Hot Air at The Earth Summit?

As the U.S. stonewalls a Rio meeting, citizens offer a planet-saving proposal

By Eugene Linden

Over the next few months, delicate negotiations will determine whether the world's largest environmental meeting will produce real progress in saving the planet from man-made ruin. Or whether the session will merely add to global warming with hot-air emissions from about 100,000 parliamentarians, religious leaders, environmentalists and heads of state.

The occasion is the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, to be held in Rio de Janeiro next June. For two years, international committees have been hashing out a declaration of principles for the so-called Earth Summit. The bureaucrats have also been negotiating an ecologically sound agenda for the 21st century and a series of proposed agreements on the control of climate change, respect for biodiversity and a slowing of deforestation. But as the final negotiating sessions approach, U.S. intransigence on key issues means the summit may turn into little more than a biodegradable photo opportunity for heads of state.

The stakes are high. With carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere 25% above those in the 18th century, many environmentalists fear that the world is already too late in coming to grips with the still unknown effects of global climate change caused by emissions of so-called greenhouse gases. Says Maurice Strong, secretary-general of UNCED: "This conference is an opportunity that may not occur again in our lifetime. When, if not at Rio, will we address these problems?"

He might ask the Bush Administration. The U.S. is resisting pressure from the European Community and Japan to use the Rio conference as a forum to set targets and timetables for the reduction of warming gases, among other things. It has also resisted pressure to commit new funds so that developing economies can grow without destroying precious ecosystems. Washington's posture stands in contrast to the leadership the U.S. exercised in 1972 at the U.N. Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm, which first established the environment as an area of international cooperation. Now, says James Gustave Speth, president of the Washington-based World Resources Institute, "our government is not accepting the responsibilities that come with the world's largest economy."

This week Speth's institute will publish a "Compact for a New World," a proposed model for a way rich and poor nations might come to mutually beneficial agreements in Rio on the environment and development. Meeting in Washington last June, a group of activists, businessmen and politicians agreed that poorer southern nations would have an easier time accepting unpalatable initiatives on population stabilization, climate change and deforestation in return for a substantial quid pro quo. Its elements: debt forgiveness, direct financial aid to help end poverty, and technical help to reduce the poor nations' role in global environmental problems.

This type of north-south bargain is also what the Rio conference should be all about. But while the U.S. seems to treat Rio's emerging suite of agreements as a threat, other industrial nations see the Earth Summit as an opportunity. MITI, Japan's powerful Ministry of International Trade and Industry, is developing a 100-year plan to make Japan dominant in eco-technologies; Tokyo is also said to be pondering ways to become the world leader in environmental reform.

Many conservationists believe the prospect of lost opportunities in the global marketplace will eventually persuade the Bush Administration to be more forthcoming. But what will emerge from the Rio deliberations is still very much up in the air. Barbara Bramble, an official at the National Wildlife Federation, argues that even if the Earth Summit produces toothless principles, it will still have the effect of shaping environmental agendas for everybody, from the U.N. to ordinary citizens groups. The question is whether the bureaucratic timetable and that of the biosphere will match up.

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