The Era of Eco-Diplomacy Is Born; Will It Survive? : Environment: Even in its compromises, the Earth Summit is a matrix for cooperative global problem-solving.

The just-concluded U.N. Conference on Environment and Development has launched the world into a new era of international eco-diplomacy, eco-negotiation and eco-lawmaking. We will be pondering its meaning for months, but here are one observer’s provisional conclusions:

First, eco-diplomacy can be even harder than the diplomacy of peace and security. When dealing with Iraq, Cambodia or Yugoslavia we have a Security Council of 15 countries that can lay down the law for the whole world community. Moreover, the United States is protected by its veto power. But in the new world of “sustainable development” negotiations, there is no equivalent to the Security Council and no way to create one.

In eco-diplomacy, we do not want majority voting in which poor countries would regularly outvote us, so we have to settle for unanimous outcomes in U.N. meetings. For the Earth Summit and in its preparations, this has meant achieving consensus from 178 countries on an action plan called Agenda 21--800 pages covering 40 large subjects from atmosphere, soil, water and forests to population growth, toxic waste disposal, technology transfer and financing. That would challenge the ingenuity of a Metternich, even of a Kissinger.

As the delegates found out in Rio, lowest common denominator diplomacy can be exceedingly frustrating. In one key area after another, Agenda 21 was diluted by veto coalitions of objecting countries. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iran watered down references to energy taxes and energy efficiency. Malaysia and India prevented an agreement to negotiate a treaty on the protection of the world’s forests. Even before Rio, the Vatican, supported by Argentina and Ireland, had eliminated references to family planning and contraception. And, of course, the United States successfully resisted commitments to additional contributions of foreign aid.

Second, and this is the good news, eco-coalitions of the willing do not need to be blocked by veto coalitions of the unwilling. Even in its watered-down form, Agenda 21 provides a useful framework for future action by countries that are prepared to show a higher level of ecological responsibility. Despite the Vatican, for example, the Agenda 21 document calls for universal access to “information, education and means” to ensure that women and men “have the same right to decide freely and responsibly on the number and spacing of their children.” Agenda 21 cites the estimate of the Secretariat that funds made available for this purpose should be doubled by the year 2000 from the present $4.5 billion a year to $9 billion. These references in the action plan will help encourage family planning programs supported by international aid in more than 60 developing countries.

Third, international eco-law will come in installments. The failure of the United States to accept binding targets and deadlines in the Framework Convention on Climate Change was a disappointment, but hardly a tragedy. The convention commits the United States and other nations to cooperate in stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, and to report on the domestic programs they undertake to achieve this goal.

Six months after the convention comes into force, the parties can add national targets and timetables in the light of scientific evidence. As in the case of the Vienna Convention on the Ozone Layer, subsequent protocols can tighten up national commitments.

Fourth, eco-diplomacy requires our best. The Biodiversity Convention, negotiated in Nairobi in the weeks before Rio, contained unacceptable provisions on biotechnology, intellectual property and financial arrangements. The Bush Administration should not be faulted for its refusal to sign, but rather for its incompetence in negotiation. We sent a low-level and inexpert delegation to Nairobi and exercised insufficient diplomatic leverage in key capitals. Worse still, we failed to forge a common position with other industrialized democracies who shared our misgivings on the final document. As a result, we were isolated and humiliated at Rio.

It is too early to call the Rio conference a success or a failure. It was meant to launch a global partnership in which, for the first time, all countries, East and West, North and South, will be obliged to harmonize economic development with environmental protection. The new “high-level” Commission on Sustainable Development that Rio recommended is supposed to ensure that countries and international organizations like the World Bank will carry out their responsibilities in the Agenda 21 program.

One of our first clues to whether they will do so will come next year when we see who U.N. members and international agencies will send to the first meeting of the commission and what will be the nature of their instructions. What the United States decides to do will have enormous influence on others. It will provide an early test in eco-diplomacy for President Bush, or Clinton, or Perot.