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Rescuing the Johannesburg Summit |
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By Mario Osava*
A campaign is under way to save the Rio+10 Summit, an effort to reconcile North-South relations.
RIO DE JANEIRO - A final effort to prevent failure -- which seemed increasingly inescapable at the four preparatory meetings for the World Summit on Sustainable Development -- began at the Rio+10 International Seminar held Jun 23-25 in this Brazilian city.
The meeting was held as part of the ceremonies of the passing of the "environmental torch" from Brazil's President Fernando Henrique Cardoso to his South African counterpart, Thabo Mbeki.
Brazil hosted the World Conference on Environment and Development (also known as the 1992 Earth Summit), the direct precursor to the upcoming summit known as Rio+10, to take place in the South African city of Johannesburg Aug 26-Sep 4.
Sweden's Prime Minister Goran Persson participated in the Earth Summit on behalf of the first-ever global environmental summit, held in Stockholm in 1972.
Government leaders, environmentalists and international officials from around the world issued an appeal -- aimed particularly at rich countries -- to participate in the Johannesburg Summit and to put into practice the commitments and principles agreed and signed in 1992.
Mbeki promised to make the greatest possible effort to get the talks going and began his efforts by making a personal appearance at the summit of the Group of Eight most powerful countries, which took place Jun 25-37 in Canada.
Environmental organizations applauded the willingness of Mbeki, Cardoso and Persson to lead the campaign to prevent an "unacceptable" failure of the Johannesburg Summit.
In a message directed at national leaders present for the meeting, including British vice-prime minister John Prescott and Jordan's Princess Bama Bint Talal, the ecologists underscored the "unkept promises" of the 1992 Earth Summit and the continued suffering of the human population: one-third lack sufficient water and basic services, while hunger and misery continue to spread.
Faced with this scenario, the 41 Brazilian and international groups at the seminar signed an appeal to the world's governments to wrap up the accords for approval of the Rio+10 action plan, under South African leadership.
Twenty percent of the final document has not yet been clearly defined due to the lack of consensus on matters important to developing countries and the environmental movement, such as greater development assistance, funds to fight poverty, and the elimination of production and export subsidies in the industrialized North.
Those are the issues that meet with most resistance from the wealthy nations, particularly the United States.
There will be agreement and advances in Johannesburg, repeating the process of the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, which also began with a great deal of pessimism and uncertainty, but produced results that are praised today, environmentalist Paulo Nogueira Neto, who has held various posts in the Brazilian government, told Tierramérica.
With "realistic optimism", the executive director of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), Klaus Toepfer, also is confident that there will be success in Johannesburg, a meeting he referred to as a "conference for peace".
It means taking urgent measures to prevent serious conflicts over water, to reduce hunger and halt other forms of social and environmental deterioration, Toepfer said.
But the quantity and variety of demands makes consensus difficult, admit government leaders and environmentalists alike.
"We must focus on three priorities: poverty reduction, modification of production and consumption models, and financing," Brazil's Environment Minister José Carlos Carvalho said in comments to Tierramérica.
These are inseparable objectives of sustainable development, agreed Carvalho and UNEP Latin America and Caribbean director, Ricardo Sánchez.
But they require not only more financial aid flowing from the industrialized North to the developing South, but also changes in the "asymmetric nature of globalization," stated Brazil's president Cardoso.
"The most unsustainable is the fact that some consume more than they should, while others consume less than is needed to maintain human dignity," he said.
* Mario Osava is an IPS correspondent.
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