The concerns and frustrations of the NGOs is well documented in the News Letter OUTREACH 1997. What makes this particular News Letter excellent is that it was produced every day during the Earth Summit II - Rio+5 meeting. It is a wonderful and useful guide to what was happening on a daily basis...we applaud the editors and producers of this paper. This News Letter is available via e-mail if you send a request to WFUNA at: wfuna@nygate.undp.org

OUTREACH 1997: speaking for the CSD/NGO Steering Committee in collaboration with ECO 1997. ECO has been published by Non-Governmental Groups at major international conferences since the Stockholm Environment Conference in 1972. The opinions commentaries and articles printed in OUTREACH are the sole opinion of the individual authors or organizations, unless otherwise expressed. They are not the official opinions of the NGO/CSD Steering Committee or of WFUNA.

Pamela Chasek, PhD

Earth Negotiations Bulletin
212 East 47th Street #21F
New York, NY 10017 USA
Phone: +1-212-888-2737
Fax: +1-212-644-0206
E-mail: pam@dti.net

Five years ago at Rio, global civil society looked at the Earth Summit as a source of hope for a new global partnership that would bring us back from the brink of ecological catastrophe and at the same time help developing countries and poor communities to develop in sustainable ways.

Today, on the final day of this Special Session, the world's citizens are alarmed that the world is rushing even nearer to that brink of ecological disaster as the old production systems and lifestyles persist, the forests and lands are mined, the atmosphere polluted, as if the Earth Summit never happened.

We are also deeply disappointed that the spirit of Rio seems to have vanished. Aid has fallen. Financial resources continue to be sucked out from developing countries through debt servicing and declining terms of trade. At the end of the 1980s for example, countries of Sub Sahara Africa were losing 15 percent of their GDP through the fall in their terms of trade, and even more through debt servicing. In all $300-500 billion flows out from South to North each year, creating a huge financial vacuum that the small and fast declining volume of aid is unable to offset.

Instead of the promised technology transfer, the new intellectual property rights agreement at the WTO is creating new barriers to the South's access to environmentally sound technology. It also accelerates the practice of bio-piracy, in which genetic resources and the knowledge of local communities on the sustainable use of biodiversity are hijacked and transformed into patents and patented products that are the new source of enormous profit for the big corporations.

The main victims are the poor communities and ordinary people who endure the destruction of their environment and the indignities of poverty.

And yet today, even as we survey the extra environmental destruction that the last five years has brought, which are so well captured in the many papers of the CSD and even more eloquently in the many hundreds of NGO documents displayed during this Special Session, we stand and salute the hundreds and thousands of local community leaders and the millions of ordinary people around the world, who have provided us the hope that something is being done to save the Earth.

We salute the indigenous peoples, who are desperately guarding, sometimes with their very lives, the remainder of the world's rainforests and other ecosystems.

We salute the local communities and environmental activists of the North and the South who too are fighting to save the remnants of their old growth forests from the logger's axe, and who are bravely battling the toxic dumps and hazardous industries located in their neighborhood.

We salute the communities in every region that have had to bravely defend their lands, homes and resources from the encroachment of commercial interests and big billion-dollar projects that all too often turn out to be economically unviable and ecologically destructive and that create millions of environmental refugees.

We salute the thousands of farmers around the world who, having suffered from the ill effects of chemical-based agriculture, have switched to organic farming on their own, and are rebuilding the land, despite the lack of support of the agriculture establishment.

We salute the consumers and consumer movements that are fighting against unhealthy products and unsustainable consumption patterns, who campaign for breast feeding instead of baby foods,who raise the alarm over hazardous pesticides and pharmaceutical drugs dumped onto the Third World, and who have taken the tobacco industry to court and forced it, in the United States at least, to admit its liability, to pay billions of dollars in compensation, and to agree to request that government regulate their behavior.

We salute the individuals, the campaigners and the scientists who are exposing the dark side of genetic engineering in the midst of the industry's media hype, and who are waging a campaign against the patenting of life and the cloning of nature's creation.

We salute the women, who are all too often in the forefront of the communities' fight for survival, hugging the trees to prevent their being chopped, standing with the men and often in front of the men in facing the bulldozer, fighting against toxic industries and dumps to prevent the poisoning of their children.

