ENVIRONMENT: Passing the Torch to South Africa

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 26 2002 (IPS) - Securing a commitment from the world’s leaders to ensure the success of the upcoming World Summit on Sustainable Development was the main focus of a three-day seminar in Brazil that ended with the symbolic transfer of the “environmental torch” to South Africa.

Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson handed over to South African President Thabo Mbeki Tuesday the responsibility for the third international conference on the environment, slated for Aug 26-Sep 4 in Johannesburg.

Stockholm (1972) and Rio de Janeiro (1992) were the sites of the first United Nations-organised summits that made sustainable development a global objective, aimed at preserving the planet’s ability to host life.

Mbeki assumed the commitment “to do whatever it takes,” and to secure the support of key world leaders, in order to lay to rest fears that the Johannesburg conference will be a flop. Such concerns have been triggered by the discrepancies and disagreements that have surrounded preparations for the international summit.

From Rio de Janeiro, Mbeki set off on his first mission to that end directly to Kananaskis, a resort town in the western Canadian province of Alberta, where the leaders of the Group of Eight (G-8) principal industrial countries gathered Wednesday for a two-day meeting.

At the International Seminar on Sustainable Development that ran Sunday through Tuesday in Rio de Janeiro, Cardoso, Persson, Mbeki and British Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott agreed to send out a strong call to the G-8 leaders to pay more attention to the Johannesburg summit and to the issues to be addressed there, like the fight against poverty and conservation of the environment.

Resistance put up by some industrialised countries, especially the United States, is standing in the way of consensus on the central issues up for discussion in Johannesburg, especially touchy questions like financing for sustainable development.

Poor nations are demanding compliance with the commitments assumed at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, when the countries of the industrialised North pledged to make good on an earlier promise to earmark at least 0.7 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to official development aid.

The official development aid of rich countries amounted to just 0.33 percent of GDP in 1992. But instead of rising since then, that proportion has dropped to the present 0.22 percent, noted Cardoso and other participants in the seminar organised by the Brazilian government, in which diplomats, activists, legislators and journalists took part.

Although significant advances have been made since the first global summit in 1972, in the Swedish capital, the factors leading to unsustainable development are growing, said Persson and Mbeki at the ceremony to hand over the headquarters of the UN conference to South Africa.

Mbeki pointed out that in the past 30 years, fish stocks in the world’s oceans have diminished, while carbon dioxide emissions, desertification, soil erosion and the number of endangered species are all on the rise.

Consumption patterns have shown themselves to be totally unsustainable, said the South African leader, who noted that all of the world’s petroleum supplies would not be enough to meet demand in China if its population consumed the same amount of oil per person as is consumed in the United States. The same goes with paper, he added.

Persson, meanwhile, highlighted the rise in poverty in the world. The Swedish prime minister said today’s challenge is to make globalisation act in favour of sustainable development and in favour of the peoples who are demanding economic globalisation for the good of all, as well as democracy, human rights, peace and a cleaner environment.

For his part, Cardoso urged the world’s political leaders to assume their share of responsibility for promoting sustainable development in a world threatened by serious environmental problems.

The Brazilian president stressed the need to strengthen the “multilateral dialogue,” and criticised the unilateralism practiced by the United States, as he had already done in other speeches during the seminar.

Cardoso referred to the “G-1” instead of the G-8 to point his finger at Washington as the origin of the difficulties in preparing the World Summit on Sustainable Development.

The 90 representatives of non-governmental organisations, international bodies, social movements and universities who took part in the seminar attempted to come up with practical actions that could give a boost to the negotiations aimed at making the Johannesburg meet a success.

“We were looking for leaders for this process, and now we have found them,” said Marcelo Furtado with the international environmental watchdog Greenpeace, after welcoming the commitment assumed by Mbeki, Cardoso and Persson to do everything possible to ensure that progress was made at the Johannesburg summit.

The general concepts and objectives of sustainable development, defined at the 1992 Earth Summit in Brazil, must not suffer setbacks, said environmentalists at the seminar, who added that what must be done now is to establish clear targets and timetables, as well as the means for meeting them.