ENVIRONMENT: Diplomats Voice Optimism as Earth Summit Anniversary Nears

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Apr 10 1997 (IPS) - U.N. diplomats are upbeat that they can devise concrete proposals on the environment in time for the fifth anniversary of the Rio de Janeiro ‘Earth Summit’ in June.

A three-week meeting of the Commission on Sustainable Development, which began here Tuesday, already is displaying a greater deal of cooperation between industrialised and developing nations that previous environmental meetings, says Mostafa Tolba, the chair of the talks and former head of the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP).

“The mood is very positive, and there is actually quite a convergence,” agrees Eileen Claussen, a U.S. assistant secretary of state who specialises in environmental issues. Most nations from North and South alike are eager to push for new strategies to protect freshwater suplies and regulate energy usage, she adds.

With North and South working together, Tolba says, “everyone is expecting concrete goals and targets in the Plan of Action” to be submitted to a special session of the U.N. General Assembly on the environment scheduled for June.

The important thing, he adds, is to develop a strong statement to follow up on the ‘Agenda 21’ plan for environmental protection developed at the Rio Summit. “We cannot go with a slim, thin, weak declaration and expect (governments) to sign up,” Tolba argues.

Governments last month identified more than a dozen key areas of concern that will need to be addressed at the special ‘Earth Summit Plus Five’ session of the General Assembly, for which many nations are seeking concrete timetables for progress.

Among the most urgent topics mentioned are poverty eradication, changes in consumption and production patterns, reduction in desertification, conservation of freshwater, and the protection of oceans, biodiversity and the atmosphere.

But despite the talk of progress, many delegates from the South say that, five years after the Earth Summit, the promise of environmental cooperation between the richer and poorer countries has dwindled.

“The Rio spirit has faded,” says Msuya Waldi Mangachi, a Tanzanian diplomat who chairs the Group of 77 delegation at the current meeting. In particular, he says, the South is hoping the new talks can re-emphasise the question of mobilising a transfer of resources and of environmentally friendly, but costly, technology to the poorer countries.

“In these (past) five years, mobilisation has not been very promising,” Mangachi says. Although nations at Rio agreed that the industrialised countries should set aside 0.7 percent of their gross domestic products for official development assistance (ODA) to the South, the actual ODA level has fallen since 1992 from 0.3 to 0.27 percent, Mangachi says.

“The environment has dropped many notches down the global and national agendas,” argues Martin Khor, director of the Malaysia- based Third World Network.

“The major reason is that in the five years after Rio, the process of globalisation linked to liberalisation has gained so much force that it has undermined and is undermining the sustainable development agenda,” Khor adds. “The environment, welfare of the poor, and global partnership have all been dislodged and sacrificed in this wave of free-market mania.”

Mangachi notes that the 132 developing states comprising the Group of 77 are suggesting specific timetables for the North to bolster its commitments to help finance environmentally friendly policies in the South. Among them, he says, is the proposal of a deadline — perhaps as soon as 2000 — for developed nations to meet the 0.7 percent ODA target, and timetables to set up an international clearinghouse for technological data.

Other nations are showing their environmental commitments here in other ways, including the signing of a pledge to halt the destruction of forests.

The non-governmental World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) announced Wednesday that 15 countries had agreed to a WWF pledge to set up networks to protect areas in each country, setting aside a minimum of 10 percent of each type of forest contained there. (The countries are Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bolivia, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Lithuania, Malawi, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Romania, Slovakia, Tunisia, and Uzbekistan.)

Francis Sullivan, director of the WWF’s Forests for Life Campaign, says that, by the time of the General Assembly session, some 30 countries may have committed themselves to the pledge.

Such commitments are necessary, Sullivan argues, noting that 94 percent of the world’s forests are unprotected from degradation, and that annual rates of deforestation since the Earth Summit remain high — increasing by 34 percent in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest since 1992.

“To date, the inter-governmental processes have failed to get any real or specific commitment for action to save the world’s forests,” Sullivan says.

But the WWF is equally wary of proposals, voiced by Canada and the European Union here, to hold a global convention on forests soon. Many environmental groups believe that such a convention at this time would result in a weak agreement that could be dominated by commercial timber interests.