The Press : Rio Conference on the World’s Editorial Pages

The U.N. Conference on Environment and Development, continuing this week in Rio de Janeiro, has drawn diverse comment from the world’s newspapers. A sampling:

“There is no doubt that most of the damage to the global environment has been caused by the destructive production-consumption pattern of industrialized nations. If developing nations with three-quarters of the world population go down the same road as the industrialized nations, destruction of the environment will accelerate.

“Although leaders from 100 nations will participate in the summit, no single nation seems prepared to step forward and take leadership. Russia has its own problems at the moment, and the United States has taken a weak position toward the Rio meeting.

“Therefore, we believe Japan should assume leadership. It has experienced in recent years rapid industrial growth while combatting successfully the problem of pollution. Internationally, Japan has been overshadowed by the United States and Europe, and its image has suffered as a result. The Global Summit will provide Japan with a good opportunity to display leadership in working to help solve possibly the most critical problems facing mankind.”

-- Yomiuri Shimbun , Tokyo

“An environmental war has begun. To be truthful, it is the advanced Western countries that have taken the most from Mother Nature. They are responsible for having contaminated the Earth through mass consumption of coal energy, mass production of goods and massive consumption of daily goods since the Industrial Revolution era.

“Nevertheless, they are lukewarm in contributing to a Green Fund. Instead, they are more interested in using this issue as yet another trade barrier with Third World countries. If they continue this kind of attitude, they will be accused of being environmental imperialists.”

-- Kyunghyang , Seoul

“The Rio Summit will try to respond to some of the threats that weigh on us. Stange thing though, it will not raise what appears to be the main issue: Overpopulation. Today we are 5.4 billion on the earth. According to the predictions, we will be 11.6 billion by the year 2150. In countries like Nigeria and Bangladesh this only means one thing: They will be even more miserable. It is this population explosion that . . . puts at risk the planetary balance at least as much as the “Greenhouse Effect” that still remains to be proven . . . .

“It is true that the Earth is heating up under the blanket of dioxide and carbon that we send into the atmosphere. Our winters are less severe. The Royal Society of Meteorology in the United Kingdom has already alerted us to the rising of temperatures. But that was 50 years ago. The world shook a little, then got back to business and got cold again.

“The moral of this story is that, if we should salute Rio and fight for ecology, it is always permitted to beware of ecologists.”

--Editor in Chief Franz-Olivier Giesbert, writing in Le Figaro , Paris

“The Earth Summit is proof that the problems facing individual nations are also the problems of the world and provides a forum for people of all nations in the globe to have their say in the important decisions being taken in Rio de Janeiro.”

-- Jornal do Brasil , Rio de Janeiro

“For Mr. Bush to pull out of the biodiversity accord, after it had been broadly agreed and on the eve of the Rio conference, shows a quite amazing disregard for world opinion.”

-- The Guardian , London

“When it comes to the crunch, the United States’ leadership of the New World Order has been found wanting.

“The United States finds itself isolated at the United Nations Earth Summit. . . The United States has so far steadfastly refused to sign a treaty to protect the world’s threatened plant and animal life.

“It has agreed to sign another treaty to curb global warming but only if its clauses ‘suggest’ but not compel nations to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide.

“The stirring rhetoric of President George Bush at the end of the Cold War not so long ago, that mankind can at last deal with the broader issues and challenges that it faces, now rings hollow. . . .

“Some New World Order! Some world statesman!” -- The Sowetan , South Africa

“On the eve of the Earth Summit in Rio, the biggest international conference of all time, some very severe judgments have been pronounced on what, according to the pessimists, will be merely a “Rio Carnival” of ecology.

”. . . It’s a fact that the richest countries hesitate to take on a huge expenditure today to avoid disasters that will happen in a future that is uncertain and far away; that the poorer countries are reluctant to give up exploiting their natural resources in favor of the world climate, and to the detriment (real or apparent) of their populations or their ambitions of grandeur. It is also undeniable that if adequate countermeasures are not taken in time, the disasters will happen and then they will be irreparable.”

--Arrigo Levi, writing in Corriere della Sera , Milan

“It cannot be hoped that a conference will change the world. To expect that from the summit would be absurd. . . . That which has been so long in taking shape as a scenario of degradation--the inequality between and within countries, the poverty of the majority of humanity--will not be altered magically.

“If one is to hope, then it is for new attitudes, basic agreements to seek the sustainability of human life. That would not be little.”

--Columnist Enrique Provencio in La Jornada , Mexico City