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As the five heads of states of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) meet on African soil in Durban next week for the developing nations’ summit, civil society in Durban will be holding its own summit of a very different nature.
 
BRICS governments often use radical rhetoric alluding to anti-imperialism, and in this year’s summit, they will undoubtedly impress upon the rest of Africa that their corporations offer better investments in infrastructure, mining, energy, and agriculture than traditional Northern multinationals. In the brics-from-below! counter summit, hosted by groundWork [1], the South Durban Community Environmental Alliance (SDCEA) [2] and the University of KwaZulu Natal Centre for Civil Society (UKZN CCS) [3], civil society will play two major critical roles: firstly, acting as a watchdog of the claims, processes and outcomes of the BRICS summit, and secondly, providing a platform for civil society organisations in these countries to share experiences and create networks.
 
The prospect that South Africa “presents a gateway for investment on the continent” [4] could leave Africa overwhelmed by BRICS corporations and is indicative that the trajectory of the 21st century ‘scramble for Africa’ has already begun. Africa’s ‘Resource Curse’ will attract billions of dollars worth of BRICS infrastructure developments. In this light, the BRICS Summit in Durban is set to be the next successor to the initial carving up of Africa, which took place in 1885 in Berlin.
 
Africa’s survival, however, is largely at the mercy of climate change.  Climate change is driven by increased greenhouse gas emissions, which is fuelled by South Africa and other BRICS countries that continue to rely on and supply their Northern counterparts with dirty, non-renewable sources of energy, or the products created from dirty energy. The United Nations COP17 hosted in Durban in 2011 resulted in a weak, non-binding deal, which neglects the historic responsibility of Northern countries and promotes a rising average temperature for the continent at 1.5 degrees higher than the rest of the world.   
 
The major focus of this year’s summit is the new BRICS Bank, despite the growing world financial crisis clearly not boding well for this. Austerity scenarios continue to play themselves out in Greece, Spain, Portugal and Ireland, as a result of IMF bail-out of banks – which in 2012 included $75 billion of BRICS countries’ capital. The proposed BRICS Bank will exacerbate the chaos in our and our neighbour’s social, economic and environmental spheres already caused in part by multilateral financing. Existing development finance institutions in BRICS countries – like South Africa’s Development Bank of Southern Africa – offer mainly negative lessons.
 
Along with these issues, people in BRICS countries face numerous serious socio-economic, political and civil rights violations. Inequality, lack of adequate infrastructure, increased levels of violence, state repression, and the exploitation of resources to the detriment of people’s livelihoods and their ability to live in a healthy relationship with their environments, are all symptoms of development not oriented towards people but rather government and corporate profit.
 
The brics-from-below! civil society summit will take place from 22 to 27 March at different venues around Durban and is open to all journalists to participate.

groundWork (Friends of the Earth, South Africa)
South Durban Community Environmental Alliance
University of KwaZulu Natal Centre for Civil Society