Johannesburg: As I write on this Monday morning, Nelson Mandela is about to open the Global Forum meetings that are part of the World Summit on Sustainable Development. This is the UN-staged conference that has brought the world’s media–and more than 50 nations–to South Africa.

There is a tension here — and a sense of foreboding — that I didn’t feel ten years ago, when the last Earth Summit was held in Rio. There was an optimism then, a spirit of possibility, that now seems lost, as the deep divides in the world — -and environmental decline–become more evident to one and all.

What will come out of events like this? Press attention may help the rest of the world get a sense of what Africa is going through. It may, before it gets distracted–as it surely will, when the big names like Castro and Arafat arrive, and when the protests begin in earnest.

Right now, the air is filled with pessimism. The Sunday Times here reported that the summit failed before it began because the rich nations of the west have managed to gut much of the language that the poor countries wanted passed, language that insure more fairness in trade, debt relief, and a higher flow of development aid.

The Summit is a battleground, and a bizarre one at that! The UN has based its operations in Sandton, one of the most affluent suburbs in the world, adjacent to upscale shopping centers, ritzy restaurants and posh hotels. This is where the formal sessions take place, amidst an army of security and a legion of bureaucrats. A large media room has been set aside for journalists.

A second venue is out near the townships, at an underutilized expo center called NASREC, or naswreck as I call it, where the NGO’s are supposed to assemble. The Green Party of Germany is here in force and some forums and seminars are underway in cavernous halls with no windows. The hard core anti-globalization campaigners have been conferring at Wits University and feel the Nasrec site is there to co-opt them. Already they have challenged the police with an unauthorized march for the right to march. It was met with stun grenades that forced them back on campus. Another encampment of landless people are squatting elsewhere. Many of them were arrested before the summit began, after another unauthorized march. The ANC will be staging its own march on Saturday.

A third venue, the UBUNTU village, is for the public and features a stage for concerts and various rooms showcasing South African crafts. Many are quite beautiful. The government is setting up a web site so that people around the world will soon be able to buy them directly from the people who make them, a direct way to help the poor and spread the culture.

The final venue is a corporate one, for sessions among companies that are trying to project themselves as socially responsible. BMW is showing off a hydrogen powered clean energy car. HP has a pavillion, etc.

These four worlds at the summit may not intersect that much. We will have to see.

I am here with a my own agendas–filing reports for World Link TV and helping an innovative youth media project organized by filmmaker Michael Lee of Trafika films, and the NY-based pop sustainability organization, who is working with Harriet Gavshon’s Curious Pictures.

More on all of that later. Have to run, but sometimes I feel like the bear — making tracks and not getting anywhere. Sorry I can’t file a fuller report.

I am told Osama is back in the public eye with a letter posted on the net–but I haven’t read it yet.

You can still reach me by writing dissector@mediachannel.org