Alternative Treaties Preface from the January 1993 edition This revised edition of the alternative treaties from the International NGO Forum follows two pre-publication editions, and incorporates a number of changes from those earlier publications. In bringing forward this edition, our intention is to present the treaties effectively in a published format - with attention to a relatively consistent style and readability that can interest a constituency beyond the non-governmental organization (NGO) representatives who were in Rio; we have also tried to structure the treaties in a way that supports the overall treaty process, facilitating the coordination of ongoing treaty-related activities and negotiations on the language of the treaties. The principal innovation in this edition is a system of numbering that allows each element of each treaty to be uniquely identified. Each treaty has been given a number - based on a revised grouping of the treaties that is intended to highlight the relationship between treaties. A consistent system for identifying each paragraph has been adopted for all the treaties. Thus each section can be referred to very simply by combining the treaty number and the number of the paragraph or clause, as in the following examples:
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"We, the people of the world, will mobilize the forces of transnational civil society behind a widely shared agenda that bonds our many social movements in pursuit of just, sustainable and participatory human societies." (1.23)
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The numbering system will also make it easier to keep track of activities related to the treaties and to strengthen the links between treaties. The numbering of each element has already made it possible to put the entire text of the treaties into a full-text database. When the database is fully developed, it will be able to help keep track of which treaty signatories are involved in the various action components of the treaties and will also allow classification of each section by key word. The combination of these two features will then, for example, make it possible to generate listings of people and groups involved in related activities and make it easier for them to exchange experiences and explore the possibilities of collaborating with each other.
The numbered version should also be helpful in facilitating negotiations concerning the treaty language - particularly once the numbering system has been applied to versions of the treaties in other languages.
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A bibliographic note may be in order concerning the use of the numbers in this treaty for citations: the alternative treaty documents are intended to be 'living documents' that continue to be amended and enhanced as the original language is tested in action, as the concerns and input of groups who were not able to be in Rio are heard and incorporated and as the alternative treaty process matures and grows. This means that new treaties are likely to be added and some of the existing treaties may be significantly revised, with inevitable implications for the numbering of the documents.
Thus in order for references to the text of any of the alternative treaties to be unambiguous, it would be advisable to identify the particular version or edition of the treaties from which the text has been taken. At this point, it would probably be sufficient to cite this as the 'Alternative Treaties, Revised Edition, 1/93'. Eventually it might become necessary to use more elaborate references; hopefully it will be a long time before we get to the point where the Alternative Treaty documents have numbers as complex as United Nations documents, and where a citation for the last of the above quotes has become INGOF/AT-RIO/ENG/Rev. 1(1/93) - 18.15.
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Besides the numbering system, the revised edition involves other minor changes in the treaties, for example in the adoption of a consistent style for punctuation, language - U.S. spelling is used throughout - and the use of acronyms. The revised edition has also involved some minor editing of the text - to correct spelling and grammatical mistakes, to maintain grammatical consistency in lists of actions or issues, to reduce the use of repetitive, redundant text (e.g. where each item in a list begins with "To ..." or "That ..." or "NGOs will ...") and to clarify the text where the meaning was obscured by unconventional use of the language.
Some of the treaties in the pre-publication editions, and that have been posted on-line, have included lists of people and organizations involved in drafting and negotiating those treaties, along with occasional information on documents that were used in the treaty drafting process. That information has all been placed in an Annex to this edition. Note also that as complete a list as possible of the treaty coordinators has been compiled; the list - including names addresses, phone, fax and electronic mail accounts.
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One result of the changes that have been incorporated in this edition is that it is not identical to the 'final' version of the treaties that were posted by NGOnet in December 1992 on the 'ingof.treaties' electronic conference of the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) electronic networks. However, by agreement with NGOnet, the text of this edition will be posted as a 'response' to the corresponding document on the ingof.treaties conference. To facilitate discussion, actions and comments across languages, parallel versions using this numbering system will also be made available - and posted on-line - of the Spanish, Portuguese and French versions of the alternative treaties.
