Tension Clouds Beginning of Earth Summit

In an atmosphere of palpable tension between the Earth’s rich and poor, government officials and environmentalists from 178 countries opened a historic summit on the planet’s future here Wednesday, with the outcome uncertain despite 2 1/2 years of preparation.

With about 10,000 delegates, more than 7,000 journalists and observers from a host of environmental groups on hand, leaders of the United Nations-sponsored extravaganza hailed it as a potentially pivotal moment in relations between the rich nations of the world and its increasingly poor majority.

“No place on the planet can remain an island of affluence in a sea of misery,” Canada’s Maurice Strong, secretary-general of Earth Summit, told the opening session in a suburb 15 miles from Rio’s fabled Copacabana and Ipanema beaches.

“We’re either going to save the whole world or no one will be saved. We must, from here on in, all go down the same path. One country cannot stabilize its climate in isolation. No country can unilaterally preserve its biodiversity.”

Though delegates were not inclined to challenge Strong’s warning, the meeting opened amid certainty of bitter debate before more than 100 presidents and prime ministers arrive here for the grand finale next week.

Among the developments:

* An incipient move was already afoot to reopen a supposedly final agreement on protection of biological diversity--one that the Bush Administration says it will refuse to sign.

* Several countries, still fuming that the United States kept firm deadlines and goals out of a treaty to reduce global warming, began preparations for one final attempt to force at least informal concessions from Washington.

* Another bloc advocated reopening the Rio Declaration, a set of environmental principles agreed to in New York last month as a sort of preamble to a lengthy plan for sustainable development and resource use into the 21st Century.

* Questions on how and how much industrialized countries will finance environmental protection and share modern technology with developing nations--perhaps the summit’s most important decisions--appeared to remain as far from resolution as ever.

In a press conference on the eve of the opening, Strong predicted that the summit meeting will seem to be on the verge of collapse before it ends on June 14.

The same thing happened at a summit on the environment 20 years ago in Stockholm, he recalled. But that meeting eventually succeeded in making environmental protection an international issue for the first time and inspired this summit in observance of its 20th anniversary.

“Success, I believe, is likely,” he said. “But success will not come easily in the next two weeks, and success is not inevitable.”

The depth of the rift between rich and poor was illustrated as Pakistani Environmental Minister Anwar Saifullah Khan spoke for the developing nations’ caucus Wednesday afternoon. “It is difficult,” he said, “for a man scavenging on the garbage dump created by affluence and profligate consumption to understand that protecting a bird is more important than protecting him.”

Khan’s remarks followed by a day an equally bitter denunciation of developed countries’ attitude toward a set of principles being developed to protect tropical forests. Denouncing Northern boycotts of tropical forest products, Malaysian diplomat Ting Wen Lian accused developed countries of pushing for a forest accord simply “to appease public opinion and get electoral mileage.”

Developing nations will not hold their forests “in custody for those who have destroyed their own forests,” she warned.

Questions and certain conflicts notwithstanding, the summit opened with significant accomplishments in hand, or within reach.

In ceremonies today, the long-debated treaty designed to address the threat of global warming will be opened for signature.

Brazilian President Fernando Collor de Mello, who was made the honorific president of the conference Wednesday, will be the first to sign. The treaty will remain open for signatures for another year before it is submitted to signing nations for formal ratification.

Despite reservations of the United States and Japan, it appeared that other world powers are prepared to sign a biological diversity treaty to conserve wildlife and its habitat.

Scott Hajost of the Environmental Defense Fund, an official observer of the proceedings, said efforts were under way Wednesday to get the treaty reopened and bring the United States aboard.

Environmental sources also said plans were proceeding for British Prime Minister John Major to talk with President Bush and discuss a possible reopening of the agreement. In spite of environmentalists’ insistence that a reopening and U.S. signing was still possible, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator William K. Reilly said he was unaware of any such effort.

Reilly, who leads the U.S. delegation, told reporters that he expects the treaty to be opened for signature on schedule later this week and said the United States will stand by its announced intention not to sign.

President Bush will come here next week when world leaders gather for the summit highlight, but until then Reilly bears the burden of defending the United States’ controversial role in the global warming and biological diversity negotiations and of fending off criticism that Washington is less than generous in its support of tropical forest protection.

In spite of the Europeans’ still-burning unhappiness that the United States blocked their proposal in global warming talks to stabilize emissions of greenhouse gases by the turn of the century, Reilly called the treaty a historic accomplishment.

Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland, who will meet with President Bush in Washington on Friday, said she wants to discuss “global issues” with the President before he comes here, observing that Norwegian experience has shown that aggressive environmental protection need not be economically ruinous.

“We have to be able to foot the bill for our own overuse of nature,” she said shortly after addressing the opening plenary meeting. “We have not paid the bill for the consequences of that . . . . The wastebasket is full. We have to pay the bill for the consequences of raising our standard of living.”

The Key Issues

Matters under consideration by negotiators at the Earth Summit:

Global warming: A treaty encouraging--but not requiring--reductions in carbon dioxide emissions to combat global warming.

Technology transfer: A way to transfer so-called “clean” technologies for producing energy and cutting pollution to countries that aren’t able to pay for them.

Ocean pollution: Better ways to manage marine ecosystems.

Forest protection: Statement of principles on environmentally benign forest management.

Population control: Measures to stabilize population growth in developing countries.

Preservation of species: A treaty to conserve biological diversity.

Sustainable development: Standards and strategies to promote development that meet the needs of the present without compromising the future.

Source: Times wire reports