杏吧原创

TEN years ago, amid the swarming flies and sweltering heat of northern Kenya, Erdo was born. Poor, often hungry and sometimes ill, his life has not been easy. The cattle his family depended on were stolen by bandits. To find the money to get by, Erdo鈥檚 parents now chop down trees and make charcoal to sell. But this is no long-term solution. The trees take longer to grow than to burn, and one day there will be no more wood.

The plight of Erdo and his parents is typical of that facing tens of millions of others, particularly in Africa. All over the continent, forests are shrinking, rainfall is scarcer than it was and droughts are becoming more and more frequent. Poverty is endemic, hunger common, and AIDS is killing millions. Wars over natural resources have torn apart nations, from Angola and Sudan to Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

But it did not have to be like this. In the year Erdo was born, leaders from 179 countries gathered in Rio de Janeiro to try to improve his future, and that of the rest of the world鈥檚 poor. The UN Earth Summit launched an unprecedented effort to tackle the environmental injustices of pollution, resource depletion and declining biodiversity and the social injustices of poverty, hunger and inequality. At the heart of the plan was sustainable development 鈥� the idea of improving the lives of people today without wrecking the prospects of future generations.

As a consciousness-raising exercise, the Earth Summit remains unsurpassed. Issues such as global warming and loss of biodiversity reached people all over the world. A spirit of unprecedented cooperation and optimism pervaded the meeting. At last, it seemed, rich nations would replace greed with altruism. Ten years on, however, that vision has been exposed for what it is: naive. The majority verdict is that we have failed to live up to the spirit of Rio. Around the globe, pollution has worsened, resources are still being raided and the gap between rich and poor has widened. Even our attempts to tackle environmental ills have stalled.

鈥淎ll over the world people are depressed because 10 years ago it was promised in Rio that we would now take action towards more sustainable development, and very little has happened,鈥� says the European Environment Commissioner, Margot Wallstrom. Even the UN leadership admits the results are disappointing. 鈥淯nsustainable approaches to economic progress remain pervasive,鈥� says Secretary-General Kofi Annan. 鈥淭here is a gap between the goals and promises set out in Rio and the daily reality in rich and poor countries alike.鈥�

The scope and vision of the Earth Summit were breathtaking. It seemed as if the world鈥檚 leaders really did want to break the mould and put the planet on a new trajectory towards a fair and sustainable existence. 鈥淣o place on the planet could remain an island of affluence in a sea of misery,鈥� declared the summit鈥檚 secretary-general, Maurice Strong. 鈥淥ne part of the world cannot live in an orgy of unrestrained consumption while the rest destroys its environment just to survive.鈥�

One of the pillars of the Rio summit was a 40-chapter blueprint for the 21st century, called Agenda 21. It spelled out the principles that should guide governments in dealing with everything from women鈥檚 rights and fairer land ownership to national trade tariffs, hazardous waste and sustainable use of forests, farms and seas. Agenda 21 is the most serious attempt the world has ever made to reconcile the traditionally conflicting ideals of environmental sustainability and economic growth. Underpinning it was a bargain between poor and rich nations.

In return for signing up to the Rio agreements, developing countries were to receive more money from developed nations. Agenda 21 estimated that its implementation would cost $625 billion a year and said that $125 billion of this should come as aid from wealthy nations. To raise this sum, every rich country agreed to double its aid budget to 0.7 per cent of their gross national product. But they have failed lamentably on this score (see Graph, p XX. By 2000, the average global aid budget had fallen to 0.22 per cent of GNP, while the total amount dropped from $69 to $53 billion. Yet over the same period, global economic output increased by 30 per cent.

Between 1992 and 2000, only one country out of the top 15 contributors of foreign aid improved its performance: Denmark raised its contribution from 1.02 to 1.06 per cent of GNP. Britain鈥檚 contribution has stuck at 0.33 per cent, while those of France, Canada and the US halved, with the US remaining firmly at the bottom of the league in 2000 on a meagre 0.1 per cent.

Agenda 21 also sought to cut the developing world鈥檚 debt to Western banks, which has crippled many countries鈥� economies by diverting as much as 40 per cent of government expenditure towards loan repayments. But again, the opposite has happened. Since Rio, the total debt burden of developing countries and former Soviet republics has climbed by one-third to a massive $2.5 trillion.

