Ladies and gentlemen,
In a couple of weeks, we will have a huge world summit in Johannesburg. Kofi Annan has labelled the summit in Johannesburg as a summit meeting on the future of the earth. Not only of the earth, but of the earth and the people. And it's a crucial conference where world leaders will assemble to take decisions on how to implement an advanced process.

For instance, the process of 1992, when we organized the Rio de Janeiro world summit on sustainable development. Do you remember what the state of the world looked like about ten years ago? We just had gone through a difficult period of the 1980s, which was a period, not of perspective, but of adjustment. Adjustment to crises for many countries.

And then, all of a sudden we got the year 1989, the end of the cold war, and a great sigh of relief went, not only through Europe, but through the world as a whole, because in the period before that the superpowers had more or less decided about the future, also that of the South. After 1989, it was possible, also in many developing countries, to go for change.

Change also got a chance, to be followed by the new perspective in 1992, when the world conference on sustainable development brought together development, as well as environment, into the paradigm of sustainable development, with the major implication that decisions on how to steer economic development today ought to be based also on considerations with regard to the future. The influence of future generations has to be part and parcel of decisions in favour of present generations. And these two changes did auger well for the period of 1990's.

It is ten years later, and we look back. And what did we see during the period of the 1990's? We saw much higher economic growth than we saw in the 1980's. Low adjustment, economic recovery, economic growth. Not only in the North, but also in the South. But at the same time we also saw emerging conflicts. Conflicts which, for decades before, had been terrorized by the east-west conflict, got a chance due to the fact that change was possible and would not be paralyzed by power positions coming from outside. Conflict in many individual countries, very often not only of an economic character, class conflicts, but also of an identity character. Minority-majority conflicts, religious conflicts, ethnic conflicts, conflict about the future of the nation state in many countries, in Latin America, in the Middle East, in Africa, in Southern Europe, in many Asian countries. The 1990's, though we did have economic growth, became a period of transition more than development, or conflict management more than co-operation. The great new future for development co-operation, which could be foreseen in 1989 at the end of the Cold War, did not come to pass.

Looking back to the period of the 1990's, we can say that we have missed many opportunities, for instance, to deal with poverty. Still, one and a half billion people live on about one dollar a day, which is at or below subsistence level, and it is adding to frustration. It is adding to the feeling of neglect. It is adding to the emerging greater differences in the world.

This is, to a great extent, a period of transition which went parallel with, as the Prime Minister was saying a couple of minutes ago, with globalization. In 1992, in the conference in Rio de Janeiro, the world organization was not anxious at all. We didn't think about globalization ten years ago. Today, you can't have any speech referring to issues of importance without referring to globalization. This reflects a major change, for globalization is a new phenomenon.

In the previous century and the centuries before, there was an increasing part of our economic progress dependant on international economic change. That is not new. But it is new, not in economic terms, not in technological terms (greater communication). It is new in terms of the market. It is a spiritually new phenomenon. Whereas in the past, there always was a barrier in terms of distance or time, this is no longer the case. Everything which is happening, right now, in Korea or in Argentina, is registering in Noordwijkerhout at the same moment. Every development in economic terms that takes place far way from Europe, does have its impact all around the world. Due to transnational capital, due to transnational communication, the world, for economic and technological reasons, has become one market. It is one system, and we know there is no barrier any longer. And that is a totally new phenomenon. Globalization is new, spiritually new.

The consequences are great. We have much more mobility than in the past. Mobility of capital, mobility of labour, mobility of information, mobility of citizens, mobility of values. That's positive, you might say. At the same time, it has a price. Mobility of capital, short term capital, instant capital, is indeed threatening economic stability, as we have seen during the last decades. Another consequence is the fact that the consequences of change, the impacts, are taking place quicker and are much broader than ever before. It is much more difficult to protect yourself in the international society against consequences of events, changes. That means more instability, more dependence on what's happening elsewhere.

