At the Public Eye on Davos in New York conference, Victoria Tauli-Corpuz of the Tebtebba Foundation in the Philippines related her experience at the World Economic Forum two years ago. The lesson she drew? The WEF is where big businesses puts together a public relations strategy, tries to co-opt its opponents and pushes governments to make compromises at the World Trade Organization.

Two years ago, Victoria Tauli-Corpuz was invited to speak at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. This year, the indigenous people's rights activist criticized the WEF at the "Public Eye on Davos" conference in New York.

As the director of the Philippines-based Tebtebba Foundation, Tauli-Corpuz figures she was invited to the WEF because the mining industry "wanted to get some sort of information" from people who have actively campaigning against mining corporations around the world.

"I now realize that at that meeting they were already talking about how to contain all these conflicts in indigenous people's communities in mining areas," said Tauli-Corpuz.

After the WEF meeting, some of the world's largest mining companies created the Global Mining Initiative. Tauli-Corpuz said that the initiative was presented to the United Nations as a partnership between indigenous peoples and mining corporations—but it isn't.

"It's all a lie," said Tauli-Corpuz. "They invited me to become a member of this group and I refused because I cannot in all honesty be there and say something on behalf of all these people. I do not have the right to bear that kind of responsibility"

She said the companies' next step will be to present the idea of "sustainable mining"—an obvious impossibility—at the World Summit on Sustainable Development next year in Johannesburg.

"They are trying to plot out a whole program where they will really clean up the image of the mining corporations. This is really their main concern, because the image of mining corporations has been so destroyed because of all this anti-mining campaigns and now they want to look like the good guys. So they've come up with this whole idea of the Global Mining Initiative, of which one idea is the Mines, Minerals and Sustainable Development."

Having witnessed first hand how the WEF is a forum where companies create strategies to make deals with governments and organizations, Tauli-Corpuz is deeply concerned about the affect the WEF has on world.

"I'm convinced that this WEF is really the baddy where these corporations come together, sort of look at the problems they are faced with, where they are not able to do whatever they like to do and then deal with the heads of states who are going there."

She says it is at the WEF that large companies begin pushing governments for new trade agreements at the World Trade Organizations.

"The agenda that they really do have as far as...is to liberalize investments," she said. "They would like to negotiate a new treaty on investments which is like the failed Multilateral Agreement on Investments."