On 3/25/2013 8:04 AM, Nnimmo wrote:
Durban, 26th of March 2013
BRICS TO SUSTAIN THE OIL-BASED SYSTEM
Oilwatch International notes that the economic and political
formation
known by the acronym BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South
Africa)
started as an idea of Goldman Sachs for describing the main emerging
markets. It is easy to read as a grouping conceptualized not in the
interests of the people or the earth but for the sake of capital
accumulation for the 1% and dispossession of the 99%, sustained by a
system for the continuing extraction and consumption of fossil
fuels.
The world has thus been saddled with yet another arbitrary and
artificial
multi-lateral collective like the G8, the G20 and whatever other “G”
may
be dreamt up tomorrow. Generally, such groupings have the role of
subverting formal multilateral processes where some possibilities
still
exist for democratic decision-making. Groupings like the BRICS are
like
old-boy clubs, bestowing a sense of exclusivity on their members and
enticing them to work for the collective interest of the powerful
and to
the detriment of others. When BRICS collectively gave $75 billion to
the
IMF in 2012, it was not Europe or the US which lost voting power –
but
Africa. When BRICS (minus Russia) signed the ‘Copenhagen Accord’
with
Washington in 2009, this sleazy deal confirmed that the fossil-fuel
addicted economies could continue polluting unabated while the rest
of
Africa is cooked by climate change.
The governments of the BRICS pretend that they are standing up
against
neo-colonial and imperial forces. They also suggest that their
countries'
corporations compare favourably to the global North’s. These claims
have
little foundation in reality. The BRICS' infamous power, oil and
other
fossil-fuel companies (whether private or state-owned) engage with
impunity in the same misbehaviour that foreign transnational
companies in
the same fields do. They aid repression, drive environmental
destruction
and harm local livelihoods.
Brazil’s Petrobras, Russia's Gazprom and Lukoil, India's CoalIndia
Ltd.,
China's CNPC and Sinopec, and South Africa’s Sasol, among others,
are all
extending their reach deep into their continents and beyond, taking
advantage of each country's role as regional hegemon.
Given the definition of the BRICS as a grouping of “markets” rather
than
societies, it is not surprising the way they are reduced to their
products. As Russian analyst Anna Ochkina writes for the Durban
“brics-from-below” coalitions: “Brazil is essential for agricultural
supplies, China provides cheap labour, India supplies cheap
intellectual
work force for high tech industries, South Africa provides minerals
and
Russia supplies minerals, oil and gas. The scale and conditions of
provision of these resources for global capital makes BRICS
countries
essential for the current system” [1].
While the BRICS present themselves as offering benevolence to the
territories they plan to economically carve, their own peoples have
to
endure serious socio-economic, political and civil rights
violations. They
live with serious inequality, lack of adequate infrastructure,
increased
levels of violence and other symptoms of development oriented not
toward
people but rather toward government and corporate profit [2].
Oilwatch views groupings of this ilk as attempting to partition the
world
into various markets and spheres of influence, and to support each
other
as they meddle in the affairs of nations they work to exploit and
oppress.
Blocs like the BRICS are wedges for breaking apart other, more
democratic
spaces, eroding solidarity and promoting narrow market interests.
This week's BRICS summit in South Africa will be a key battleground
for
both emerging and already imperial forces. As the biggest economy on
the
African continent, South Africa found that it could not stand by and
watch
while what was the BRIC began a second scramble for Africa, without
trying
to grab a slice of the pie for itself. And so South Africa forced
itself
into contention and the BRIC acquired an “S”.
Africa’s minerals and other resources have been objects of desire
for
plunderers and adventurers of every ilk over the centuries. Of late,
land
grabs have supplemented the grabbing of other African resources.
Through
these grabs, BRICS and similar blocs seek to entrench failed
neoliberal
agendas as well as an already obsolete fossil fuel- and dirty
energy-driven civilization. The BRICS do not seem to realize that
the
destination of their planned drive on wheels of markets driven by
dirty
investments and the grabbing of resources is a brick wall. Or dead
troops
in search of their leaders’ mineral interests (as in unfortunate
South
Africans in the Central African Republic just as BRICS begins its
Durban
summit).
The grouping of nations into blocs by commodities and financial
traders
such as Goldman Sachs must rank as one of the most blatant
subversions of
the collective rights of peoples today. The situation will only be
exacerbated by Goldman Sachs’ likely influence over the BRICS Bank
proposed at a recent March meeting in South Africa. One leading
Johannesburg official at Goldman Sachs is the former governor of the
South
African Reserve Bank, and Pretoria has requested that SA be the host
for
the new BRICS Bank – which Beijing reportedly supports.
Such a BRICS Bank could only exacerbate the social, economic and
environmental chaos already caused in part by multilateral
financing.
Existing development finance institutions in BRICS countries – like
South
Africa’s Development Bank of Southern Africa or BNDES, the Brazilian
development bank – offer sobering lessons. The spectacular failures
of
Goldman Sachs, as well as those of other Wall Street companies
holding
huge stocks of physical commodities such as oil storage tanks, metal
warehouses and power plants [3], should send strong signals that
their
dreams and desires must be repudiated and rejected.
Oilwatch International denounces the contraption called BRICS and
all
other groupings set up to drive divisive and exploitative agendas
around
the world. We believe the time has come for the peoples of the
countries
in groups such as the BRICS, G8, and G20 to demand that their
elected
leaders shun those harmful blocs that destroy formal multilateral
spaces
and plunge the world into violence and deeper crises as evidenced by
spiralling climate change, financial, economic and food crises.
OILWATCH INTERNATIONAL
www.oilwatch.org
NOTES:
[1] ccs.ukzn.ac.za
[2] Friends of the Earth South Africa. 20 March 2013.
Brics-from-below
summit: Watching and challenging power!
http://www.foei.org/en/blog/friends-of-the-earth-south-africa-brics-from-below-summit-watching-and-challenging-power
[3] CNBC. 11 March 2013. Goldman Leads Decline as Wall Street
Commodity
Revenues Plummet http://www.cnbc.com/id/100541469