WWF: "Positive Contribution" of UNCED

June 2, 1992

Rio de Janeiro-- "Writing off UNCED as a failure is a premature judgement," said Charles de Haes, Director General of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), at a major press conference held today at the International Press Center (IPC) of the '92 Global Forum.

WWF is an organization with around five million members from around the world who contribute to it financially. This gives WWF a tremendous punch in the international battle for influencing public opinion over environmental issues.

Mr de Haes added: "UNCED has (already) made some positive contributions towards integrating environment and development. The environmental debate will never be the same. The inseparable relationship between environment and development has been established and the process of integrating them has irrevocably begun." The issues that divide the North and the South, continued de Haes, are on the table "with industry participating in the dialogue."

WWF feels however that the high hopes and ambitions it held for UNCED will not be achieved "here in Rio" pointing to "a greatly weakened Climate Convention and the refusal of the US government to participate in the Biodiversity Convention as being major contributing factor to lower expectations concerning what UNCED will achieve." Mr de Haes affirmed however that "we shall have these two conventions." He added that WWF would do all in its power to see that the conventions are signed in Rio and that "implementation starts as soon as possible."

According to Mr de Haes "industry is here to stay and we all depend on it. The WWF is set to work to ensure that industry uses natural resources" in the most efficient way, with minimum impact on the environment. In his opinion, this is not just the responsibility of transnational corporations but also of the small and medium-size enterprises which the Director said "account for far more resource consumption and pollution worldwide than do the transnational corporations."

Mr de Haes added that Governments have an important responsibility to protect the environment, and "must introduce national legislation and participate in international agreements to level the playing fields and, in this way, ensure that the enterprises behaving in a environmentally responsible way are not penalized in comparison to the irresponsible and polluting companies."

De Haes called upon GATT and other regional trade agreements to "provide for discrimination against products made in an environmentally unfriendly way and to protect those countries and companies which practice full-cost accounting by internalizing their environmental costs."

Saying that WWF has heard some very encouraging words during the UNCED process, he asked: "where are the concrete action plans?" "We need action not hot air." The elimination of poverty, the reduction of wasteful consumption and living sustainably, equitably, is within the our capacity, continued de Haes

In opinion of Mr de Haes "after two years of intensive negotiations, governments have taken the promising seed of UNCED and developed it into a full-grown skeleton of a plan --Mr UNCED." He also said that "Mr UNCED is being clothed with fancy words but, when you remove them, there is little flesh." Governments have ten days to build muscle into Mr UNCED's body. If they don't, conclluded de Haes, Mr UNCED will, at best, be a weakling and or else he may fade away and die.

GATT's decision-making processes "must be far more transparent as indeed should be those of the World Bank's Global Environmental Facility (GEF)." said Mr de Haes, who also pointed to the importance of the participation of local communities in the decision making processes relating to aid projects which "affect, or should affect their lives."

Jose Carlos Libanio, Policy Officer, WWF Brazil office, said that "it is of the utmost importance that developed and developing countries build consensus on governance of the GEF." He also called for a "balance on the voting system, so that recipient countries have a fair share in the decision-making process on the protection of the global environment."

For Mr Libanio the translation of solid positive political will into sustainable development depends upon the commitment of financial resources. "European countries are ready to commit 0.7% of their GNPs to developing countries by the year 2000," said Libanio.

The Brazilian WWF leader also pointed out that if recession is hitting hard in the developed countries, it has had a "devastating effect on the developing world."

"Misery and greed are the engines of environmental degradation," added Libanio. While advocating the reduction of wasteful consumption, particularly in Northern countries, he also chastised the "elites of the developing nations who must also make their contribution by adopting and promoting new sustainable patterns of consumption."

Grazia Francescato, President, WWF-Italy, said WWF was calling for the immediate signature of the biodiversity convention and its ratification within 12 months. "Biodiversity ought to be the Queen of the Rio Conference, not the "Cinderella" being rejected by Prince Bush," she added. (IPC)

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