The weariness and cynicism the phrase arouses are almost palpable. "Another UN Summit" people say, as their eyes glaze over and they shrug their shoulders, barely having the enthusiasm to enquire about the objectives, the means to be adopted, or even the participants.
 
And at one level, such impatience with UN Summits is completely understandable. In the past decade, there have been at least seven major UN Summits, including the first Earth Summit in Rio in 1992, the Population Summit in Cairo in 1995, the Social Summit in Copenhagen and the Women’s Conference in Beijing in 1995, the Habitat II Conference in Istanbul in 1996, the Millennium Summit in New York in 2000. Each of these has been more than simply large spectacle, coming out with a string of pious declarations and even time-bound "commitments" by countries, designed to improve the conditions of the peoples of the world.
 
And yet, there has been no associated change in conditions on the ground – environmental damage continues apace, inequalities have worsened, material lives across the world have become more fragile and insecure. This is why such Summits seem, to so many people at the moment, to be little more than reasons for another set of international bureaucrats and national delegates to visit yet another country and salve their consciences by publicly affirming their commitment to justice and equality.
 
Even so, it would be wrong to be completely cynical about these exercises, or to allow them to turn into talking shops that are complete failures in practice. The UN may seem like an expensive dead duck, but it is still potentially one of the important institutions that can be used to push for pro-people government policies, and to combat the other more powerful multilateral institutions, such as the IMF and the WTO, that are now blatantly serving the needs of corporate capital rather than the citizens of the world.
 
Consider what the second Earth Summit, or the World Summit on Sustainable Development about to be held in Johannesburg, is all about. As a conference on the kind of development that should be pursued by both developed and developing nations, poverty, over-consumption and  unsustainable lifestyles are supposed to be major concerns.  Officially, the main objective of the Summit is "to reinvigorate political commitment to sustainable development". It is supposed to conclude with a "Johannesburg Declaration", reaffirming governments’ commitments, with a negotiated implementation plan outlining priority actions that will promote economic growth, social development and environmental protection.
 
Of course all this is more necessary now than ever before, as world consumption patterns have never been so unequal or so unsustainable. The problem is that the United States government, in its new more aggressively uncompromising persona, has already undermined the outcome of the process well before the Summit started. While George Bush (unlike most world leaders) will not even attend the conference, his administration has already done the groundwork, in the preparatory meetings, of removing all policy potency from the text of the declaration and providing another paean to the glories of unregulated capitalism. The US is effectively trying to push its free trade and investment agenda, as expressed also by the WTO, as synonymous with sustainable development.
 
In fact, the US is trying to force a withdrawal even from the negotiating principles agreed in Rio. These include the precautionary principle, which states that governments should be especially cautious whenever there is a possibility of devastating and irreparable environmental harm. This principle also underlies the BioSafety Protocol and similar public policy. However, the US has already complained that it conflicts with free trade, and has used the WTO dispute mechanism to push this point.