These brave, ordinary, people, often the poorest and most humble of their societies, are the true practitioners and the real heroes of the sustainable development that the rest of us only talk about. They are in the forefront of the battle to defend their rights and to save not only their world but our world, and on our behalf, always with hardship and bravery, and sometimes paying with their very lives.

We also salute the many development NGOs and environment NGOs, the new breed of environmental journalists, the public servants in local authorities, the planners at national level, and the precious few political leaders, who have in their own way put out their necks on behalf of sustainable development. They include many of you present in this hall and in the outside rooms of this building, who are going against the status quo and pioneering the way ahead.

We owe it to the public, and especially to those people in the local communities, to do our part to challenge the old and unsustainable ways and patterns of production, technology, consumption and lifestyles.

Even as we do so, we realize increasingly that the millions of battles waged at local level are all linked to the growing power of globalization. The kind of globalization prevailing today is inequitable, benefiting a few but marginalising the many. It is based on and it is rapidly spreading the same consumption and production patterns that we have already proclaimed unsustainable. It represents the growing power of big business that is increasing its monopoly of the economy and extending its reach to policy-making bodies.

In the five years after Rio, globalization is undermining the sustainable development agenda. Commerce and the need to be competitive in the global market, have become the top priority in many countries. The environment, welfare of the poor and global partnership have been downgraded on the agenda.

In particular, the 1994 Marrakesh Agreements of the WTO appear to be over-riding the 1992 Rio Agreements of UNCED and the WTO is now institutionalizing globalization. This globalization process seems to reward the strong and is ruthless in marginalising the weak. Its paradigm emphasizes the gaining of more market share, profits and greed above all else, values that are opposite to sustainable development and global partnership.

The NGOs are also concerned that due to the rise of this private sector approach, the role of the UN in social, economic and environmental issues is being steadily eroded and instead transferred to the Bretton Woods institutions and the WTO, which represent a different model of international cooperation.

We therefore call on the political leaders to take control of the globalization process, and channel it towards the goals of sustainability. As many NGOs see it, this should be the first priority of the actions needed in the next five years.

The CSD and other agencies of the UN should deal with the issue of globalization and sustainable development. As a start it should be a cross-sectoral issue to be discussed each year.

In dealing with globalization, it is vital to reassert the principles at the heart of the Spirit of Rio: that the poor have the right to development, the rich have the duty to change their lifestyles and to help the poor, and that the common but differentiated responsibilities to save the Earth should be put into practice.

In the next five years, the following other actions are urgently needed:

** Make the private sector, and especially the transnational corporations, more accountable and subject to regulation. The recent developments in the tobacco industry is a good example of why and how regulations are needed to curb marketing and eventually production of a harmful product. The lesson learnt should lead to similar regulation in other areas.

** Make the world trading and financial systems, including the WTO, more transparent and accountable to the public and to the goals of sustainable development.

** Greatly strengthen the resources, role and capacity of the UN and in ways that enable it to be true to its mission of serving the social, developmental and environmental needs of the people, especially the weak and poor.

** Create more opportunities and access for NGOs to participate in the UN's activities. At national level, give more space to NGOs and social groups to function and to participate in policy consultation and development.

** Integrate social, equity, and environmental concerns in national economic policy and development planning, and in the design of international policies (such as structural adjustment programmes) and in trade rules and agreements, so as to prevent social polarization, increase social equity, eradicate poverty and protect the environment.

** Rigorously assess new technologies such as genetic engineering for ecological, safety and social impacts, before allowing them to operate and spread.

** Quickly conclude effective treaties preventing the export of hazardous chemicals and other substances.

** Place top priority in development planning on the need to protect watersheds and hill regions, to prevent further forest loss and to secure water supplies for the future.

** Take much more seriously the task of phasing out unsustainable agriculture, and vigorously promote sustainable agriculture.

NGOs realize that these tasks are hard to achieve, and also that they can be done only if citizens themselves actively participate and campaign for them.

In the next five years, even as we pressure our policy makers and politicians to meet their commitments to sustainability, the NGOs, citizen groups and social movements will also intensify the pressure on ourselves to fight for people's rights, for the local and global environment and for the future of the Earth.

Thank you.

