World Summit Reaches Pact to Sustain Planet

After days of nearly round-the-clock discussions, bleary-eyed negotiators at an international summit here reached agreement Monday night on a broad plan to bring clean water, sanitation and energy to the world’s poor without further degrading the planet.

The hard-won consensus plan, which has decidedly weaker language than many delegates and environmentalists had hoped on increasing the use of renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power, is expected to be ratified today or Wednesday by more than 100 heads of state or government assembled at the World Summit on Sustainable Development.

Although the final draft of the plan was not expected to be released until today, its more than 70 pages contain dozens of initiatives that aim to do everything from removing trade barriers that burden the struggling economies of Third World nations to restoring the oceans’ depleted fish stocks and reducing by half the 2 billion people who lack access to basic sanitation.

“We’ve made a real breakthrough with a plan of action,” said John Turner, an assistant secretary of State who headed the U.S. team of negotiators. “We have moved forward on the fisheries issue, on land-based sources of pollution. We’ve made some real steps toward preserving biodiversity.”

Margaret Beckett, head of the British delegation, called the deal “a victory for everybody who wants to put sustainable development at the heart of everything we do.”

However, a number of environmental groups expressed disappointment at details emerging from the negotiations.

“We don’t seem to be making progress. We seem to be backsliding,” said Michael Strauss, a spokesman for a coalition of environmental and activist groups.

The real measure of success for the plan, which is strictly voluntary, will be actions taken in the years ahead.

The 10-day summit in Johannesburg was set up to implement environmental promises made a decade ago by the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro.

Although the Rio summit has been credited with sharpening the world’s focus on environmental issues, few of those goals have been accomplished in the intervening years.

So the United Nations decided to bring world leaders here to forge an implementation plan that would set specific steps to follow toward Rio’s twin aims of reducing poverty and preserving the environment.

The late-night breakthrough Monday came after a raucous day of debate and protest that included police dispersing pro-Palestinian demonstrators with a water cannon and Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe lashing out at critics of his program to seize white-owned farms.

In defending his land redistribution system, Mugabe said the issue has “pitted the black majority, who are the right holders and primary stakeholders to the land, against an obdurate and internationally well-connected racial minority, largely of British descent and brought in and sustained by British colonialism--now supported by the Blair government.” British Prime Minister Tony Blair declined to comment.

Mugabe Assails U.N.

Addressing leaders from around the globe, Mugabe then took aim at the summit’s host, the United Nations, calling it an “outdated” institution used to “dominate the world for the strategic national goals of the rich north,” a reference to the industrialized Northern Hemisphere.

The battle between rich nations of the north and poor nations in the south has dominated the talks here on the environment and development. It surfaced again and again in the five-minute addresses made by a parade of national leaders who took the podium.

As often as not, speakers bashed the United States as the world’s richest nation and biggest polluter, responsible for about 25% of emissions of globe-warming gases.

The Bush administration continued to take heat for pulling out of the 1997 international agreement signed in Kyoto, Japan, to reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases responsible for global climate change.

“Now is no longer the time for an ‘every country for itself’ attitude,” scolded French President Jacques Chirac.

Saufatu Sopoanga, prime minister of Tuvalu, pleaded for the survival of his tiny South Pacific island nation, which is being washed away by rising sea levels and severe storms that scientists attribute to increasing global temperatures.

“We want our islands to exist forever and ever and not become submerged under water merely due to the selfishness and greed of the industrialized world,” Sopoanga said.

He called for binding commitments to reducing emissions of fossil fuels.

But the new plan does little to advance the cause of reducing emissions from burning fossil fuels. The language falls short of what was sought by many nations to promote the Kyoto Protocol for curbing emissions, or even to reduce reliance on fossil fuels.

One of the final sticking points, which was resolved Monday, was the fight over establishing specific goals and timetables to increase the world’s reliance on alternative energy--such as solar or wind power or small hydroelectric plants.

The European Union was pushing for a worldwide pledge that 15% of all energy would be from these renewable sources by 2010.

The U.S. and some oil-producing countries were opposed to any specific percentages or timetables. The American delegation was worried about what this might cost the U.S., which now gets 11% of its energy from renewable sources--and most of that from large hydroelectric plants that some critics consider not “green” enough to qualify.

In the end, the U.S. and oil-producing allies seemed to wear down their opponents. The compromise language in the plan does not set any specific target for increasing the use of renewable energy.

Instead, it says that nations, “with a sense of urgency,” should substantially increase the global share of renewable energy.

“This was the final piece,” said Lowell Flanders, a senior U.N. official tracking the negotiations. “They have a deal in all of the paragraphs. Basically, it’s done.”

An unidentified Canadian official told Reuters news service that his delegation still hoped to reopen negotiations on women’s reproductive health.

“With the exception of the one issue that Canada is going to raise on human rights, the negotiations are over,” the Canadian official said.

But Turner, the American assistant secretary of State, described the Canadians’ issue as one that raised a procedural question: Can the text in a paragraph that was agreed upon months ago be reopened for amendment? He didn’t think it would be. “The world community has focused on a positive path here,” Turner said, “and doesn’t want to get consumed with issues that engaged a great deal of passion and distractions.”

When the plan is compiled and made available for the world to scrutinize, a number of environmental groups are certain to be disappointed because negotiators failed to go as far as they wanted them to on issues such as adopting an environmental code of responsibility for corporations and making sure government subsidies do not lead to environmental damage.

Powell Due Today

President Bush decided not to attend the Johannesburg gathering and to send Secretary of State Colin L. Powell instead for the final two days of the summit. To soften criticism of the president’s conspicuous absence, administration officials have been announcing a series of partnerships and programs to bring food, water and energy to impoverished nations and help preserve the rain forest in the Congo Basin.

Kofi Annan, secretary-general of the United Nations, opened Monday’s session with a call for world leaders to take responsibility for the poor, for the planet and for the future.

“Not far from this conference room--in Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe--13 million people are threatened with famine,” Annan said. “If any reminder were needed of what happens when we fail to plan for and protect the long-term future of our planet, it can be heard in the cries for help from those 13 million people.”

Much of the emerging famine is blamed on severe drought. But Mugabe has complicated matters by evicting hundreds of white farmers from their land at a time when Zimbabwe desperately needs food. Instead of ending up in the hands of landless blacks, some of the farms reportedly have been doled out to reward Mugabe’s friends and loyal military officers.

Leaders of other nations in the British Commonwealth have criticized Mugabe’s actions, one likening them to “ethnic cleansing.”

U.S. Agency for International Development officials have called it irresponsible for the Zimbabwean leader to evict experienced farmers who could grow food and save hungry people.

About half of the people in southern Africa who are facing starvation live in Zimbabwe.