| Environmentalists take harsh blow
By THOMAS C. FOX
As the World Summit on Sustainable Development drew to a
conclusion, environmentalists expressed disappointment after the European Union
buckled to pressures by U.S. delegates on timetables to wean the world from
greenhouse-producing fossil fuels.
After days of talk in Johannesburg, South Africa, Aug. 26-Sept. 4,
the final tug -- and measure of summit success -- seemed to come down to which
of two visions of sustainable development the delegates would adopt.
One, out of the European Union, called for a weaning from fossil
fuels and strict timetables; the other, out of the Bush administration, backed
by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and Japan, downplayed the
need for change and objected to all timetables and targets.
As pressure grew and summit delegates approached the final hours,
Europe backed down. The alternative, they said, would have meant imperiling the
entire summit.
Environmental and development groups were furious that what seemed
an imminent deal to set firm targets and a timetable to encourage the spread of
wind, solar and other renewable energies in developing countries suddenly was
watered down in favor of fossil fuel energies.
Steve Sawyer, climate policy director of Greenpeace, told the
British Guardian: “The Americans, Saudis and Japanese have got what
they wanted. ... It’s worse than we could have imagined.”
Through the 10-day gathering, environmentalists and many delegates
vilified the Bush administration, as the United States took the brunt of world
criticism for having abandoned the world community. The U.S. position on a
range of global issues had a common denominator: The United States would accept
no timetables or targets. It would offer no pledges. Whether the issue was
water, sanitation, energy or pollution, the Bush team held firm, often finding
allies in oil producing nations or among poor nations that said they could not
afford renewable fuels.
The Bush delegation argued that it is willing to commit to
practical, focused aid and development programs but cannot bind the American
people to what it sees as vague, symbolic gestures.
Going into the summit, few environmentalists expected more from
Washington. Yet the reality of Bush “unilateralism” and his
nationalist focus, facing the urgency of the tasks and the sentiments of the
wider communities, was nevertheless painful to swallow.
Kyoto in a ‘timely
manner’
The Johannesburg summit of 2002 became an echo of Bush on Kyoto in
March 2001. That’s when the president rejected the 1997 environmental
protocols that set legally binding emission reduction goals. The United States
produces 25 percent of the world’s greenhouse emissions. Bush said
adoption of the Kyoto goals -- seen as modest by environmentalists who give
some predictions of a 6 degree global warming in this century -- would hurt the
U.S. economy.
In Johannesburg, the U.S. delegation received instructions to keep
any mention of the Kyoto protocols from appearing in the final summit action
plan, the heart of the final document. In this, however, the team did not
succeed. With heavy lobbying from the Europeans, the final text refers to Kyoto
and “strongly urges” nations that have yet to sign the protocols to
do so in a “timely manner.”
The final wording of the summit’s key energy section not only
avoided mention of timetables, but it included a call for the use of
“fossil fuel technologies,” although in the context of developing
“cleaner, more efficient, affordable” energy sources. The wording was
an especially harsh blow to environmentalists.
“We are bitterly angry that the OPEC countries, Japan and the
United States have combined in this way to help wreck the world’s
environment and endanger the security of our common home,” one
environmental group stated just after the wording of the energy text was
released. The feeling was widespread.
In the final hours, each head of state -- more than 100 attended
-- was allowed five minutes to speak to the delegates. British Prime Minister
Tony Blair, French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard
Schroeder all urged final ratification of the Kyoto protocol and in so doing
distanced their governments from the United States on the summit’s global
issues. They spoke of the urgency to curtail climate change, citing recent
European flooding as the latest evidence of the growing consequences of failure
to act.
Blair spoke of the ills of poverty and pollution. His insight was
not the world’s plight but the failure to act over it. “What is truly
shocking is not the scale of the problems. The truly shocking thing is that we
know the remedies.”
One could find little solace in the somber remarks of many world
leaders who expressed dismay at the deteriorating state of the world’s
environment and the worsening condition of the poor. Few offered new money or
concrete plans to close the widening gap between rich and poor states, but
there were many urgent pleas for action to save the planet from disaster.
Saufatu Sopoanga, prime minister of Tuvalu, a minute Pacific
island state, said his country was already succumbing to sea level rise.
“We want our nation to exist forever and ever and not to be drowned
because of the greed of the industrialized world,” he said. “Climate
change affects everyone. All parties, especially the highest emitters of carbon
dioxide, must take steps urgently. How much longer must we repeat our story to
the world?”
Debt paid three times
Hugo Chávez, president of Venezuela, like many leaders of
developing countries, urged the cancellation of debt, which he said had been
paid back three times over in Latin America. Speakers reminded delegates that
2.1 billion people live with inadequate water supplies and that 40 percent of
children in the developing world are underweight or starving.
Costa Rica, regarded as Latin America’s most environmentally
aware country, where 27 percent of the land is protected and 95 percent of the
energy is renewable, announced that it would no longer allow coal mining or oil
exploration. “Economic development based on the destruction of nature is
suicide. God first created plants and the animals and then man. If the plants
and animals are dying, guess who is next,” said President Abel
Pacheco.
The summit, with its tortuous governmental negotiations, got the
lion’s share of the media attention, but there were more than a dozen
smaller summits and parallel events taking place, each drawing together the
three pillars of the world community -- governments, business and
nongovernmental organizations, NGOs. More than 60,000 delegates attended. It
was called the largest U.N. meeting ever organized.
Delegations and NGOs spewed out several thousand statements,
initiatives, declarations, resolutions, position papers, responses and
challenges. If there were hints of a babel of discord, it could also be said
that the gathering provided the most sustained focus ever by the world
community on the critical and complex issues of sustainable development.
The conference drew fresh attention to the devastating effects
that rich nations’ food subsidies are having on poor nations. These
subsidies now reach $350 billion yearly, making it virtually impossible for the
poor to compete in the world market or even to maintain modest local farms.
Curiously, these subsidies come out of governments that condemn intervention in
the marketplace. It was pointed out that rich nation subsidies now amount to
seven times the assistance they give in aid to the poor nations of the
world.
In the end, the summit action plan did include certain deadlines
for improving water supplies and for saving rare species as well as for taking
common action to fight AIDS and mass poverty. Negotiators committed themselves
to halve the 2 billion people living without sanitation by 2015. They also
agreed to protect the world’s fishing stocks, by restoring most of the
world’s major fisheries to sustainable levels by 2015. They agreed to the
banning of some of the world’s most harmful chemicals by 2020, including
DDT. These were viewed as major steps forward.
‘I have heard you’
On the closing day of the gathering, U.S. Secretary of State Colin
Powell was booed, heckled and jeered as he defended the U.S. environmental
record. Delegates from NGOs repeatedly interrupted his speech, chanting,
“Shame on Bush.” Several people held up banners that said:
“Betrayed by governments” and “Bush: People and planet, not big
business.” Powell was visibly annoyed by the outbursts. At one point he
answered, “I have now heard you.”
Ten years ago, as a reluctant participant at the Rio Earth Summit
in 1992, the first President George Bush gave warning of what has become the
watchword of U.S. foreign policy over the last decade: “The American way
of life is not negotiable.” Ten years later, the most important message
the vast majority of those who gathered at the conference seemed to want to
deliver to the younger Bush was: The future of life on Earth is not
negotiable.
Thomas C. Fox is NCR publisher. His e-mail address
is tcfox@natcath.org
Related Web site
World Summit on Sustainable
Development
www.johannesburgsummit.org
National Catholic Reporter, September 13,
2002
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