Delegates discussing how to develop the world without destroying it will need a ”miracle” to reach agreement on key issues before the United Nations conference ends on Friday, a senior UN official said on Thursday.
Issues dividing some developed nations from developing countries – such as trade and finance – will probably get carried over to the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in August, Lowell Flenders said.
”There’s a very good possibility. There will be a fair amount of (issues) in the text (to be carried over to Johannesburg) unless a miracle occurs between now and tomorrow, which could happen in terms of an all-night session”, he told a press conference.
”There seems to be a logjam on the issue of trade and finance.”
More than 3 000 government officials and activists from 173 countries are meeting on Bali Island to try to bridge differences before the Johannesburg Summit.
They have been meeting since May 27 to discuss the action plan or ”Bali Commitment” but have yet to reach agreement.
The UN says a deal in Bali is crucial for the success of Johannesburg.
On Wednesday 118 ministers from around the world began a parallel three-day meeting to discuss ways to implement an action plan and a political declaration to be endorsed in Johannesburg.
The action plan focuses on water and sanitation, energy, agriculture, biodiversity and ecosystems and health.
Officials say the United States is reluctant to commit new financial aid for programs to reduce poverty and protect the environment in addition to what it pledged at the development finance summit in the Mexican city of Monterrey.
The US also argues that the Bali meeting is not supposed to discuss new money but should focus on implementation.
But the European Union and developing countries maintain that the previous commitments do not come close to what is needed to tackle poverty and protect the environment.
Athena Ronquilla of the Eco Coalition, which groups
international activists from Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and Consumer International, accused the US and its allies in the developed world of trying to scuttle any agreement in Bali.
”I think over the last couple of days we’ve already heard of serious attempts by particular countries to shamelessly hijack the Bali process,” she said.
”Countries led by the world’s major polluter are in fact quietly and slowly making this process arrive at a stalemate.
”They are coming to Bali with no mandate to negotiate new money, no targets, no timetables and yet after almost two weeks of negotiation they still manage to arrive at a conclusion that it is the developing world who is to blame for the lack of progress in this negotiation,” she said.
The head of the United Nations Development Program, Mark Malloch Brown, urged governments to narrow their differences.
”Obviously we are concerned about the continued political and intellectual differences that appear to separate delegates,” Brown told AFP.
Developing countries have called for stronger references to ways of financing sustainable development and a greater commitment by developed countries to open their markets wider to trade and to transfer technology.
Among other proposals at the meeting, the EU and many developing countries want the Johannesburg summit to adopt a proposal that 15% of all energy consumption worldwide should come from clean, affordable and renewable sources within eight years.
The US and some other developed states, including Japan,
Australia and Canada, have been reluctant to add new targets and set timetables.
They said many targets had already been set at the UN Millennium Summit in September 2000 that called for the halving, by 2015, of the number of people living on less than one dollar a day and the number with no access to clean water.
The UN says 1,2 billion people still live below the poverty line while 1,1 billion people lack access to clean drinking water and power. – Sapa-AFP