The multistakeholder model being embraced by the UN gives corporations even more power over society, the economy and the environment, at the expense of national democratic institutions.
At last week’s COP 28 Summit, held in Dubai, which as Yves pointed out is one of the most air conditioned cities on the planet, indigenous groups kicked up a storm about the unprecedented number of fossil fuel lobbyists attending the UN talks. At least 2,456 fossil fuel lobbyists had been granted access to the negotiations, according to an analysis cited by the Guardian. That’s four times the number registered for COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, itself a record year, and seven times the number of official indigenous delegates.
Also heavily represented at the negotiations were Big Ag corporations — hardly surprising given that one of the main talking points at this year’s event was tackling emissions from the food sector. From De Smog:
Attendees are present from some of the world’s largest agribusiness firms – such as meatpacker JBS, fertiliser giant Nutrien, food giant Nestlé and pesticide firm Bayer – and powerful industry trade groups.
Meat and dairy interests are especially well represented with 120 delegates in Dubai, triple the number that attended COP27 in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt.
Overall the analysis of the delegates list by DeSmog shows that the total number of people representing the interests of agribusiness has more than doubled since 2022 to reach 340.
In addition, the analysis reveals that over 100 delegates have travelled to Dubai as part of country delegations, which grants privileged access to diplomatic negotiations. This number is up from just 10 in 2022…
“With greater scrutiny over emissions from meat and dairy companies, it is not surprising they are stepping up their game to head off any COP outcome that might hinder their operations,” Ben Lilliston, from the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy told DeSmog.
“Even so, a tripling of delegates is alarming – it drives home the urgent need for reforms that limit corporate influence at UN climate meetings.”
A Shift in Global Governance
If anything, the opposite is happening. The rapid rise in both the number and, presumably, influence of corporate lobbyists at the UN climate summit is part of a rarely discussed but hugely significant shift in global governance that has been under way for decades but is dangerously close to completion: the corporate takeover of the United Nations. The process is poised to accelerate further at next year’s UN Future Summit, as the renowned German financial journalist Norbert Häring recently warned on his blog:
The complete subjugation of the UN to corporate interests, which the World Economic Forum outlined with its Global Redesign Initiative in 2010 and has successfully pursued since then, is to be enshrined in the rules and regulations of the world organisation at the UN Future Summit in 2024. This is important not least because of the planned pandemic agreement, which is to give WHO excessive powers.
In his 2021 report “Our Common Agenda”, UN Secretary-General António Guterres outlined his ideas for reforming the way international organisations work (global governance) and set up a High-Level Advisory Board on Effective Multilateralism to draw up reform proposals. These were then supposed to be discussed at the UN General Assembly in September 2023 and translated into concrete resolutions.
However, there was resistance from the G77 group, which represents countries of the Global South. The discussion of the High-Level Advisory Board’s proposals was therefore postponed until next year. This “multi-stakeholder future summit” is now to take place in September 2024 and decide on the main features of the UN reform.
The High-Level Advisory Board has already published an 83-page report outlining the steps needed to modernise the world’s foremost multilateral institution. It includes the following paragraph (on page 18):
Our global governance system has a glaring hole: the private sector. Companies of all sizes drive advancements in new technologies; energy, industrial, and agricultural companies are responsible for a huge portion of our global carbon emissions and pollution; banks and finance companies handle our global financial flows; and private companies deliver most of our goods. But our multilateral treaties largely ignore these actors, wrongly assuming that
State action is sufficient to regulate this global network of private actors.
This paragraph could have been lifted straight out of the World Economic Forum’s Global Redesign Initiative (2010),
, which was led by the WEF’s three most senior executives – Klaus Schwab, its Executive Chairman; Mark Malloch-Brown, then its Vice-Chairman; and Richard Samans, its Managing Director. In its final report, titled “Everybody’s Business: Strengthening International Cooperation in a More Interdependent World,” the GRI proposed the creation of a system of multi-stakeholder governance as a partial replacement for intergovernmental decision-making.
That is essentially what the High-Level Advisory Board is also calling for: the replacement of multilateralism — the process of organising relations between the governments of multiple countries, ideally governed democratically, that has been the model of global governance for the past century — with the World Economic Forum’s model of “multi-stakeholder partnerships,” which would bring together the private sector, governments and civil society groups across all areas of global governance. As mentioned, this process has been in the works for decades, as the GRI project directors explained almost 15 years ago:
“While experimentation with individual public—private and multistakeholder partnerships has flourished over the past decade, including in many international organisations, they continue to play an incremental, even experimental, role in the international system rather than a systematic one. For this to change, policy-making processes and institutional structures themselves will need to be adapted and perhaps even fundamentally repositioned with this in mind.”
The WEF’s Main Stakeholder: Transnational Corporations
If enshrined in the UN’s rules and regulations at the UN Future Summit, the WEF’s multi-stakeholder model will grant corporations, many of them partly or even largely to blame for the major crises the world faces, even more power and influence over society, the economy and the environment, at the expense of national democratic institutions. It will mean even less democratic representation and accountability in the decisions taken by UN institutions. In the WEF’s vision — laid out in the GRI’s final report — the government voice “would be one among many without always being the final arbiter.”
It’s not hard to guess who that role will generally fall to. After all, the WEF represents some of the world’s wealthiest and most influential people and corporations. On its website, it has kindly laid out, in alphabetical order, all of its partners, strategic partners and associate partners. It reads like a Who’s Who of many of the world’s largest corporations and philanthro-capitalists, primarily (but not exclusively) from the US and Europe. A is for Apple, B is for Blackrock (or Blackstone Group), C for Citi, D for Deutsche Bank, E for Exxon Mobil, F for Foxconn, G for Glencore, etc.
In a 2016 article for the Transnational Institute, Harris Gleckman, a senior fellow at the Center for Governance and Sustainability and former chief of the NY Office of UNCTAD, distilled the three core elements of the WEF’s multi-stakeholder model of governance:
First, that multi-stakeholder structures do not mean equal roles for all stakeholders; second, that the corporation is at the centre of the process; and third, that the list of WEF’s multi-stakeholders is principally those with commercial ties to the company: customers, creditors, suppliers, collaborators, owners, and national economies. All the other potential stakeholders are grouped together as “government and society”. Note that [Klaus] Schwab says nothing about democracy in this approach to multi-stakeholder activities.
The WEF already plays a significant role in shaping global policy, in part through its Young Global Leaders Forum (2005-today) and its predecessor, the Global Leaders for Tomorrow program (1993-2003). These two programs have helped to create a transnational clique of would-be elitists, some of whom have gone on to fill very important roles in both the public and private spheres. It is almost the epitome of George Carlin’s “Big Club” that you and I ain’t in…
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Nick Corbishley 