of input and guidance from Teppei Dohke, the Tokyo office manager of IUCN-J, IUCN's local "membership organization". (IUCN-J only has 23 members but they include the biggest establishment nature NGOs - the Wild Bird Society, Conservation International, Friends of the Earth-J, WWF-J, etc. as well as the Environment and Foreign Ministries.) Most of Dohke-san's and IUCN-J's work heretofore has been translating IUCN-related foreign news and policies into Japanese for local members. Now Dohke and Furuta-san his IUCN COP10 project director counterpart in their Keidanren office are charged with a hundred pre-conference tasks including keeping the CBDSN informed, involved and in line.

The afternoon session was a series of issue presentations from some of the more active groups working on particular habitats, species or educational campaigns. There was also a powerful Ainu rights presentation from Hideyaki Uemura-san of the "Citizens' Diplomatic Center for the Rights of Indigenous People", who spoke forthrightly about the disastrously destructive synergy between kaihatsu-shugi ("development-ism") and shohi-shugi (consumerism) in Japan today and the unholy marriage of government power with the nuclear industry, factory fishing corporations, zenicon giants, and growth obsessed keiretsu.

Long-time Ainu campaigner Hideo Akibe struck a less confrontational note in his keynote at the evening dinner session and at the Education for Sustainable Development follow-up conference at Chubu University the next day. He did lament and condemn the government's consistent focus on Ainu heritage as merely a tourist resource while continuing to refuse them recognition under the UN's Declaration of Indigenous Rights, which the LDP administration signed. But when he turned to biodiversity, he spoke out quite movingly about the traditional "wajin" village reverence for nature as a worthy and ancient parallel to the Ainu's own tribal pantheistic sensibilities. The problems the Ainu and the world face today are not caused by the country folk, but by those who have retreated to lives in city offices cut off from the rhythms and relationships of natural life.

In short, he was well spoken so I told him about the Kyoto Journal special biodiversity issue and he agreed to contribute.

Regarding the COP10 treaty provisions or their mission and strategy at the conference, there was hardly any discussion at all. Some of the steering committee members recognized this vacuum, but pointed out that they wouldn't know until May what was being formally proposed so it was too early to plan a response. Some of those who bothered to read the government's post-2010 biodiversity target guidelines that the Foreign Ministry had released a couple weeks before were getting worried though. As pointed out elsewhere, the COP10 preliminary docs are pretty hard-hitting and advocate:

• stopping the rate of biodiversity loss by 2020

• ending subsidies that harm biodiversity

• halting destructive fishing practices

• controlling the unintentional transfer of species from place to place

• placing at least 15% of land and sea area under protection

• just compensation for medical lore-raped tribes and Third World countries

But the Foreign Ministry's targets only offer study, research and "development of useful mechanisms" verbiage. They do not address subsidies, over-fishing, bioengineering, vast new sanctuary proposals, biopiracy, or a single concrete goal - i.e., it is wooly techno-speak from stem to stern and does not commit Japan to anything. As the official position of the host country, this exasperating vagueness bodes ill for the survival of the initial proposals' letter or spirit in the final document.

The only specific proposals offered by the Shimin Network thus far are to develop a domestic conferencing service for their groups called i-dialog.jp and an international discussion forum (run on the UN University servers) that ties the university's 40 affiliated research centers and the CBD Alliance crew together. Both services should debut in mid-February - around the same time as our COP10.org opens. They will be useful resources for us to link to, but according to current design, they do not allow outsider NGOs to join or participate in their discussions.

The second day the theme and venue shifted to an Education for Sustainable Development discussion at Chubu University. The morning began with Akibe-san's Ainu perspective and a lively 3-person panel that addressed satoyama rural models, gender issues in biodiversity organizing, and the troubling absence of a coherent philosophy behind the COP10 treaty or even the positions of the NGO community. After that encouraging start, however, the afternoon just featured re-appearances of the issue group spokespeople from the previous day and once again the only concrete discussion was about the i-dialog.jp and UN University conferencing services.

Yours truly interjected a couple times to warn of the CBDSN's dependence on gov and big corp funding; to introduce the KY biodiversity issue and COP10.org project; and to suggest that like 19th century medicine, the network should move beyond their currently divisive emphasis on individual symptom areas and address the common pathogens behind most of their disasters, the same big corporates and multinationals that were already swarming all over COP10's premises and neutering the government response.

These outbursts were less intended to convert or radicalize the leadership than to locate potential allies in the audience, and for that they worked pretty well. Think I have located a half dozen well connected rebellious spirits, who really would like to make a difference, are focused on COP10, and open to new ideas. In brief,

• Naoto Anzai - former Chunichi Shimbun economics reporter; co-founder, Good News Japan; and returning member of the CBDSN steering committee.

• Akio Kohchi, former ad agency guy who (with Anzai-san) resurrected Earth Day celebrations in Japan in 2001 after they died out in the late '90s, now raising 15 varieties of primitive rice in Toyama and planning useful COP10 interventions.

• Natsuko Hirota, who just finished a film on war, ecology and indigenous consciousness in East Timor and is now serving as an adviser to Nagoya's progressive new mayor re COP10 preparations

• Atsuo Tsuji of Japan Wetlands Action Network - see above

• Hiroshi Komamiya, head of the Gifu NPO Center and CBDSN steering committee elder, who called for a clear philosophy in the COP10 treaty and NGO community

• Seichiro Takemine, hotshot young Mie University eco-economics scholar and apprentice of CBDSN co-chair Takayama, very disrespectful of authority, very bright.

• Tadanori Sakakibara, office manager of the Japan Biodiversity Forum, alternative tech/community biz booster who thinks the only thing that will save rural Japan is the absolutely immediate destruction of the entire Nokyo (gov-run agricultural cooperative) system, which now primarily functions as an agro-chem drug pusher and rips off 50% of all their members' farm income in produce distribution fees.

There were twice that many probables, but this is the list of "solids" thus far.

Monday was a day of site scouting for outdoor rallies/events and foreign NGO meeting room/press center space. Found some promising places and Anzai-san is following up with reality checks now. The COP10 site, the Nagoya Congress Center is huge, metallic, inhospitable, and perhaps best remembered for its bizarre 3-story white plastic statue of General Francesco Sforza on horseback (after a da Vinci clay model). The Horikawa river that runs alongside it is a broad dead industrial canal totally encased in concrete. The NCC's "gardens" are also concrete intensive so there will be ample stark counterpoints to COP10's biodiversity theme and a lot of inevitable questions as to what a nice green conference is doing in a place like this.

The upside of the weekend was the recognition that there are a lot of smart worried members in the NGO coalition who are ready for some fruitful action. The biggest downside was confronting the reality that the coalition as a whole is still not prepared for any significant foreign participation; is 90% dependent on corporate/gov charity; and hasn't even begun to think about strategy yet.

In sum, there are fine potential allies in the woodwork, but (as per last lengthy rant) the gov/corporate influence is ubiquitous and working hard to dumb down civil society's understanding of the problems and, of course, response. There are earnest grassroots types quite willing to resist a total corporate hijacking of COP10 but they don't quite know where to start.

Nagoya in the best of times is not for the faint-hearted. This year it's going to be a hair-raising zoo.

more news as it happens,

david k-