At the largest Earth Summit ever, which will open in Johannesburg in about two weeks, representatives of countries and corporations will once again promise to work to improve the standard of living and protect the environment.
By Barry James
At the largest Earth Summit ever, which will open in Johannesburg in about two weeks, representatives of countries and corporations will once again promise to work to improve the standard of living and protect the environment. The problem is that since the first summit, which was held in Rio de Janeiro a decade ago, such promises have been made repeatedly and not kept. in practice,
The standard of living actually goes down and the state of the environment is deteriorating
Photo: Reuters
A man floats on a raft and collects plastic scraps in a river covered in trash in Indonesia. It is predicted that by the year 2020, water will replace oil as the leading source of conflicts in the world
The road from the first Earth Summit, held in Rio de Janeiro ten years ago, to a similar global conference that will be held later this month in Johannesburg, is paved with good intentions to improve the fate of the world's poor and protect the environment. But this path may end up in a dead end, because in the largest gathering ever held by the United Nations, the participants will have to face a very difficult challenge: trying to breathe life into baseless promises to change the trends of ecological degradation and the decline in the standard of living, which are affecting many areas of the world.
About 65,000 people, from heads of state and corporate executives to representatives of civil organizations, intend to participate in the World Summit for Sustainable Development, which will take place between August 26 and September 4. Its main goal is to promote economic development, especially in developing countries, without robbing their resources that the children and grandchildren of the current generation will need to survive tomorrow.
However, the balance of the last ten years shows that it is difficult to expect that the Johannesburg summit will improve the situation significantly, if at all. At the Rio summit, which was held in 1992 and received much publicity, the governments agreed on a bold plan to combat the deterioration of the soil, air and water, to preserve the diversity of living creatures and to strive for economic growth within the limits of the Earth's ability to support life.
At other UN summits, which took place afterwards, similar formal promises were made regarding the promotion of education, assistance to women and the reduction of poverty.
Today, however, in 80 countries the per capita income is lower than it was at the time of the Rio summit. The threat to natural resources such as forests, fisheries and clean water and air is greater than ever. The richest 20 percent of the human race - including rich minorities in poor countries - consume energy and resources at such a high rate that to bring the rest of the world's population to a similar standard of living would require the resources of four planets the size of the Earth.
According to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, the results recorded since the Rio summit were disappointing, especially in light of the great global economic growth recorded in the XNUMXs. "In some ways the situation today is worse than it was ten years ago," he wrote in a report published earlier this year. According to him, the attitude towards development is gradual and does not include long-term thinking; The environment is threatened by consumption and production patterns that are not sustainable; Whereas the international aid is insufficient and is decreasing.
The forests are shrinking
The Rio summit ended with the signing of two treaties - one related to climate change and the other to the protection of the diversity of species in nature - in a plan called "Agenda 21" to eradicate environmental problems, reduce poverty and foster development.
But since the summit, the rate of carbon dioxide emissions, believed to be responsible for climate change and global warming, has increased by ten percent worldwide. This rate rose by no less than 18% in the US, which withdrew its support for the Kyoto Protocol, which was signed after the summit and was designed to limit global warming.
More than 180 countries have agreed to protect biodiversity, but its two richest sources, coral reefs and tropical forests, have since been severely damaged while fewer than forty countries have implemented conservation and protection plans. In addition to this, the lack of funding limits progress within the "Agenda 21" program.
"This is not progress," claims the "Friends of the Earth" organization, one of the main environmental organizations that will participate in the summit. He hopes that the international meeting will serve as a reality check for governments and international institutions, even if nothing else is achieved.
The industrialized countries were very far from fulfilling the commitments they made in Rio, to dedicate large resources to aid the poor countries. Rich countries then promised to provide foreign aid of 0.7% of their GDP, but only the Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands complied. In fact, the average aid allocated to development from the rich countries fell from 0.35% of the national income in the early 0.22s to 2000% in 10. It fell despite the fact that the economies of the rich countries, measured by annual GDP, grew by a total of 1.2 trillion dollars in the XNUMXs. At the same time, about XNUMX billion people survive on less than a dollar a day.
At the upcoming summit, the leaders will issue a "Johannesburg Declaration" that will reaffirm their commitment to sustainable development, and it is assumed that they will refrain from new specific promises. "The real test will be if we can convince the world that the major world conferences can bring about real change on the ground," said Nitin Desai, the UN Under-Secretary-General from India, who serves as the Summit's Secretary-General.
