It is responsible in large part for the social dislocation and environmental degradation witnessed in recent years. As an alternative to the laissez faire globalization currently championed by several groups, we urge you to champion the cause of environmental, social, and economic justice and equity and rights to be placed at the center of development and economic planning and priorities. These include but are not limited to access to environmental information, the right to know, freedom of environmental information, freedom of environmental speech, access to environmental justice, including in a court of law, and the right to participate in decision making. To effectively address trans-boundary environmental costs, all concerned people, regardless of nationality, must be availed these rights in the country from which the environmental impacts originated. NGOs are prepared to support the establishment of appropriate procedural rights regimes by helping to establish appropriate international regimes.
Governments can develop supportive national level legislation.
Finally, intergovernmental organizations can work with governments to develop relevant regional and global instruments. We endorse the principle of partnership that underlies such calls. However, we need to stress that partnership requires not a blurring of roles, but the establishment of appropriate institutional, regulatory, and other conditions to ensure responsible corporate behaviour. Business should not be allowed to unduly influence government policies for their own narrow commercial interests at the expense of the public. Similarly, the UN and its agencies have to guard against going into the kind of partnerships with business where business influences or even dictates UN policies and programmes.