Main Issue at Environment Summit: Who Pays?

The optimistic spirit that suffused the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro five years ago was nowhere to be found Friday as delegates to the special U.N. session on the environment papered over deep differences at the heart of the international environmental agenda.

With the speechmakers largely gone, the delegates worked toward a session-ending document--broad in scope but short on details--that by its conclusion early this morning encompassed the least controversial provisions on which they could agree.

Whether dealing with issues of forestry, global warming or dwindling foreign aid, the debate in the end revolved around the questions of who pays, and how much?

Throughout the week, representatives of the developing nations were consistent in their complaint that the industrialized countries failed to meet their Rio pledge to increase foreign aid to 0.7% of their nations’ gross national product.

The developing countries say they need the money to pay the higher costs of building their economies in an environmentally responsible way.

The debate over finances demonstrated the powerful new theme that underlies a dramatic shift that has accompanied the globalization of the world economy:

Control of the environmental agenda in the developing world follows a money trail that is now trod less by governmental foreign aid donors--carrying the conditions they attach to assistance--and more by corporate interests weighed down by few environmental regulations.

“With private capital, you don’t have the public pressure levers available,” said Hilary French, vice president for research of the Worldwatch Institute in Washington, D.C.

The private sector’s share of capital flowing to the developing world has surged to 84%, compared to less than 50% in 1990, French said. During that same period, the size of the foreign investment has bulged from $44 billion to $234 billion last year, according to the World Bank.

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In the session’s final document, intended to set a path toward implementing the Agenda 21 that came out of the Earth Summit, the delegates:

* Called on developed nations to meet the commitment to provide foreign aid totaling 0.7% of gross national product. Since Rio, aid has fallen from 0.35% to 0.3%--and U.S. aid has dropped from 0.2% to 0.1%--of the value of the nations’ goods and service.

* Sidestepped a proposal for an international forestry treaty opposed by the United States and most environmental organizations. A special panel was appointed to study the issue.

* Warned of a coming shortage of fresh water, saying that more than one-fifth of the Earth’s population has no access to safe drinking water and that this number is growing.

* Called for the phasing out of leaded gasoline, which fouls the air throughout much of the developing world, “as soon as possible.”

The diplomats wrangled into the evening over language on climate change. But it was clear there would be no specific goals or timetables set to guide negotiators who are preparing for a year-end conference in Kyoto, Japan, on climate change.

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Reflecting the belief that the conference failed to make the dramatic step from the goodwill of Rio to the tangible measures that would convert the Earth Summit’s goals into a safer environment, Gordon Shepherd, director of international policy of the World Wide Fund for Nature, said:

“We would have been much better served if the heads of state had endorsed what was agreed in Rio in 1992 and then used their energy to develop funded action plans with targets and timetables for implementation. The Rio agreements were rightly hailed as a major success, but the promises made there have been betrayed in New York this week.”

Razali Ismail, the U.N. ambassador from Malaysia and president of the General Assembly who chaired the weeklong meeting, sought to explain the lack of specific progress here. He cited the difficulty of following up any broad agenda-setting meeting like the Rio conference with the nitty-gritty business of putting ideals into action.

“You can’t go five years down the road and leave with the same bunch of platitudes,” he said.

In preparing the document taking stock of the world’s environmental problems, Razali added, “we didn’t go for the gloss. We went for the real thing. We have an honest appraisal” that reflects the divisions over the future of tropical forests, for instance, and over global warming.

He characterized the limited scope of the document and the contentiousness of the meeting as a “wake-up call” to the United Nations.

The world body, he said, “is not given a place to deal with the hard-core issues of economics, trade and distribution of resources.”

The climate-change issue was by far the most visible topic during the meeting.

The climate change theory--accepted by many scientists--holds that global temperatures are creeping upward as carbon dioxide, given off by combustion engines and other sources that burn petroleum products, traps the Earth’s heat, much as the panels of a greenhouse hold in the warmth of the sun. With the increase in temperature will come, it is feared, severe weather patterns, droughts, tropical diseases and rising sea levels that could swamp coastal communities and entire small island nations.

President Clinton, who spoke to the conference Thursday, disappointed many of the activists who crowded nearby corridors because he did not commit the United States to specific reductions in carbon dioxide emissions.

The president said he wanted time to prepare the United States’ policy and draw on lessons to be learned at a major conference on the subject this fall.