Vangelis Vitalis, the chief advisor to the "Round Table for Sustainable Development", a private organization based in the Organization for Economic Development and Cooperation in Paris, compiled a collection of data showing how in the last decade the situation of many people has changed for the worse, and how government policies contribute to global instability. Among his examples:
* The cost of realizing the goals of the Kyoto Protocol - reducing the gases that cause climate warming by the year - 2010 for the rich countries is estimated at 56 billion dollars. This is while the subsidies that these countries will give in the same period of time for fossil fuels will amount to a total of 57 billion dollars.
* The amount of fresh water available to each person in 1950 was 17,000 cubic meters. In 1995 this amount decreased to 7,000 cubic meters and now it is decreasing so rapidly that in 2020 up to five billion people will suffer from a "severe water shortage", and water will replace oil as the leading source of conflicts in the world.
* Almost 50% of the world's fish stocks have already been completely used up. More than 20% are used excessively, some to the point of causing irreversible damage. Despite this, fishing fleets in the rich countries receive subsidies equivalent to 20% of the value of the catch, and these finance the construction of larger boats, which they use to continue fishing the dwindling schools of fish.
* The area of tropical forests in the world is shrinking at the rate of an area four times larger than that of Switzerland per year. This is while the global forestry industry receives subsidies totaling 35 billion dollars every year.
* The annual development aid of the rich countries to the poor countries is 53.7 billion dollars. This while farmers in rich countries receive subsidies amounting to 335 billion dollars.
The US is piling up difficulties
Statistics like these help explain why expectations for the upcoming summit are low. Indeed, there are those who claim that nothing bad will happen if this is the last time the representatives of the governments meet and make promises they know they will never keep.
Simon Upton, chairman of the "Round Table", said he faced similar problems when he served as New Zealand's environmental affairs minister. According to him, "I had nine years of fruitless international meetings, where the people had to defend their positions in public", even if personally they did not believe in them.
He now invites Ministers of Environment, Trade, Development and Foreign Affairs, or their official representatives, to discuss ideas together with the best experts in each given field. "We must ensure that these agreements are implemented properly," said Upton, adding: "The fisheries sector is a classic example of a case where things don't work. The fishing is done in the open sea, outside the scope of sovereign supervision; Boats there fly flags different from those of their nation states and in fact simply rape the fish stocks. Maritime law is managed by international lawyers, an elite that specializes in the subject, but at the same time really important aspects are being neglected in which the situation continues to deteriorate and deteriorate."
Jean-Francois Richard, vice president of the World Bank in Europe, said that there are currently about 240 agreements and treaties on environmental matters, but even when they are approved by the countries, they are not enforced or only partially enforced, when their handling is the responsibility of toothless offices with low budgets .
In a new book called "At Tzahri Hayom", which he says includes his own ideas, Rishar proposes to establish networks that will deal with twenty global issues that must be resolved within the next twenty years. These include global warming and the growing threat of infectious diseases. "A permanent network will operate around each issue that will include governments, businesses and representatives of non-governmental organizations," he said. According to him, once the network carefully examines the issues and the proposed solutions, it will become a rating agency, which will judge the governments and institutions on the extent to which they have fulfilled their obligations.
The likely outcome of the Johannesburg Summit will be a political declaration, reaffirming the principles of the Rio Declaration and a draft implementation plan, which will be more focused. These two agreements will be of the type known as "type-1" intergovernmental agreements. But most of the attention and dynamics at the summit will be around the non-binding, "type-2" agreements included in "Agenda."21 These concern local administrations, businesses and non-governmental organizations, as well as governments.
The United States did not send any high-ranking representative to the preparatory meeting held in Bali, and it is still unclear whether US President George Bush will attend the Johannesburg summit.
Washington continues to withdraw from many multilateral agreements, and is expected to hold back on formal commitments or timetables that would subject it to international obligations. Instead, the United States will continue to emphasize the non-binding agreements, of "type-2." International trade, more than as an occupation in development and environmental quality.
Some officials said it only makes sense for the rich countries to finance health projects in the Third World, because poor health is one of the obstacles to economic development. Thus, for example, the number of victims of the AIDS epidemic has already equaled the number of victims of the Black Thing epidemic in the 14th century.
