Going round again

Upon re-reading some my recent and not so recent posts, it occurs to me that perhaps something of a disclaimer is in order, just to point out that you might have to adjust the levels of your inbuilt sarcasm detectors to "mental", if attempting to gleam any threads of coherence at all out of my fragmented ramblings.

So I turned on the news this morning, as one does the morning after say - a big football match or a national election, in order to find out "the score" as it were, with Bali.

But of course, you don't get the results of a footie match or a national election being announced as "well, actually, we really haven't got a clue about the outcome". Unless it's a Belgian national election of course. Anyway, I found this most dis-heartening. But of course, it's so much worse than dis-heartening.

I like the way the BBC have covered the conference so far, I have to say. Incidentally, I also approve of the way the BBC exposed Gordon Brown's late arrival at the Lisbon treaty signing for the spineless, petty gesture that it was (and even interviewed my best friend Mr. Nigel Farage, who did a very good impersonation of someone for whom the world has more or less just ended). But back to Bali - I think the way they juxtapose the reports on the suits at the conference with the picture of "just down the road" in the rice fields, where people's livelihoods (and lives) are at stake, and they fear for their futures but hey, what can you do, etc, helps to reinforce the real scandal of the whole process. I don't mean to sound like Al Gore - but the immorality of it. Of shirking on such heavy, heavy responsabilities, of treating it like just another diplomatic impasse that has to be negotiated around with words that are just a little bit more ambiguous in order to keep people happy (cf. the Lisbon treaty, on that note).

Studying the rhetoric of colonialism, which may well turn out to be my vocation in life such is the passion I've uncovered for it, or "cultural diplomacy" if you want to be euphemistic about it (and they generally do) has on so many occasions struck me as bearing disturbing similarities to the rhetoric we hear nowadays regarding the environment. Oh the implications.

And no, I have to disagree with my learned African Politics lecturer, much as I revere him and his enthusiasm for political outcomes in a made-up imaginary country called The Gambia, I personally don't think the word "discourse" is an empty term. In fact, such a suggestion smacks of someone who clearly doesn't understand (french) sociology, and probably doesn't respect it either, if they're going around making statements like that. Discourse, is crucial. Not in itself, but because it's symptomatic of underlying attitudes and conceptions. Yes, I definitely think so.
If you want an example of an empty term, try - everyone's favourite - "sustainable development". Nobody in the world thinks sustainable development is a bad thing. It's something we can all agree on, and as a result - means absolutely nothing. This discovery, made at an early stage of my "Environmental sociology 101" class, was the source of considerable disillusionment for me because I actually thought we were making some real progress in this direction.

"Protection" is another favourite, that crops up in both. And problematic, because although it sounds nice & benign, in some contexts protection can mean annexation, can mean isolation, can basically mean theft. Depriving people of their livelihoods on the basis of "environmental protection" might sound like a moral dilemma, but it shouldn't. It's an ingenius way of turning the problem on its head. Yes, of course the (over)developed nations should lead by example, they should step up to the plate and commit to binding targets that slash their emissions so developping countries can go about meeting decent living standards without too much pressure and strain. But then remind yourself, that these are the very same nations, who 200 years ago decided to pump all the resources from their colonies, in order to fund their grand industrial entreprise (not to mention their monuments and palaces...). And instantly, it's the likelihood, rather than the emissions, which are slashed.

Between Gordon Brown's pig-headedness, Bernard Kouchner's casual quasi-threats of war against Iran, and George Bush every living breath, you don't have to look very far to realise that we are not living in an era of solidarity. Fairness and altruism, are not part of the equation, let's be clear about it.

Although there's been such scope for optimism this month, what with the EU-Africa Summit, the Lisbon treaty ratification, and ground-breaking talks at Bali, hopes for a real global breakthrough just haven't materialised. The problem is, the approach to diplomacy in these forums is still the same old dusty one that's always been deployed.

Case in point - Lisbon. Those who supported the original EU constitution aren't happy because it's been twisted out of shape and watered down so much, and those who opposed it initally are hardly any more enthusiastic. As for the Eurocrats, it's almost as if they're embarrased, trying to sneak it under the radar, to scrape back some legitimacy, but almost doing themselves more harm in the process. But this is inevitable if you're trying to resurrect & repackage a defunct and much-maligned document. The prognosis of Bali, at its most optimistic, seems to be about regenerating the Kyoto protocol, in a new & improved format that we can all agree on. But it's the same strategy of attempting to "replace" a treaty that failed, and has lost all credibility.

Perhaps it's no surprise that, for all their professed noble intentions, the same kind of diplomacy just leads to attempts to reproduce the same kinds of agreements. Which are inevitably destined to suffer a similar fate, unless they're modified to be made more pallatable - to the point of rendering them irrelevant.

The lesson is, sometimes - if at first you don't succeed, perhaps it's time for a radically new approach.