BRICS-watch: Oilwatch chimes in
from
Patrick Bond
on Mar 25, 2013 06:16 AM
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