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Conclusions
At the UN’s World Summit for Sustainable Development in 2002,
there will doubtless be formal declarations of sustainable
intent by governments and corporations, some new international
institutions may be created or old ones reformed, some new
money may even be promised from the world’s richer countries
to the poorer. Meanwhile the values of global capital are
so entrenched in the international institutional eco-system
that the worlds most likely to be saved at such a meeting
are those understood and valued by its managing, advisory
– and beneficiary – elites: people for many of whom ‘the environment
is not what is around their homes, but what is around their
economies’ (Lohmann, 1993).
The lifestyles and values of the elites that Maurice Strong
works with may be on the same planet as the places and communities
affected by their decisions, but for most of those who lose
immediate land and livelihood to ever more mobile and extractive
capital, they (and I: warm and well-fed as I work at a computer
in London, England) are a world away. And for all the power
and ambition in the hands of global elites, any reforms which
do not start from the needs and knowledge of people suffering
now from unsustainable and unjust developments, can hardly
hope to save their world for them.
But before exploring the GEF’s real world potential and limitations,
the following chapter turns to the situation giving rise to
this unique fund in the first place.
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