UNITED NATIONS, June 27 -- The second United Nations Earth Summit ended

negotiations today with delegates failing to make significant progress

toward resolving any of the planet's most vexing environmental problems.

 

After five days of speeches and dozens of hours of sometimes tortuous

negotiations, international leaders could not agree even on a final

political statement that was supposed to reflect global resolve to fight

pollution. The impasse was seen by many as a final death blow to the

"Spirit of Rio," the sense of optimism that followed the original U.N.

Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro five years ago. "We reached the zenith of

our enthusiasm for sustainable development and the environment in 1992,"

conceded a visibly weary UN General Assembly President Razali Ismail, of

Malaysia. "Since then, many things have come our way that have

distracted our attention."

 

The summit, which drew delegates from nearly 180 countries including 44

heads of state, was organized to assess progress since the 1992 meeting

and to lay the groundwork for new agreements on a range of environmental

issues, including a treaty on climate change, at a meeting in Kyoto,

Japan, in December. Among other issues, negotiators hoped to reach

consensus on specific timetables for the reduction of "greenhouse gases"

blamed for global warming, for firm commitments from industrialized

countries to increase aid to developing countries for environmental

efforts, and for a pact to protect forests.

 

Instead, the meeting was dominated by disputes between rich and poor

countries, as well as between the United States and Europe over whether

to set legally binding targets for reducing air pollution.

 

In the end, negotiators were able to agree only to a formal document

that contained vague commitments to fight poverty, to increase aid to

developing countries and to conduct future talks on preserving forests

and cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

 

By some measures, the summit -- dubbed "Rio Plus Five," referring to the

five years since the initial summit -- was a step backward in the effort

to mobilize global resources against ecological problems. Some observers

were already calling it "Rio Minus Five."

 

"The spirit of Rio has disintegrated, and national and short-term

interests have prevailed," said Jonathan Lash of the World Resources

Institute. "It was not a demonstration of leadership and cooperation."

 

Razali, briefing journalists on the results of an all-night negotiating

session, described the results as "pretty sobering" and a "wake-up call

to the United Nations." But he declined to pronounce the summit a

failure. "For the first time we are honest enough to recognize the

limitations of our promises, and of our ability to meet targets," Razali

said. He added that it was fortunate that so many world leaders

attended, "so they can see that everything is not so rosy."

 

Representatives from environmental groups who attended the summit as

nongovernment delegates were even more blunt. "We view what happened

here as an almost complete failure," said Greenpeace International's

Clifton Curtis. "It reflects an abdication of responsibility by

governments to take the actions that are needed."

 

Martin Khor, of the Third World Network, predicted that the failure by

wealthier nations in the Northern Hemisphere to honor aid commitments to

poorer countries of the Southern Hemisphere would prompt the developing

world to "chuck the environment out of their agenda."

 

"We're moving into a North-South divide which can potentially ruin our

prospects for sustainable development," Khor said. "And I think the

blame clearly is to be put on the North."

 

Environmental groups and some European delegations were particularly

angry at the United States for resisting appeals to commit to binding

targets for reducing emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse

gases.

 

In his speech to the summit on Thursday, President Clinton promised only

to back "realistic and binding limits" on pollution in an international

treaty to be signed in Kyoto. The Japanese, Australian and Canadian

governments also have declined to embrace specific targets, while the

European Union favors reducing emissions to a level 15 percent below the

world's 1990 output.

 

But U.N. officials said developing countries were also partly to blame

for the summit's lack of success. Some delegations appeared to be

deliberately blocking progress on the summit's final political statement

as a protest against the West's failure to honor aid commitments.

 

"There was a sense of being aggrieved because of the many promises of

Rio that didn't come about," Razali said. But overall, he said, the

summit appeared to fall victim to a new "parochialism" that has spread

over the developed world since the end of the Cold War.

 

"It is a parochialism that has affected the willingness of countries to

make available the funds and resources needed . . . to achieve results,"

he said. Delegates were cheered by reports of a slowing in the world's

population growth rate, but most of the news was grim: Since Rio, the

world's forests have continued to shrink, agricultural land has been

lost and supplies of fresh, clean water are under increased strain. Many

coastal areas are suffering from pollution dumping and over-fishing, and

emissions of greenhouse gases are rising rapidly.

 

Copyright 1997 The Washington Post Company

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