By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Mar 12 1997 (IPS)

Some Brazilian non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have doubts over whether the “Rio plus Five” Forum , which opens here Thursday, can bring about compliance with the environmental accords signed here at the 1992 Earth Summit.

Roberto Kishimani, executive director of Greenpeace Brazil, said that his organization wwould not attend as he did not believe the Forum would “bring about any significant advance” in the application of terms specified in the Climatic Change and Biodiversity Agreement of 1992.

The “Rio plus Five” Forum had a commercial bias because of its affiliation with The Entrepreneurial Council for Sustainable Development, according to Greenpeace. The Council, composed of large transnational corporations, represented “an obstacle” to environmental exigencies such as the reduction of gas emissions which contribute to the greenhouse effect, Kishimani said.

Other large Brazilian NGOs such as “SOS Mata Atlantica” and “The Socio-Environmental Institute” also announced they would not participate in the Forum.

“Rio plus Five” is promoted by The Earth Council – sponsors of the Rio Global Environmental Summit in 1992 – headed by Maurice Strong, Executive coordinator for U.N. reform. Israel Klabin, a businessman with paper and cellulose interests and director of the Brazilian Foundation for Sustainable Development, has presided over the organizing committee for the Rio gathering, which is being billed as a people’s forum.

The secretary-general of the National Forum of NGOs, Katia Drager Maia, who also sat on the organizing committee, said much of the criticism against the forum was not justified. She pointed out that the conference had established a “working group” limited to 500 participants.

“Most of these are representatives of non-governmental agencies,” she said. “In fact, only 40 will be business people.”

Maia went on to say that one problem “may be that some people want to repeat the Global Forum” – which ran parallel to the 1992 Environmental Summit. That separate conference gathered tens ofthousands of people from all over the world, and sponsored protests and debates that were open to the public.

Luiz Pinguelli Rosa, a physicist from Rio’s Federal University, disagreed. She maintained the exclusion of essential themes, such as actual progress on the implementation of climatological and biodiversity agreements, indicated that the design of this conference had been worked out by developed nations which wish to circumvent central agreements subscribed to in 1992.

The “Rio plus Five” Forum will run through to March 19 with discussions focussed on economy, the environment, science, technology, governability, social development, communication and value systems as they relate to environmental concerns.

Scheduled speakers include renowned scientific authorities, and politicians such as Brazilian President Fernando Enrique Cardoso and former President Mikhail Gorbachov. Argentine singer Mercedes Sosa – also a well-known environmental activist – will supply a unique voice to Forum events.

Several alternative events also will be held in Brazil during the Forum. A three-day seminar on the “Greenhouse Effect, Gas Emission and Climatic Change” that will bring together scientists from several countries will open in Rio Janeiro Thursday. Sao Paolo is hosting a six-day symposium entitled “From Rio to the Streets,” an event which began last Sunday under the auspices of the Provincial Secretariat for the Environment. Participants agree on the need for social pressure to oblige compliance with measures spelled-out in Agenda 21, an agreement issued in 1992 by the Environmental Summit.

According to Rosa Roldan from Brazil’s Institute for Social and Economic Analysis, the goal of alternative events is to discuss topics such as economic globalization and patterns of consumption, thus introducing perspectives to the environmental debate which will not be covered at the “Rio plus Five” Forum.

Roldan lamented the “lack of participation by civil society and grass-roots organizations” in the preparatory stages of the official Forum.

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