The United Nations’ final preparatory conference for the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) ended with ministers and officials from more than 170 countries failing to reach full agreement on an action plan to save the planet.
“The meeting has failed to reach a consensus due to a lack of good faith and spirit of constructive dialogue,” preparatory committee chairman Emil Salim told a media briefing in Bali on Friday night.
“Compromise on a number of issues was not reached, issues that are considered of great importance to a number of countries.”
Last week, shortly after the start of the conference — aimed at producing a working document to be ratified at the WSSD in Johannesburg later this year — Salim said he was hopeful the gathering would produce what would be known to the world as the “Bali Commitment”.
But on Friday he asked journalists “not to consider (the conference) too much of a disaster”.
“Because there is no commitment, it will be rather difficult to call it the Bali Commitment, but it also… can’t be called the Bali Disaster,” he said.
The action plan under discussion at the conference was the so-called “Chairman’s Text”, a 78-page document intended, once it was finalised, to serve as a blueprint for sustainable economic development over the next decade.
The latest draft of the document was issued earlier on Friday. Substantial key portions of it are still in bold and bracketed, denoting they have not yet been agreed on.
This draft document will form the basis of discussions at the Johannesburg summit — a result, say observers, that is going to put delegates at the WSSD under a great deal of pressure.
Salim said about 80% of the text had been agreed upon by delegates, and good progress had been made on issues relating to the eradication of poverty and health.
A major problem area, however, had been on financial and trade matters.
“On the one hand there is significant improvement and progress, on the other there are disagreements,” he said.
An attempt on Thursday by South Africa, Brazil and Indonesia to salvage one of the more heavily-bracketed key sections of the text — chapter nine, relating to the implementation of Agenda 21 — had failed.
According to Salim, an alternative text for this chapter introduced by South African Environmental Minister Valli Moosa ran into opposition from, among others, the United States and Japan, who objected to 13 of the points it raised.
Salim said the meeting had failed to reach a compromise on essential issues, including time-bound financial targets and action plans, and on technical co-operation and capacity building.
It had also failed to reach a consensus on “the acceptance of common but differentiated responsibilities”.
The conference’s outcome is far removed from what a senior member of the South African delegation last week said the country would like to see emerge from the negotiations.
Department of Environmental Affairs head Dr Chippy Olver said that among other things, South Africa was hoping to see a set of forward-looking deals on trade, finance, technology, debt relief and technology transfer.
Asked at the time if there was any likelihood of unresolved issues being carried through to the summit, Olver said: “We would like to get closure on the Chairman’s Text, and I think most countries are quite committed to that”.
However, there remained a possibility that some areas would remain bracketed, “but we’re going to work very hard to avoid that”, he said.
Earlier on Friday, South African Foreign Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma noted that some of issues discussed may be carried over to Johannesburg. She said these issues, which concerned her the most, had to do with “finance issues, resource issues, targets, and basic principles that have been agreed before”.
“If we really get the proper targets… and the time frames correct, as well as the financing, that is something that is very important. We would also like to see something on access to markets, because it is not only the social issues that are going to take us out of poverty.
“Education and health are very important too, because they are an investment for proper economic development; if countries produce they must have a market, and they must have fair competition, so those issues are very important,” she said.
Non-governmental organisations at the conference on Friday described the conference as “a profoundly disappointing process”.
Speaking at a media briefing, US-based Strategy Centre director Eric Mann said the outcome would “force a lot of people into an oppositional stance”.
On the role of NGOs at the coming Johannesburg Summit, he said: “All of us are challenged to go back and create the sort of structures that ended the war in Vietnam”.
Members of the environmental watchdog organisation Greenpeace on Friday evening unfurled a protest banner inside the Bali International Convention Centre, the venue for the conference, and tied it to a banister on the second floor of the building.
“Australia, United States, Canada — the filthy three, axis of environmental evil,” the six-metre long message read.
UN security officials tore down the banner and confiscated it. – Sapa
Special report: More on the Johannesburg Summit 2002