The Economic Summit : Environment: Hot Topic but Little Action Seen : Statement Expected to Only Reaffirm Earlier Commitments

When leaders of the world’s seven leading industrial nations conclude their economic summit in Paris today, they are expected to issue a strong statement on the need for international cooperation to protect the global environment.

Never have environmental issues occupied so high a place on the international agenda, and the expected joint communique is evidence of growing worldwide recognition that global warming, deforestation, acid rain and depletion of the Earth’s protective stratospheric ozone layer could have far-reaching social, political and economic implications.

But it is highly unlikely that the seven nations will go much beyond statements of concern and a reaffirmation of their commitments to step up scientific research while insisting on new environmental safeguards as economic development projects proceed in developing countries--most of them funded by the West.

Calls by environmental groups to limit emissions of so-called greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, for example, are not expected to lead to an international accord for at least several years, in part because of the scientific uncertainties that remain over the issue and in part because such a limit could portend unprecedented restraints on economic development.

Nonetheless, the 15th annual economic summit has been notable for the attention paid to global environmental issues and as a stage for leaders of the Group of Seven--the United States, Japan, West Germany, Britain, France, Canada and Italy--to establish or strengthen their environmental credentials.

Call to ‘Reforest America’

President Bush, it was learned, could announce today a major policy initiative, “Reforest America,” that calls for the planting of 10 billion additional trees in the United States during the next decade on public and private land at a total cost of $700 million, Washington sources said. Reforestation is viewed as a major way to reduce excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. An Administration source estimated the proposal would reduce carbon dioxide emissions in the United States by 100 million tons, or about 10%. Much of the money would be offset by timber sales and energy savings. It was not immediately clear how many trees are currently planted annually in the United States.

At the same time, it seemed likely that summit leaders would endorse a preliminary step leading to a global warming convention. That step calls for opening talks on what elements should be included in the framework of a future global warming convention. But that falls short of backing immediate negotiations on the contents of such a treaty.

Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney appeared successful in including in today’s communique a call for internationally accepted yardsticks to measure national performance on the environment. West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl pressed for action to protect tropical rain forests.

Japan announced several days before the summit opened that it would provide $2.3 billion over the next three years to help developing countries protect their environment. Part of the money would be earmarked to establish a fund to help prevent the destruction of tropical rain forests by assisting poor people to find alternatives to cutting down trees for fuel and fodder.

In part, the Japanese spending plan--a 56% increase over the previous three-year spending program--was seen as an attempt by Japan to repair its reputation. Tokyo has been roundly criticized because of its logging activities in South America and Southeast Asia.

William K. Reilly, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency administrator who accompanied Bush to France, earlier told The Times that the Paris economic summit would be the first economic summit in which environmental issues would occupy so prominent a position.

“On all these issues,” Reilly said in Paris, “we see that there is an emerging consensus on the part of the leaders of the governments represented here . . . that these issues are significant, important, are worthy of concern at the very highest levels of government.”

But no grand strategies to rescue a planet in distress were expected to emerge from the summit, a point that environmental organizations deplored.

“Rhetoric is terrific, discussions are great, but we feel it’s time for specific commitments,” said Rafe Pomerance of World Resources Institute, a Washington-based public policy research organization.

In a telephone interview from Washington, David Wirth, a senior counsel with the private Natural Resources Defense Council, added: “These broad-gauged commitments are very welcome.” Wirth, an authority on global environmental issues, added, however, that “it is very important that they be followed up with concrete policy actions.”

Some scientists and environmental groups are calling for a 20% reduction in carbon dioxide levels by the year 2000 in order to slow global warming that could result in rising sea levels, a shift in crop growing regions and enormous social and economic dislocation.

For example, some scenarios predict that a doubling of carbon dioxide by the middle of the next century from pre-industrial levels would result in worldwide temperature increases of 1 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit--an increased that could force farmers to abandon the Corn Belt, moving it toward the Northeastern United States and Canada. The availability of water could shift dramatically, with more summer droughts and winter floods in California.

But all of these scenarios are based on computer models--known as general circulation models--that are far better at looking at global effects than accurately predicting regional or even national impacts, in large part because computers are not powerful enough to process the necessary data.

Until the science is better grounded, many policy-makers say it will be difficult to muster support for politically difficult decisions that could have a major impact on nations and individuals.

Despite expressions Saturday of disappointment from environmentalists, few of them were surprised that the heads of state were proceeding with caution.

Global warming, for example, poses a particularly complex set of public policy dilemmas for policy-makers that are far more difficult than those faced in hammering out the Montreal Protocol, an accord that took effect last January to limit the use and production of ozone-destroying chemicals by 50% within 10 years by industrialized countries.

It took 15 years from the time that chemicals such as chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, were found to be destroying the ozone layer until the Montreal Protocol took effect last January. Since then, the United States and other nations have called for the total phase-out of CFCs by the year 2000 if safe substitutes can be found, as expected.

Yet, compared to limiting carbon dioxide emissions to reduce global warming, putting a lid on CFCs was comparatively easy.

Chlorofluorocarbons have been essential to air conditioning, refrigeration, the production of some foam packaging and aerosol sprays and in the cleaning of electronic components such as computer chips in the manufacturing process.

But reducing greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide will be far more politically difficult because the bulk of these emissions are direct consequences of meeting fundamental human needs for food and shelter, as well as transportation, manufacturing and indeed virtually every activity connected with economic development. Sixty percent of the carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere by humans is caused by the burning of fossil fuel.

“Practically everything about our society seems to be . . . (an) agent by which fundamental physical and biological cycles are modified in ways that potentially change how the Earth operates as a system,” William F. Harris III of the National Science Foundation told a global warming conference last week at UC Davis.

“The principal problems of the environment, especially at the scale that we’re talking about, are so large and so complex that no single activity can deal with them effectively. Therefore, the problems require an interdisciplinary research effort on a scale not attempted before,” he said.

It is for this reason that the United States has strongly endorsed the work of an international panel--the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change--that was established by the U.N. Environment Program to closely examine the scientific basis for global warming predictions, the potential economic and social impacts and to recommend policy actions to slow or mitigate the greenhouse effect. It is scheduled to issue a report in the fall of 1990.

“The Administration believes that negotiation of a convention prior to receiving the report of the IPCC in the fall of 1990 would be premature,” Susan Offutt of the Office of Management and Budget told the UC Davis conference. It was a position reaffirmed by the U.S. two weeks ago when the IPCC met in Nairobi, Kenya.

“The President is hoping the IPCC process will lead to international scientific consensus on the severity and potential for global climate change as it affects the environment and the world economy,” she added. The United States chairs the IPCC panel that will recommend steps that nations can take to help reduce global warming.

However, Bush has endorsed talks to examine the potential elements of a framework convention--a position likely to be affirmed in Paris.

Mostafa Tolba, the executive director of the U.N. Environment Program and a chief architect of the Montreal Protocol, said that he hoped negotiations on an international global warming treaty would begin by late 1990.