EARTH SUMMIT : World Leaders’ Rhetoric Marks Beginning, Not End, of Debate

From London to Bonn and Beijing to New Delhi, leaders of rich and poor nations stepped up to the dais at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro Friday to proclaim new commitments to safeguard the world’s environment.

In a series of high-profile speeches from as many as 60 world leaders, the usual international preoccupation with military security and trade was displaced--at least for the moment--by mounting alarm over the Earth’s deteriorating ecological systems.

“A peaceful future can only be assured if we make our peace with nature,” German Chancellor Helmut Kohl told a host of world luminaries.

British Prime Minister John Major added, “There will be people who decry the achievements of this conference. But this conference is proof of a dramatic shift over the last decade: The environment is no longer the specialist concern of a few--it has become the vital interest of us all.”

Never have so any heads of state gathered to address the world’s environmental ills--problems ranging from the loss of biological diversity to fears of global warming.

Brazil’s president, Fernando Collor de Mello, who opened the session, said: “This is a unique, and perhaps the last opportunity, to build a new world. Our people expect a lot from us.”

But as the summit, officially known as the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, headed for a conclusion Sunday, there was general agreement that the rhetoric marked the beginning, not the end, of a debate that will continue for years to come.

Much as it did Friday, most of that debate will focus on how to reconcile environmental safeguards with the pressing need for economic development to raise living standards in Third World countries.

“We inhabit a single planet, but one of many worlds,” said Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao of India. “Such a fragmented planet cannot survive in harmony with itself . . . we must assure that the affluence of some is not derived from the poverty of many.”

Some leaders took pains to protect plans to use polluting domestic energy reserves unless industrialized nations transfer environmentally safer technology to them.

Among them was Prime Minister Li Peng of China, whose country has vast coal reserves it expects to tap to generate electricity. Of all fossil fuels, coal emits the most carbon dioxide, one of the chief gases that contribute to global warming.

“Developed countries have a greater obligation to find solutions and to transfer technology,” the Chinese prime minister told the conference. “Protection of the environment must respect the sovereignty and independence of each country.”

Delivering another message, Blaise Compaore, president of the African nation Burkina Faso, said poor Third World countries should not be expected to repay their foreign debts.

Nowhere was the link between a country’s security and the environment more evident than in the remarks of President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, of the Maldives, an Indian Ocean archipelago. The Maldives, like Bangladesh and other low-lying countries, could suffer widespread flooding if global warming raises sea levels and produces storms of unprecedented severity.

“A 1-meter (3.3-foot) rise in the level of the ocean threatens our survival as a nation,” Gayoom said. “We are a small nation and maybe our voice does not have weight. . . . But do not let our voice go unheard, for if you do, it might be forever.”

Uganda’s President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni claimed there are two groups destroying the planet’s ecological balance: “Those ignorant (or) . . . aware but too poor to stop it, and profit-seekers looking for easy money.”

But Major of Britain put a slightly different slant on the issue. “Much of the damage that we have done to our environment has been inflicted not out of greed or malice, but out of ignorance,” he said. “What every child knows today few scientists knew the day before yesterday. I suspect that for many of us it was not until we saw the pictures of the Earth taken from outer space that we realized just how small, fragile and precious our globe is.”

Each world leader was given seven minutes to address the gathering on what was the climatic day of a summit that began June 3. Until Friday, most of the official work had been done by delegates from each country who worked furiously to finalize statements of principle, action plans and treaties to protect the environment.

What comes next is the formidable task of transforming the various plans and statements into concrete actions.

In his talk, President Bush, in fact, challenged nations to join the United States in making good on their promises. “We’ve not only seen the concern; we share it. We not only care; we’re taking action,” Bush said.

“As political leaders, our job is to force the pace and stretch out the limits of international cooperation,” Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney said. “The nations gathered here today have the human genius to create a world free from deprivation and secure from degradation. What remains is for governments to provide the leadership the world so desperately needs. . . . Our children, the Rio generation, will be our judges and our beneficiaries.”

Times staff writer Rudy Abramson in Rio de Janeiro contributed to this story.