And the third consequence of that globalization process is this. Because of the fact that globalization is more or less economically and technologically driven, we see a wish to have everywhere more or less the same economic values. Consumers everywhere. It is an economic process. It is a process to have one over-all market. What we see is not 'all different, all equal'. Globalization means all the same, all the same uniform economic values, and much inequality. It's exactly the opposite of the slogan of the conference here. Globalization means uniformity and inequality, rather than differentiation and equality. We see indeed greater differences, not between different countries in the traditional norms, but within society. You have access or you don't have access. And you're not going to be given access, because we don't need you. Within individual nation states in the past, we needed also policies to have more purchasing power around, in order to drive the economy. But now, the market can expand itself. There always will be buyers far away. We don't need all the people nearby, with the result of greater differences within societies.

And therefore globalization also has a fifth consequence. Erosion of nations, due to the conflicts, and to transnational economic causes. Globalization may have some positive aspects. It also has negative consequences. And the only thing that weighs the balance between the positive and the negative consequences is who makes the decisions, and what is the motive, what is the value behind. It is customary to say that globalization is a positive phenomenon. But in so far as it does lead to uniformity rather than to differentiation, it leads to inequality rather than to equality in terms of access to resources in the world. It is, on balance, not a good phenomenon.

(Due to technical problems a part of the recorded speech is missing. The next section is a summary of notes taken)
Globalization is an occupation of the world's resources and space, like a grid, a world above the other. Many people have no aces to the resources of this new world. It is a system, though no one is in charge. People first fought exploitation, now they fight exclusion. And there are many people that turn their back to that new system. The system responds in a defensive way. If we let it happen, the coming world summit will be about building a coalition against terrorism. Why not building a coalition for sustainability, for civilization, for accessibility, and make it possible for all people to find a save place within that system? We could broaden globalization to other domains of our lives, to climate, bio-diversity, to social policy making, legal systems. It is possible, though difficult.

Globalization can also be steered into a different direction by strengthening country institutions, in particular institutions of civil society throughout the world, institutions of environmental movements, institutions of the human rights movements, institutions of people who are organizing multicultural dialogue. Also institutions at the world level whereby, for instance there are new possibilities of dispute settlement, rather than having all disputes settled within the realm of WTO, on the basis of paradigms only related to the liberalization of international trade. Globalization is also a process that can be approached by letting it go and picking up the pieces and helping the victims - only the victims, which is not the right approach if you do not at the same time give a voice to the victims. Also it is important to organize within the system possibilities for a more democratic approach with regard to decisions within countries and across countries. Bring the process back to the public realm rather than leaving the process of globalization to economic and technological factors outside the realm of public decision-making.

That has to be done, of course, on the basis of global ethics, global values to be shared -not the same in all countries because we all do have, in different countries, our own traditions and own histories. But it is possible to find a global common denominator with regard to values underlying future decision-making. It is important, in that system of global ethics, to combine values with regard to earth, and with regard to people, whereby we say the earth belongs to the people. Whereby, indeed, people take decisions with the interests of unborn generations incorporated in the interests of the present generations. Whereby such decisions are being based upon values related to individual human rights and individual human dignity, with mutual respect. And whereby a time horizon different from the time horizon emerging on the basis of short-term economic interest, will be prevailing with regard to, for instance, decisions on future technological change. Many new technological breakthroughs may have cumulative negative consequences on future generations and, for that reason, the important value of precaution is extremely important in order to take the interest of future generations into account.

Sustainability, of course, does not mean that nothing ought to change. There is change. The question however, is: who is in charge of change? Make it public. The question is: make societies resilient. Change is there, but make societies resilient to change, in order to keep a safe home for everybody. If not, frustration will prevail. If not, people will continue to turn their backs against a system which they do not consider to be their system. It ought to be inclusive, in the interest of future generations as well as in the interest of present generations.

That is what is at stake at the world conference in Johannesburg. I keep my fingers crossed, because present negotiations do not go very well, because one particular major problem. Is that past promises have not been kept. Many countries are saying: why should we go on negotiating a new text which, perhaps, is not going to be lived up to in the years ahead? Again, that also asks for the value of credibility: don't make a distinction between what you promise, also in multilateral negotiations, and what you are doing. And that is why the next world summit will be a summit dedicated to action: implementation of past promises on the basis of the values that we did say we wanted to cherish. That is what is at stake in Johannesburg. And I very much hope that gatherings such as yours will be a very important contribution to the new opinions and the new values which have to be exchanged over there.

Thank you very much.