It should be noted that this revised edition contains five documents from the International NGO Forum that have not yet - as of 5 January 1993 - been posted on-line. These documents are the People's Earth Declaration (1) and the Rio de Janeiro Declaration (2), the Code of Conduct for NGOs (10) the Draft Protocol on Biodiversity Research (37), and the Women's treaty (39). Also, lest there be any residual confusion as to the number of alternative treaty documents, it should be mentioned that what has been posted on-line as the Oceans Treaty has been separated here into five component treaties on marine related issues, plus the resolution on Guanabara Bay.
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This revised edition has a slightly expanded introductory section; in addition to updated articles on the status of the treaty process, we have also included the text of a variant on the alternative treaty process, namely the Earth Covenant, with a brief article describing that process. Our hope in so doing is to promote some cross-fertilization of ideas and energy between these two processes.
As with the earlier editions, we have included the address of His Holiness, the Dalai Lama to NGOs in Rio. Although the Dalai Lama was not directly involved in the alternative treaties, his participation in Rio and the nature of his remarks on Universal Responsibility and Our Global Environment appear to be very closely aligned with the underlying vision of the alternative treaty process.
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It was noted above that there have been two pre-publication versions of this edition. The initial version was prepared for the Citizens Respond conference held from September 25-27, 1992 in East Lansing, Michigan, and sponsored by the U.S. Citizens Network on UNCED and the Center for Advanced Studies in International Development, Michigan State University.
A second pre-publication edition - with a new title Alternative Treaty-Making: A Process in Support of Sustainable Societies and Global Responsibility was prepared for distribution at the Eco Ed: World Congress on Education and Communication for Environment and Development held in Toronto, Ontario from October 17-21, 1992. That edition incorporated minor editorial changes and corrections and a small, yet significant reorganization of the treaties that brought the Treaty on Environmental Education for Sustainable Societies and Global Responsibility to the forefront of the book.
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The decision to bring the education treaty to the forefront in a presentation of the alternative treaties emerged from a growing recognition that the alternative treaty-making process - invented in the lengthy course of preparation by NGOs for the Earth Summit at Rio - represents a critical shift in the assumption of responsibility by individuals and organizations for the global challenges that we face today.
A prerequisite for such a shift is that we embark on a comprehensive learning process so we can undertake the task of translating the vision underlying the treaty-making process into a reality and come to terms with the commitments embodied in these treaties. In the Environmental Education treaty, the Plan of Action begins with a commitment to implement policies to:
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"Turn the declarations of this Treaty and of other Treaties produced by the conference of citizens' groups during the Rio 92 process into documents for use in formal education systems and in education programs of social movements and social organizations." (5.22) As the tenor of the rest of the education treaty makes clear, that commitment by no means suggests that these treaties should just become the topic of classroom study; we need to learn how to make the commitments in the treaties into a dynamic, active process through which each of us can play our role in a critical global transformation.
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Please note that nothing in this edition of the treaties will be copyrighted, and we encourage people to copy the materials with or without credit. As one way to encourage wide dissemination of these treaties, copies of this document are also being made available on diskette - in MS-DOS (IBM-compatible) or Macintosh format, either as word processing files (WordPerfect 5.1 for MS-DOS, Word 4 for Mac) or as ASCII (American Standard Character Information Interchange) text; this will complement the availability of the texts of the treaties on the electronic networks.
Also, as noted above, the text of the alternative treaties has been converted into a database format and the database version will also be made available on diskette.
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If you have substantive comments on the treaty-making process or on the text of any of the treaties, please direct those comments to the regional focal points for the International NGO Forum, or to the appropriate, The addresses for the regional focal points - as well as for the coordinators of the treaties - can be found at the end of the introductory section.
Robert Pollard, International Synergy Institute
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