The failure of rich countries to cough up aid is condemned by the Group of 77 developing countries. 鈥淎genda 21 has been implemented unevenly,鈥� says the group鈥檚 Venezuelan chairman, Milos Alcalay. 鈥淢any commitments regarding means of implementation have not yet been met and developed countries have tended to ignore the development aspects.鈥�

Trapped between falling aid and rising debt, many developing countries have been unable to make progress on meeting even the most basic human needs. For example, Agenda 21 called for universal access to safe drinking water and sanitation. Yet more than 1.1 billion people are still relying on unsafe water. That includes 10 per cent of Chinese, 19 per cent of Indians and 30 per cent of people in Africa. Nearly three billion people 鈥� about half the world鈥檚 population 鈥� do not have adequate sanitation. About four-fifths of preventable disease in developing countries is a result of drinking contaminated water, and up to 30,000 people die every day from water-related illnesses.

Agenda 21 demanded a major effort to limit deaths from infectious diseases. Targets included halving deaths from diarrhoea, and a 90 per cent reduction in measles deaths. There has at least been some progress here, but nothing like what was hoped for. Between 1990 and 2000, the annual number of deaths from diarrhoea fell by 28 per cent to 2.12 million, while those from measles dropped 26 per cent to 780,000. But these improvements have been overshadowed by a 25 per cent increase in deaths from malaria to 1.08 million a year, and a sixfold leap in HIV-related deaths to three million a year, most of them in Africa.

Disease hits the poor hardest, and Agenda 21 made the fight against poverty a priority. There have been improvements since Rio, but again, they鈥檙e nothing to write home about. The proportion of the world鈥檚 population living on less than a dollar a day fell from 29 per cent in 1990 to 23 per cent in 1998. But that still leaves 1.2 billion people living in utter poverty. And in Africa, no progress has been made over the past decade with half its population counted among the very poor.

To make matters worse, the gap between rich and poor is widening. In 1960, the richest fifth of the world鈥檚 population were 30 times better off than the poorest fifth. By 1997, that figure had increased to 74. 鈥淲e are still far from ending the economic and environmental marginalisation that afflicts billions of people,鈥� says Christopher Flavin, president of the Worldwatch Institute, an economic and environmental research group in Washington DC.

Hunger and obesity

The extremes of rich and poor show up in other ways too. Although the number of undernourished people has decreased by six million a year since 1996, according to the UN鈥檚 Food and Agriculture Organization, that still leaves 850 million people going hungry. Some 13 million people in southern Africa face starvation right now. At the same time, obesity has reached epidemic proportions in developed nations. About a third of all adults in Europe are overweight, while in the US the figure is 61 per cent and rising.

One escape route from poverty is education, which was strongly endorsed by Agenda 21. It urged countries to offer primary education to all, and to halve adult illiteracy. But again, the results failed to match the aspirations. There was a drop in the number of children who didn鈥檛 go to school, from 127 million in 1990 to 113 million in 1998. The illiteracy rate among adults fell by 4 per cent, but one in every five adults still cannot read or write 鈥� most of them women.

If progress on Agenda 21 has failed to live up to expectations, what about the environmental treaties for which the Earth Summit is probably best remembered? Two international agreements were signed at Rio: the Framework Convention on Climate Change, which signalled the world鈥檚 first attempt to curb emissions of the greenhouse gases blamed for global warming, and the Convention on Biological Diversity.

Back in the early 1990s, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which draws on the expertise of hundreds of scientists worldwide, was still uncertain whether humanity was to blame for the gradual warming of the globe during the 20th century. But as more evidence accumulated, the IPCC鈥檚 view began to change. In 1996, it concluded that 鈥渢he balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate鈥�. In 2001, the panel updated its advice again: 鈥淭here is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities.鈥�

Average global temperatures in the 1990s were the warmest since records began in 1861. The IPPC predicts that by 2100 temperatures will have increased further by between 1.4 and 5.8 掳C 鈥� a faster change than at any time in the past 10,000 years. This could mean a rise in sea levels of up to 88 centimetres, flooding homes, businesses and farms around the globe, and directly affecting millions.

The 170 countries that signed up to the climate convention agreed to voluntarily cut their greenhouse gas emissions back to 1990 levels by 2000. But that was just the start. Since the convention came into force in 1994, there have been intense diplomatic efforts to strengthen it. The 1997 Kyoto Protocol committed developed countries to legally binding targets for further cuts. The aim was that by 2012, nations would have reduced emissions to a level 6 or 8 per cent below those of 1990. But in 2001 the process faltered. Although US President Bill Clinton had supported the protocol, his successor George W. Bush rejected it. It would, he said, do unacceptable damage to American industry and the economy. Australia followed suit, citing similar reasons, and Canada threatened to withdraw unless the protocol was substantially amended. There are still enough committed nations left to bring the protocol into force, but it has been seriously weakened.

