ENVIRONMENT: Rio Forum Gives Vision, But Few Results In Sight

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

RIO DE JANEIRO, Mar 20 1997 (IPS) - The conference held here to commemmorate the 1992 Earth Summit was long on vision, but delegates worry that their proposals will not go anywhere.

Then there were the ironies of the meeting.

Along with the major support of the Costa Rica-based Earth Council and involvement by various U.N. agencies and non- governmental groups worldwide, the Mar. 13-19 gathering of some 500 environmental experts thanked such conglomerates as Ford, Fiat, General Motors, the Brazilian branch of Xerox, and the Brazilian oil company Petrobras. For a conference warning of the evils of “unsustainable” levels of consumption and pollution, such support seemed odd.

In a further irony, the conference — which produced an Earth Charter affirming among other things the rights of indigenous peoples — was met with protests from indigenous Brazilian groups, including Guarani Indians from Parana state upset about the displacement brought about by the creation of a Volkswagen plant. Volkswagen was yet another sponsor of the Rio forum.

Those are the kinds of contradictions that make many environmental activists uneasy about conferences that are long on words, and less specific on actions.

“Nothing tangible seems to be coming out of it,” said T.K.A. Nair, secretary of India’s environment and forests ministry. He lauded the forum as a good way to launch debate on environmental issues, but wondered what practical effect the forum’s Earth Charter and recommendations to the United Nations will have.

Others were more severe. “Nothing happened here,” one delegate complained privately. “There is no danger of sustainable development happening any time soon.”

Some environmental experts felt more positive about the recommendations reached, but worried that they would become lost in the shuffle of advice to the U.N. General Assembly when it stages a special session on the environment this June, on the fifth anniversary of the Earth Summit held in Rio.

“There are more than 16,000 pages already submitted to the General Assembly for that meeting,” one delegate told IPS. “Even if this meeting generates 100 pages, which would be considerable, that would still be small in proportion.”

Yet delegates were generally happy with the recommendations to the United Nations, which included a call for countries to implement Agenda 21, the environmental agreement signed by world leaders in 1992 at the end of the Rio Summit.

The ‘Rio Plus Five’ forum said that the globalisation of the economy has presented difficulties in implementing a variety of regional and international accords.

And it also urged governments of the North to transfer resources to the developing world to allow for the development of sustainable projects. Governments at the Earth Summit had similarly agreed to transfer 0.7 percent of their gross national products annually to the South. “With a global fund for participation, the momentum to implement sustainable development will sadly be lost,” the delegates agreed in the recommendations.

But the forum also produced a declaration of principles, the Earth Charter, whose likely effects are more questionable.

Kanak Mani Dixit, editor of the Nepal-based ‘Himal’ magazine, called it “a little bit of the (Hindu) Rig Vedas, a little bit of the Bible, some Confucius…it doesn’t really add up to anything.”

Others dismissed the document as a “New Age” quasi-spiritual text reflecting the interests of Earth Council President and former Earth Summit secretary-general, Maurice Strong.

From the call in the Charter not to do to the environment of others “what you would not want done to your environment,” to its plea to “respect Earth and all life,” the statement faced a tough sell at the United Nations, many delegates predicted. Nair called it “a nice dream.”

But even the Charter had its defenders here. Professor Mary Tucker of Bucknell University in the United States said the Charter was “one of the most empowering documents I have seen in 20 years of teaching.”

Susan Davis, executive director of the U.S.-based Women’s Environment and Development Organisation, says the values embedded in the charter of respect for the earth and for its people represent a counterweight to the values of economic determinism and scientific rationalism that dominate much discourse.

Whether that vision lasts longer or spreads farther than the weeklong forum here remains in question. But U.N. conferences have shared the same fate: the past five years have seen agreements to protect the environment, human rights, women’s rights, human settlements and food security, and to combat poverty — and yet those goals seem as distant as ever.