杏吧原创

SO MUCH for progress. After a decade of unprecedented global economic growth, the number of people living on less than a dollar a day has barely changed. The free goods from nature 鈥� the bushmeat and firewood, fish and medicines on which the poorest people, above all, depend 鈥� are disappearing.

Ten years after world leaders at the Earth Summit in Rio promised to fix the environment, nature鈥檚 bounty is being plundered as never before. Meanwhile pollution spreads. Climate change is increasingly implicated by the rising frequency and severity of storms, floods and famines. Even the engine of economic growth, our supposed saviour, is now faltering amid financial scandal and fears of terrorism.

Next month, global leaders will converge at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa, to try to sort out this mess. Their aim is to draw up an action plan to tackle poverty head on 鈥� and to do so in ways that won鈥檛 damage the environment. The summit should be the moment to tie together the disparate issues of poverty and economic development, globalisation and corporate accountability, while protecting natural resources and preventing climate change. It aims to rediscover the path to sustainable development that we lost somewhere on the road from Rio.

Yet the summit is in deep trouble even before it starts. The final preparatory meeting in May was a disaster, leaving crucial parts of the planned Johannesburg agreement in tatters. It is perhaps appropriate that this gathering took place in Bali, a rich Indonesian tourist trap set amid a sea of poverty and environmental destruction 鈥� a totem of unsustainability.

In contrast, on the top of a small hill dubbed the Mountain of Hope in the middle of Soweto, a group of local environmentalists has its own ambitions for the future. Its members are trying to build a safer, greener community by recycling whatever they can, turning waste into everything from houses to works of art.

鈥淲e want to turn our community into a better place to live,鈥� says community leader Mandla Mentoor. But what are the chances that when delegates arrive for the summit in Sandton, the fenced-off suburb of Johannesburg, they鈥檒l be able to do the same for the planet?

Poverty in the developing world is the number-one issue on the summit鈥檚 agenda. It is poisoning the planet, triggering civil war, terrorism, mass migration and environmental degradation. You can see its pernicious impact from Angola to Afghanistan, and from Borneo to the refugee camp at Sangatte in northern France.

The full extent of the poverty crisis emerged for the first time in June. A report from the UN Conference on Trade and Development found that the world鈥檚 49 least developed nations have gained nothing from the past decade鈥檚 economic boom. Far from it. Living standards in these poorest nations, most of them in Africa, are lower than 30 years ago. More than half their populations 鈥� some 300 million people 鈥� get by on less than a dollar a day.

Back in Washington DC, President George W. Bush says these nations should open their borders to trade in order to create wealth. Indeed, they won鈥檛 receive American aid unless they do. Yet UNCTAD found that these countries are already open for business. Imports and exports account for more than 40 per cent of their GDP 鈥� higher than for most rich countries. The problem is that free trade has exposed these least-developed nations not to investment and the chance of wealth, but to a rip-off of their environmental resources, such as timber, at rock-bottom prices. In return, foreign investment has been minuscule.

鈥淭he current form of globalisation is tightening rather than loosening the international poverty trap,鈥� concludes Rubens Ricupero, Secretary-General of UNCTAD. His report predicts that by 2015 the number of people living on a dollar a day is likely to increase by 37 per cent to 420 million 鈥� a far cry from the UN鈥檚 pledge at its millennium summit to halve global poverty. Clearly something has to change, and it鈥檚 the World Summit鈥檚 task to figure out what and how.

One essential task is to banish the belief that improving the environment and helping the poor are mutually exclusive goals. Most of the rural poor live in and depend more directly on the natural environment than do the urban rich. A recent study of farmers in Zimbabwe found that 35 per cent of their average incomes came from 鈥渇reely-provided environmental goods鈥� such as firewood, food, medicines and building materials. Safeguarding these resources would ensure the poor are protected, at least to some extent.

Life support under assault

Yet despite the grand declarations made in Rio, the environment of the poor is under unprecedented assault. Rainforests, the heartlands of the planet鈥檚 biological diversity and the primary life-support system for hundreds of millions of the world鈥檚 poorest people, continue to disappear. African forest animals are being killed for bushmeat five times as fast as they can reproduce. These animals are the main source of protein for tens of millions, and they will be gone within 50 years. Many fish stocks could disappear even sooner, thanks to the industrialised fishing methods feeding the global fish market.

