By Haider Rizvi
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 30 2002 (IPS)

The current world summit on sustainable development is incomplete without discussions on the role of military spending and war, say activists who gathered in New York to discuss a 1987 conference on disarmament.

The exclusion of disarmament from the agenda of the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) alarms those who believe that military spending not only diverts financial and human resources from productive to non-productive ends, but causes environmental destruction and uneven economic and social development.

“While the very development and production of weapons (of mass destruction) leaves behind environmental nightmares, their actual use in war could jeopardise the very basis of life on this planet, ” warned Jayantha Dhanapala, U.N. chief for disarmament affairs, in a statement last Saturday.

Dhanapala urged the international community to recognise the “twin global problems” of environment and underdevelopment as identified at the 1987 Conference on Disarmament. “These problems can and must be addressed together – in the interest of sustainable development, sustainable disarmament and sustainable international peace and security,” he said.

According to U.N. estimates, worldwide military spending has risen to nearly 900 billion dollars.

At the last round of negotiations on the WSSD agenda last May, many non-governmental organisations (NGOs) proposed that governments commit to reduce military spending by at least five percent for five years. Their call fell on deaf ears.

“Military production and consumption are a serious impediment to sustainable development,” says Pauline Cantwell of Peace Action, a non-profit group that has campaigned for disarmament for the past several years.

“They cause pollution and occupy resources that could otherwise be spent on sustainable development.”

Peace groups say one way to move toward sustainable development is to stop the flow of weapons from developed countries to developing nations, where most people live on less than a dollar a day.

>From 1992 to 1999, developing countries spent more than 200 billion dollars on weapons, according to the U.S.-based Center for Defense Information, which reports 37 major conflicts have taken place in the world since last January.

The United States has been the world’s largest supplier of weapons in the past five years.

Already, says Cantwell, the ongoing ‘War on Terror’ has brought many countries under pressure to increase their military spending. “That will not be of any help to implement the agenda for sustainable development,” she adds.

Weapons makers are already reaping the profits. In its most recent earning season, top U.S. defense contractor Lockheed Martin Corp. reported that profits doubled. Last month, Northrop Grunman Corporation, which makes B-2 bombers, also reported a rise in profits.

Dhanapala warned of the “serious environmental and economic costs” of producing weapons of mass destruction, especially nuclear weapons.

The world’s eight nuclear weapons states maintain over 17,000 nuclear warheads, with the United States and Russia accounting for 93 percent, according to Sipri, a Sweden-based think-tank that tracks weapon production and export.

China has nearly 400 warheads, France 348, and Israel and Britain about 200 each. India is believed to have more than 30 and Pakistan more than 40 nuclear weapons.

But the race to spend money goes beyond nuclear weapons. The United States plans to commit more than eight billion dollars to develop its ‘Star Wars’ missile defence system. The country has already spent more than 100 billion dollars on research and other activities related to missile defence systems, according to the Center for Defence Information.

By contrast, the U.N. Development Program (UNDP) reports that more than a billion people have no access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation, which leads to the deaths of three million people annually.

Providing those services would cost about 20 billion dollars a year, according to last year’s International Conference on Water.

Peace groups complain that the WSSD, the 10-year follow-up to the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio, Brazil, fails to include any reference to the environmental impact of wars, weapons production, and the direct connection between the oil industry and the military.

At Rio, participants had acknowledged that armed conflict, as well as military production and consumption, cause death and human suffering and hinder sustainable development.

To Dhanapala, this is “the moment” for the international community to consider the central finding of the 1987 Conference on Disarmament.

It said: “The world can either continue to pursue the arms race with characteristic vigor or move consciously and with deliberate speed towards a more stable and balanced social and economic development within a more sustainable international political order. It cannot do both.”

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