By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, May 16 2002 (IPS)

Latin America and the Caribbean will demand at the World Summit on Sustainable Development – to take place in Johannesburg, South Africa, Aug 26-Sep 4 – that wealthy countries comply with the commitments made, in writing, 10 years ago at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, announced the Brazilian government.

In the last decade, the industrialised world reduced its development aid to poor countries from 0.4 of its combined gross domestic product (GDP) to 0.2 percent, according to Brazil’s Environment Minister, José Carlos de Carvalho.

The wealthy countries promised in 1992 at what was officially known as the World Summit on the Environment and Development to boost their international aid contribution to 0.7 percent of GDP, said Carvalho.

The minister addressed the inter-sectorial committee of the Forum of Latin American and Caribbean Environment Ministers as they gathered in Sao Paulo for a three-day meeting that ends Friday.

The conference is aimed at rallying forces and strengthening the positions that the region will defend at the World Summit on Sustainable Development, also known as Rio+10, in South Africa.

Environmental matters should be discussed in the context of North-South relations and should involve poverty reduction, technology transfer and changes in the international economy, stated the Brazilian minister.

The increase in farm subsidies recently enacted by the United States government will cause serious environmental damage worldwide because they will push prices down and force developing countries to turn increasingly to environmentally unsustainable production methods, he said.

The Brazilian economy, for example, could lose 2.0 billion dollars in export revenues, while the Group of Seven (G-7) most developed countries in the world is contributing a relatively limited 250 million dollars towards a pilot programme for protecting Brazil’s tropical forests, Carvalho pointed out.

The conceptual advances made at the 1992 Rio Summit need to see practical mechanisms added at the Johannesburg Summit in order to make the agreements and conventions effective, setting goals, deadlines and modes of financing that include established sources and recipients, said the minister.

The Sao Paulo meeting is centred on achieving consensus on the Latin American and Caribbean Sustainable Development Initiative, which will be presented at the Johannesburg Summit, and a Regional Action Plan for the 2002-2003 biennial.

The Initiative “is justified by the need to give the Johannesburg Summit practical meaning”, after 10 years in which progress was almost totally concentrated in “raising awareness and enacting national and international legal norms,” says the draft in discussion.

The objectives of the Initiative are to overcome the obstacles blocking execution of Agenda 21, approved in 1992, particularly the financial uncertainties, to promote private sector and civil society participation, and to foment sustainable development models.

The plan aims to strengthen the achievements of the 1992 Earth Summit, such as achieving the 0.7-percent GDP contribution by wealthy countries towards world development, the principle of “shared but differentiated responsibilities”, the participation of non-governmental actors and special attention to the small countries of the Caribbean.

The actions should promote economic growth; combat poverty, social inequalities and unsustainable consumption patterns; and reinforce fiscal tools and technology transfer that favour sustainability.

But the meeting of the Forum began under the impact of statements made a day earlier by the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for International Environmental and Scientific Affairs, John Turner, during a seminar also held in Sao Paulo.

The Kyoto Protocol, which sets goals for reducing each industrialised country’s greenhouse gas emissions – which the majority of scientists agree causes global warming -, “is not based on good science,” said Turner in his explanation of Washington’s rejection of this international convention.

The U.S. stance on the matter is the main source of pessimism among delegates preparing for the Johannesburg Summit.

The George W. Bush administration, which refuses to present the Protocol before the U.S. Congress for ratification, does not accept the principle of differentiated responsibilities, even though the United States is the world leader in greenhouse gas emissions, with nearly a quarter of the global total.

Under this principle, the United States would have to make the largest cut in emissions, and countries like Brazil, China, India and Mexico would be exempt from the goals, which Washington considers an unfair distribution of liability.

Brazil was the principal defender of the differentiated responsibility approach, arguing that the industrialised countries are liable for the vast majority of the greenhouse gases in the Earth’s atmosphere due to their past and current emissions.

Greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide, remain in the atmosphere for many decades or for more than a century.

But the greatest concern of the Latin Americans and Caribbeans, according to Carvalho, is how to reduce the “abyss” separating the industrialised North and the developing South in order to encourage sustainable growth worldwide.

This will require economic, political and environmental accords that include differentiated responsibilities for unequal partners, said the official.

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