The World Summit has set itself the tasks of eradicating the forces that create poverty and wreck the environment, as well as finding new ways to repair the damage and generate cash for the job. It鈥檚 crucial that they succeed. Their predecessors in Rio promised an extra $125 billion in development aid 鈥� and then went straight home and cut their national aid budgets.

Growing poverty and environmental destruction often feed on each other, so the aim now is to find ways in which improvements in one can generate improvements in the other. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has called for the summit to concentrate on five areas where this approach could prove most fruitful: water, energy, health, agriculture and biodiversity.

Take water, for example. One key objective likely to emerge from the summit is bringing safe drinking water to the 1.1 billion people who do not have it today 鈥� to end their long daily slog to often polluted waterholes. But this is no longer just a matter of more pipes and pumps. Forests need to be protected in order to keep topsoil in place to retain water, water-saving irrigation technology needs to be introduced and villagers must learn how to catch rainwater and prevent rivers from becoming polluted.

As for energy, modern methods of generating power could benefit both the poor and the environment. Two billion people live without mains electricity, and delegates in Johannesburg will pledge to tackle that as well. But conventional power stations hooked to a national grid will never achieve this. The costs are prohibitive. Even in Kenya, for example, one of Africa鈥檚 more organised countries, the grid has so far reached only about 10 per cent of homes.

The solution is often local village grids fed by solar, wind or small-scale hydroelectric power. Oil companies such as BP and Shell are among the biggest players in the solar-power market, recently launching large rural solar-power projects in the Philippines and South Africa. And that ties in neatly with the environmental agenda to develop renewable energy sources to counter global warming. It鈥檚 one thing that old adversaries Shell and Greenpeace can agree on.

The knock-on health benefits of improving the environment are equally clear. The UN Environment Programme estimates that a quarter of all preventable illnesses are due to dirty water and air. The competing land requirements of agriculture and wildlife are harder to resolve, however. But even here new research suggests that biodiversity is good for farming, and organic methods can be as productive for peasant farmers as more intensive methods.

If tackling poverty, conserving natural resources and protecting the environment complement each other so neatly, why don鈥檛 we just get on with them? According to environmental groups, one of the biggest obstacles is the US government. In Bali, they argue, the Bush administration refused to accept proposed targets for the introduction of everything from solar panels to sewer systems. Nor will it practise what it preaches about the free market by cutting out government subsidies for American farmers and tariffs on imported steel.

At least part of Bush鈥檚 stance is clearly motivated by domestic interests. Yet even the most globally minded supporters of reducing poverty, such as Britain鈥檚 overseas development secretary Clare Short, are reluctant to commit their aid budgets to extravagant promises in Johannesburg. The US and the EU promised extra cash for sustainable development at a conference in Monterrey, Mexico, earlier this year, and seem reluctant to have their hands tied on how to spend it. But if that鈥檚 the case, why have a summit?

To add to the confusion, the potential beneficiaries of the development aid have proved unwilling to concede to the US鈥檚 demands for a tough declaration on fighting government corruption. They might be happier to agree to that condition if the US hadn鈥檛 lumped it together with a package on 鈥済ood governance鈥� with demands that they lower trade barriers still further.

And perhaps this is the heart of it: the matter of markets and trade. The World Summit will, at root, be faced with a choice between two world visions. The first is the case for capitalism, the primacy of trade and the World Trade Organisation. It says we should plough on with the blueprint of unfettered liberal economics, hoping that despite the evidence of the past decade, it can root out poverty and stimulate enough innovation to help us clean up our mess faster than we create it. The second is the case for sustainability. It says that fighting poverty and protecting the environment should come first, or else social disorder and environmental disintegration will eventually snuff out any short-term financial gains.

These two world views battle it out every day in real political and economic decisions around the world. Should the British government this summer pour money into a programme in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh to modernise agriculture 鈥� a programme that will throw some 20 million people off their land by 2020? The case for capitalism says the new industrialised farms will generate enough wealth to make the dispossessed better off. 鈥淧overty will be eradicated,鈥� the plan announces grandly. The case for sustainability says the displaced farmers will become the future destitute residents of shanty towns, and that we should be helping them to stay on their farms and prosper.

Shrimps or mangroves?

