Green groups warn the planet is being buried at Sandton — ironically by the largest assembly of world leaders yet, gathered to save the world from destruction.
The environment is being undermined at the World Summit on Sustainable Development, they say, not only by corporate greed but by a lack of political will to rein in the excesses of trade and industry.
”Environmental issues are being trivialised,” says Juanita Castano, an adviser to IUCN-The World Conservation Union. The NGO is part of a huge co-alition called Eco-Equity that is monitoring closed-door negotiations in the Sandton Convention Centre on a plan of action for the future of life on Earth.
Negotiators are undermining well-established multilateral environmental agreements, particularly on trade and finance. The plan of action is weak on targets for environmental protection, she says, giving governments an excuse not to commit to any targets.
”Ten years after the Rio Earth Summit we should be able to link trade, the environment and development in an integrated fashion. But they are still separate … How can we have sustainable development without environmental action?”
Goals for protecting biodiversity –described as ”the insurance for life on Earth” — have hardly featured in Sandton. Established environmental policies under threat include the ”precautionary principle”, which halts activity if there are doubts about the damage it causes to the ecology or human health, and the ”ecosystem approach”, which allows activities to proceed but emphasises research into their effects.
”There is still no text that will ensure multilateral environmental agreements are not made subservient to World Trade Organisation rules,” says Friends of the Earth International, another environmental structure.
”More than 200 NGOs agree the autonomy and authority of international agreements protecting people and the environment have to be affirmed — at Johannesburg.”
The United States — often supported by Japan, Canada, Australia and New Zealand — remains the single biggest block to progress. The US opposes setting clear targets on access to sanitation; rejects language that implies binding agreements on corporate accountability; and opposes any reference to the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gases.
Even the European Union, traditional ally of environmentalists, is retreating on some important issues. It caused a furore when it compromised on a target for renewable energy sources — by agreeing to a US proposal that they rise by only a single percentage point by 2010.
”We had pinned our hopes on the EU, but they are making huge compromises,” says Roland Moreau, an executive director of Greenpeace.
Another source of contention is resistance by developing countries, notably China, to a call to scrap by 2020 chemicals that damage human health and the environment.
Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism Mohammed Valli Moosa, leading the South African government delegation, is upbeat about the state of negotiations. As the week progressed several ministers joined bureaucrats haggling over clauses in the plan of action, which some 109 heads of state will be asked to sign next week. They will also endorse a political declaration based on the plan.
Moosa is particularly pleased about the agreement reached on maritime resources. This guarantees the restoration of the world’s fisheries by not later than 2015, extends biodiversity protection to the high seas, allows developing countries to fish the high seas and ensures that developed countries assist small-scale fishers.
It is this mix of environmental protection and development assistance that green groups say is mis-sing from most of the plan of action.
”Development must give millions of people in the developing world access to electrical power,” says Moreau, ”but, unless this comes in the form of a renewable energy revolution, it will be a disaster. If it is just business as usual with fossil fuels, the increase will be a problem.”
Castano welcomes the focus on poverty reduction at the summit — because poor people rely on natural resources and are most vulnerable to the consequences of over-consumption, like climate change — but she says it is wrong to neglect the environment.
”Governments are not showing enough political will to achieve all three pillars of sustainable development: economic well-being, social equity and environmental security,” she says.