U.N.-ENVIRONMENT: Groups Predict Failure of Environment Talks

By Thalif Deen Reprint | | Print |

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Apr 24 1997 (IPS) - A coalition of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) is disappointed over the failure of the United Nations to come to grips with the issue of global environmental degradation.

The coalition says that a meeting of the U.N. Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) — the body that oversees progress on commitments made at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro — will end Friday with little to show after three weeks.

“We are utterly dissatisfied at the manner in which political commitments made in Rio have been reduced to perverse politicking by regional blocs in the pursuit of narrow economic interests at the CSD,” the international coalition, called the CSD NGO Community, says in a statement.

“We have been confronted with posturing, dog fights, and excuses,” says Kevin Dunion of the Amsterdam-based Friends of the Earth (FOE), a member of the coalition.

The NGOs say the impasse began last week when Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Nigeria moved to delete all references in the conference documents to reductions in the consumption of fossil fuels — such as oil, coal, and natural gas. The reductions are being sought as a way of limiting emissions of greenhouse gases that are linked to global warming.

But there appears to be a North-South split on a number of the issues.

Citing the repeated failures of rich countries to meet the financial commitments reached at the Earth Summit, some developing nations argue there is no reason to support agreements on the environment, energy, and trade.

Developing nations say the flow of financial resources and the transfer of technology have not kept pace with commitments or expectations in the five years since Rio.

One NGO, the London-based U.N. Environment and Development Committee (UNED-UK) says the CSD has side-stepped financing, one of the most crucial issues in the environmental debate.

Felix Dodds of UNED-UK refers to “a well calculated, but risky strategy by the South to challenge the North’s failures on finance.”

When governments adopted the blueprint for global environmental action in Rio, the United Nations estimated the plan would require some 125 billion dollars per year in “new and additional” resources.

The Washington-based National Wildlife Federation says the North has consistently failed to live up to its agreements to increase international development assistance, modify trade regulations that hurt poorer countries, and transfer environmentally sound technology to the South.

“The level of official development assistance (ODA) is now less than half the agreed 0.7 percent target promised at the Earth Summit, and it is over 20 percent lower than it was in Rio,” says Barbara Bramble of the Federation. “Without the financial resources to implement the transition, sustainable development is simply not going to be possible.”

Western donors, with the exception of the United States, reaffirmed their commitment in Rio to the U.N. aid target of 0.7 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) set more than 20 years ago. The only five countries that have surpassed the target are Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and the Netherlands.

Dodd welcomes a proposal that a top-level panel on financing be set up for sustainable development. But he says the panel by itself would not go far enough in resolving the problem of funding.

He added that “the European Union has agreed to go along with proposal to levy an air fuel tax which is expected to generate about one to two billion dollars in revenues annually.”

But Dodds is disappointed that the United States already has shot down the proposal which, he says, would be an environmental tax that would also improve the energy efficiency of airplanes.

Since the CSD meeting has not produced anything concrete, adds Dodds, there is a lot of legwork prior to the Special Session of the General Assembly in June which will review the results of the Earth Summit.

“The Special Session is in danger of dissolving,” he says. “It could be a complete disaster.”