When I was researching for my work on Agenda 21 and the UNCED, I found very little wholesale criticism in the academic press until I stumbled on this article, “Sustainable development and Agenda 21: the secular bible of global free markets and pluralist democracy” by Timothy Doyle, published in Third World Quarterly, Vol 19, No 4, pp 771-786, 1998.

This is the concluding and final text from this article:

With the emergence of global ecology, many environmental issues are seen as beyond the traditional scope of national governments. Governments are, more often than not, severely lagging behind in their responses, ‘and this transnational political space has been occupied by corporations and NGOS, which can cross nation-state boundaries more readily. This globalisation of ecological and market systems has led to “the politics of no-fixed address.” ‘* Jacques Attali, who served as the foundational head of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development looks into the near future, and sees the following:

Severed from any national allegiance or family ties by microchip-based gadgets that will enable individuals to carry out for themselves many of the functions of health, education, and security, the consumer-citizens of the world’s privileged regions will become “rich nomads.” Able to participate in the liberal market culture of political and economic choice, they will roam the planet seeking ways to use their free time, shopping for information, sensations, and goods only they can afford, while yearning for human fellowship, and the certitudes of home and community that no longer exist because their functions have become obsolete. Like New Yorkers who every day face homeless beggars who loiter around automated teller machines pleading for spare change, these wealthy wanderers will everywhere be confronted by roving masses of “poor nomads”-boat people on a planetary scale-seeking to escape from the destitute periphery, where most of the earth’s population will continue to live. These impoverished migrants will ply the planet, searching for sustenance and shelter, their desires inflamed by the ubiquitous and seductive images of consumerism they will see on satellite TV broadcasts from Paris, Los Angeles, or Tokyo. Desperately hoping to shift from what Alvin Toffler has called the slow world to the fast world, they will live the life of the living dead.**

This is the world of Agenda 21.
The only force which currently seems capable of moving beyond the boundaries of nation-states in hot pursuit of transnational corporations are social  movements and NGOS, also acting through transnational  conduits. At first glance,  the age-old story depicting the battle between David and Goliath seems an appropriate metaphor to describe this situation. Only this time, David has no sling-shot.

*Doyle & McEachern, Environmental Politics, p. 105

** Attali, Millennium: Winners and Losers in the Coming World Order, 1991, pp 5-6