Or again, should Indonesians carry on chopping down mangrove swamps to build shrimp farms? Capitalism says the short-term earnings from the shrimp farms will transform the incomes of coastal communities. Sustainability points out that such shrimp farms become barren within a few years, and that mangroves are more valuable for protecting the country鈥檚 coastline from storms and as fish nurseries to maintain local stocks.

The argument here is not so much about whether market forces can do the job as how those forces can best be harnessed. At the summit, the US and the European Union will preach the faith in the markets, and argue that government aid is not the only, or even the main, route to delivering the kind of improvements that may be agreed in Johannesburg. Both parties want to encourage the idea of partnerships between governments, communities and private industry to trigger the synergistic projects that benefit both the poor and the environment, while making money along the way.

But this apparent consensus among wealthy nations hides a big divide. The US and the free-market fundamentalists believe that capital, acting blindly and without direction, can and will deliver. Put self-interested wealth generation first, they say, and all else will follow. You want new solar power technologies? Just give business a free hand and it will do it. Economic efficiency equals environmental efficiency, they say. That鈥檚 why Bush opposes the Kyoto Protocol: it will only hamper innovation, he says.

Critics of this approach see no reason why, even in the face of rampant climate change, the markets would force an energy utility to switch from burning coal to solar power if coal is cheaper. They say market forces must be directed to effect environmental and social improvements. That means finding ways to give a cash value to things that classical economics regards as free, such as clean water, an unpolluted atmosphere, a stretch of rainforest or the carbon-absorbing ability of farm soils. We should create markets in environmental protection rather than environmental destruction, they argue.

As for greenhouse gases, proponents of sustainability say we should first set limits on emissions and then allot pollution permits that companies can buy and sell. That way, a firm that adopts solar power can sell its spare permits to one that hasn鈥檛. If the limits are tight, the price will be high and the polluter will have an extra incentive to clean up their act. Ironically enough, the US pioneered this approach as part of its attempts to reduce acid rain. But by opposing the Kyoto Protocol, Bush has rejected it as an answer to global warming.

The idea could also be applied to many other aspects of environmental protection, with the added benefit of reducing poverty. Forests and farm soils soak up atmospheric carbon dioxide and so moderate global warming. If forest and farming communities could gain cash by 鈥渇arming鈥� carbon, they would have an extra incentive to save these resources, and an extra source of cash. The prospect of European or Japanese energy firms paying African villagers to manage their forests better will be one of many scenarios discussed in Johannesburg.

For many, particularly supporters of the public-private 鈥減artnership鈥� approach, creating such green markets should be the linchpin of a Johannesburg plan for the planet. 鈥淲e can create and manage our environment as a business and make sustainability pay for itself,鈥� says Ian Swingland of the University of Kent, who edited a report on the 鈥渃ommodification鈥� of the environment for the Royal Society, published in June.

Rainforest rip-off

But not everyone is so keen. Some fear that turning environmental resources into a money-spinner could mean the poor get ripped off yet again. The worst-case scenario would see corporations taking over rainforests from their inhabitants, and even planting fast-growing monocultures to maximise their carbon credits 鈥� all in the name of conservation, says Natasha Landell-Mills of the London-based International Institute for Environment and Development.

To help guard against this, many want a firm stick to go with the carrot. Environment groups such as Friends of the Earth have been pushing delegates to agree a treaty on corporate accountability that would require companies to develop an environmental and social conscience. It would give communities legal redress if, say, their common grazing land or a forest in which they collect food were bought by a corporation. A legal framework is unlikely, but a voluntary code from industry is one possible outcome as companies grow fearful of the backlash against globalisation.

Globalisation and free markets will be in the dock in Johannesburg. They stand accused of lining the pockets of the richest while failing to produce any 鈥渢rickle-down鈥� benefits for the poor. They are also charged with unleashing an unprecedented ferocious attack on the planet鈥檚 natural resources, undermining fundamental life-support systems in the process and stealing from the mouths of the poorest.

But if the hope of progress is to be resurrected, it is as likely to come from Soweto as from the summit鈥檚 guarded halls in Sandton. On the township鈥檚 Mountain of Hope, they rather look down on the summit. 鈥淲e cannot limit ourselves to asking governments what they will do. We must change things for ourselves,鈥� says Mandla Mentoor. 鈥淭he Mountain of Hope is a proof that there exists an alternative vision.鈥� They have begun rebuilding their world already.