While politicians argued, emissions of the most significant greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, continued to rise. Between 1990 and 2000, worldwide carbon emissions grew by 9.1 per cent a year. During the 1990s, Australia鈥檚 carbon output increased by more than a quarter, and America鈥檚 by nearly a fifth, while Canada and Japan pushed up their emissions by more than a tenth. There were some successes, however. The European Union achieved a 1.4 per cent cut, thanks mostly to efforts by Britain and Germany. And emissions from Russia fell by about a third as its industry collapsed.

The second treaty signed at Rio was the biodiversity convention, which aims to protect the world鈥檚 animals and plants and to make sure that when we do exploit them, we do so sustainably. Its other main goal is to ensure that any benefits derived from bio-resources such as drugs derived from tropical plants, are shared fairly among everyone connected with the resource, not just the companies involved. The treaty came into force in 1994, and since then a number of initiatives have sprung from it. Chief among them is the preparation of national strategies for protecting biodiversity 鈥� although only 70 of the 180-plus signatory nations have so far finalised such plans. Developed countries have invested more than $1 billion in biodiversity projects in 120 countries, and one notable success of the convention was the birth in 2000 of the Biosafety Protocol, which gives countries the right to veto imports of genetically modified organisms.

However, only 22 countries have ratified the protocol so far, and it will only come into force once a further 28 follow suit.

It鈥檚 difficult at this point to measure how successful the convention has been in meeting those three main goals, but at least the world is better informed about the scale of the ecological problems we face. More than 11,000 species are threatened with extinction, and in excess of 800 have been wiped out already, mostly because their habitats have been destroyed. A further 5000 species are in serious decline and will join the ranks of the threatened unless their plight is addressed soon.

Forest farewell

Two of nature鈥檚 richest habitats have suffered enormously over the past 10 years: forests and coral reefs. Kofi Annan points out that we鈥檙e losing forest at the rate of 14.6 million hectares a year, which equates to 4 per cent of the world鈥檚 forest in the past decade. There are still 150 million people whose way of life depends on tropical forests.

Meanwhile, the world鈥檚 reefs have been seriously damaged by global warming, pollution and human exploitation. According to the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network, which is based at the Australian Institute of Marine Science in Queensland, the proportion of coral 鈥渆ffectively lost鈥� increased from 10 per cent to 27 per cent between 1992 and 2000. Nearly half a billion people live within 100 kilometres of coral reefs, and many depend on them for food and work.

The world鈥檚 failure to hit the ambitious targets set at Rio can鈥檛 be blamed entirely on rich countries cutting their aid budgets. One trend that grew to dominate the late 1990s has made it more difficult to fulfil those goals: globalisation, and its political and economic consequences.

Just look at the World Trade Organisation, which was set up in 1995 鈥渢o ensure that trade flows as smoothly, predictably and freely as possible鈥� and is championed by rich, profit-hungry nations. Many of the WTO鈥檚 principles directly conflict with those espoused at Rio. For example, the biodiversity convention aims to control the import and export of endangered species, but that directly inhibits trade. So too does the Biosafety Protocol.

Another source of friction is the convention鈥檚 insistence that any commercial benefit derived from exploiting wildlife should be shared between the country of origin and the commercial producer. The convention argues that if, say, a drugs company creates a medicine founded on a developing country鈥檚 local remedy, then it should hand over some of the profits to that country.

However, the WTO requires countries to have strict legislation for recognising and protecting the intellectual property rights of companies, and countries that don鈥檛 fall into line are penalised. While the latest round of WTO negotiations in Doha, Qatar, recognised the importance of sustainable development, we鈥檙e still a long way from seeing a workable system that marries these two sets of ideals.

Another trend that relies on the supremacy of global trade is the increasing importance of corporate power. Between 1970 and 1995 the number of multinational companies jumped from 7000 to 40,000. Five corporations have a combined income greater than the total income of the poorest 46 countries.

Environmentalists claim the world has failed to control the excesses of corporate power over the past 10 years. Friends of the Earth argues that many corporations have wielded their power unwisely. Asia Pulp & Paper has damaged rainforests in Indonesia, ExxonMobil campaigned against the Kyoto Protocol, while construction firm Balfour Beattie backed the building of the Ilisu dam in Turkey, which would force thousands of Kurds from their homes.

Getting private companies to cooperate with governments and community leaders is essential if progress is to be made at next month鈥檚 World Summit. Indeed, the task at Johannesburg is not only to restate the goals agreed at Rio and to work out how to finally achieve them, but also to update Agenda 21 to take account of how the world has changed since that landmark meeting.

The importance of this task should not be underestimated. The road from Rio has not been smooth and will get rougher yet. But so long as Erdo and his family are forced to destroy their environment just to scrape a living, stopping now is not an option.