Environmental Aid Negotiations Show Progress

Negotiators here are on the verge of settling their most contentious disputes over environmental foreign aid and eliminating the issue that has posed the greatest potential for a disastrous rift between rich and poor nations at the Earth Summit.

Barring an eleventh-hour reversal today, delegates cleaning up details of an environmental action plan are expected to accept a compromise negotiating text forged during three days of delicate talks.

Although the text itself is certain to be a subject of intense deliberations, its acceptance as a starting point is considered the paramount step toward a final agreement.

E. Curtis Bohlen, the top environmental official of the U.S. State Department, said he reviewed the document Sunday and found it acceptable as the basis for final negotiations.

Rather than insisting that industrial countries bankroll a new “green fund” to implement the action plan, a bloc of developing countries at the 178-nation meeting have acceded to plans favored by the United States and its European allies.

The industrial powers want much of the environmental aid provided by the action plan, called Agenda 21, to be channeled through the Global Environmental Facility, which is supported by the World Bank, the United Nations Environmental Program and the United Nations Development Program. The draft to be put before negotiators today says that the Global Environmental Facility “can play an important role” in funding programs under the plan.

U.S. sources have characterized Washington’s opposition to a “green fund” as the primary financing mechanism as non-negotiable.

Such an approach would lead to steadily increased demands for U.S. assistance, said William K. Reilly, chief of the U.S. delegation here. In addition to that, argued Michael K. Young, U.S. deputy undersecretary of state for agricultural affairs, a green fund likely would be perceived as being used casually for sometimes questionable purposes. “That would make it very difficult for the United States to give money to it,” he said.

Developing nations are vehemently critical of the World Bank because they are left out of its decisions, and environmentalists still consider the bank preoccupied with development to the exclusion of environmental concerns.

Both fear that the Global Environmental Facility would be overly influenced by the World Bank, and the United States has agreed to reforms of the fledgling fund.

In spite of criticism of the bank, Bush Administration officials noted that Congress has been willing to support it because the activities it funds are viewed as productive.

The emerging agreement will not include specific aid commitments for the package, which could add up $125 billion a year in additional aid from donor countries.

However, the language under consideration calls on developed countries to “reaffirm commitments to reach the accepted United Nations target of 0.7% of gross national product for overseas development assistance.” Although the United States’ level of funding is less than 0.3% and Administration officials say that they have no intention of agreeing to the 0.7% target, the U.S. delegation will accept the draft language.

The rationale, as explained by Bohlen, is that Washington has never signed onto the target and therefore is not affected by a commitment to “reaffirm” it.

Officials preparing for the Earth Summit came close to resolving their differences at an April conference in New York. Rather than come to the summit and pick up where those talks left off, the developing nations insisted on starting from the beginning.

There was concern that they would return to demands, abandoned in New York, for Agenda 21 programs financed by a green fund. But Brazil offered new language here, and it has been transformed into a negotiating text after input from the developing countries.

While the formal negotiations have focused on the machinery for implementing agreements, sources close to the talks said, the crucial ingredient awaited by the developing nations is for donor countries to announce “new and additional resources” called for in the negotiating text.

Japan is expected to announce later this week that it will provide $6 billion to $8 billion over a five-year period.

Earlier this year, the United States announced a one-year contribution of $75 million to the Global Environmental Facility. Last week, the Administration announced that it would put $150 million a year into protection of tropical forests.

This and other smaller efforts bring the new U.S. aid commitments associated with the Rio summit to $250 million a year, according to Reilly. Although environmentalists are calling on the United States to sharply increase environmental assistance to developing nations, there has been no indication that anything more will be offered at the summit.

U.S. lawmakers visiting the conference over the weekend were hardly more willing than Administration officials to discuss increased assistance.

“Somehow, there is an impression here that the United States is wallowing in money,” said Sen. John H. Chaffee (R-R.I.), who is considered one of the Senate’s foremost environmentalists. “People seem to think that the only thing required is for the Administration to ask for funds (but) . . . it is very, very tough to find money these days.”

Sen. Timothy E. Wirth (D-Colo.), who will retire from the Senate in January, said he believes, however, that the United States should adopt a goal of 0.4% of gross national product for environmental foreign aid by the year 2000.

The Japanese, he said, have wisely adopted a new foreign aid agenda, while the Administration is “making false choices between jobs and the environment.”