FOR about four days last week, Britain dropped Michael Meacher, its environment minister and a political expert on global warming, from its negotiating team for next week鈥檚 World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg. It鈥檚 a surreal thought that at the follow-up to the Earth Summit in Rio 10 years ago, the world鈥檚 greatest environmental carnival, Britain could consider taking 40 spin doctors but no environment minister.
That decision exposes a serious point about the World Summit. There鈥檚 a widespread feeling that it鈥檚 all about poor nations鈥� development and banishing poverty 鈥� so why would you need an expert on the environment? But this is to miss the point. As its name makes clear, the World Summit is about sustainable development. That is, growing richer 鈥� and not just in financial terms 鈥� while preserving the planet, so that our children enjoy all the benefits of the natural world just as we do. The environment is central to that process.
To achieve sustainable development we are going to have to make some fundamental changes to the way we measure wealth and growth, something that the World Summit looks set to ignore. Today, our notion of wealth is based purely on financial measures, but we need to incorporate the value of environmental assets into economic theory. GNP takes no account of the value of natural resources, for example, yet when we cut down a forest, we reduce our natural capital. The profits a power company makes from a new plant do not reflect its price tag in terms of air quality or global warming.
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Everything would be different if such environmental impacts were given a monetary value, and if the price of goods reflected the cost to the environment of producing them. If we knew that a particular project would degrade the environment by $1 million, say, it would be far more obvious whether it was worth going ahead with it. This would expose many technologies as very environmentally expensive. It would also help boost research and development: science and technology are crucial to helping poor nations grow (see 鈥淭he essential ingredient鈥�), but while environmental resources remain underpriced, there鈥檚 little incentive to design technologies that use them more efficiently.
It is a pity, but perhaps unsurprising, that environmental accounting is not on the agenda in Johannesburg. Rich nations would like you to think that the summit is just about developing countries. It isn鈥檛. It is also about checking how well all countries are adhering to Agenda 21, the huge blueprint for progress that was worked out at Rio. Agenda 21 brought together economic growth, social development and environmental protection as the pillars of sustainable development. The message was 鈥渃onsume less, produce less, pollute less鈥�. By these measures, the developed nations have failed miserably. In just about every area covered by Agenda 21, from maintaining fish stocks to protecting the atmosphere, we are moving away from our goals at an alarming rate (see 鈥淭he road from rio鈥�).
One reason why sustainable development has not reached mainstream political and economic thinking is that unfettered economic growth is still seen as an end in itself. Combined with domestic political agendas, this has blinkered rich countries. They have reneged on their part of the global deal drawn up in Rio 鈥� to deliver the money for development to happen. Despite enjoying unprecedented economic growth over the past decade, they simply don鈥檛 seem to have the political will to help their poorer neighbours.
Consider the aid budget. At Rio, rich nations promised $125 billion a year to help poorer countries. Yet until earlier this year the annual global aid budget stood at $53 billion. Very few countries have come anywhere near the 0.7 per cent of GNP they promised to donate. In a meeting held this March in Monterrey, Mexico, the US and the European Union 鈥� two of the least generous aid givers 鈥� added an extra $12 million to this tally, but the American aid comes with strings attached: countries will have to adhere to US notions of good governance and economic policy. And the EU rushed through its increase in what looked like embarrassed haste.
It would be bad enough if this were the only hurdle that developing nations had to overcome. But they are also impossibly indebted to Western banks. Although Agenda 21 contained a promise to cut poorer nations鈥� debt, the opposite has happened. Since 1992, their debt has risen 34 per cent to $2.5 trillion.
Of course, 鈥渢rade not aid鈥� has been the dogma of the rich countries for the past decade. It is true that trade gives developing countries a real income that they can control. The notion that free trade is the panacea for all ills culminated in the birth of the 鈥渇ree-trade policeman鈥�, the World Trade Organisation (WTO). Yet even here, rich nations are taking poor countries for a ride.
One of the loudest cries from Washington DC and Brussels has been that tariffs are distorting the free flow of goods and services, and that poor nations are not opening their markets to trade. This would be a reasonable point, except that the US and the EU are the biggest offenders. Subsidies work in a similar way to tariffs by keeping prices unrealistically low, and in 2000 rich nations subsidised their farmers to the tune of $245 billion. This year the US passed the Farm Act which signalled yet more cash for farmers, while the French continue to oppose reform of the subsidy-laden Common Agricultural Policy.
Agricultural exports are particularly important to developing nations because they seldom have a large manufacturing capacity. Yet subsidies effectively bar them from the US and EU markets. It gets worse. Subsidised northern countries are 鈥渄umping鈥� their surplus subsidised crops on the global market, forcing down prices. The US and EU together supply about half of all wheat exports, for example. The US sells at 46 per cent below production costs and the EU at 34 per cent. What chance do smallholders in developing nations have of competing with goods that cost more to grow than to sell? The UN estimates that overall, subsidies and tariffs cost the developing world about $56 billion a year in lost exports. So much for free trade.
You begin to get a glimpse of the struggle developing countries face to find the money to develop at all, let alone sustainably. The UN Conference on Trade and Development points out that the plight of the world鈥檚 49 least developed countries is getting worse, not better. During the 1990s, the number of people in extreme poverty in sub-Saharan Africa rose from 242 million to 300 million. For them, free trade and the much hyped 鈥渢rickle-down effect鈥� do not work at all.
Surely leaders at Johannesburg should be tackling these fundamental problems. The trouble is that rich nations, particularly the US with its fierce isolationist stance, see trade and finance as very different animals from foreign aid, development and the environment. Nothing, they argue, should interfere with free trade. It says much that the WTO requires nations to make hard commitments and face harsh penalties if they don鈥檛 adhere, whereas the World Summit will try only to hold countries to a few soft commitments.
Here lies a big difference between Rio and Johannesburg. At Rio, governments signed big treaties such as the Convention on Climate Change and the Convention on Biological Diversity. This time there will be less paper signing, although countries will update and reaffirm their commitments to Agenda 21.
But one of the summit鈥檚 most important aims will be to take sustainable development to ordinary people. It will initiate practical projects that involve governments, community groups, non-governmental organisations and, possibly, private companies. For example, a local community might team up with a group of NGOs to manage a national park with government funding. By setting up such projects on the ground, with real partners, goals and deadlines, the hope is that sustainable development will begin to grow from the bottom up.
Sustainable development is seen by the more enlightened in government as the most significant political, social, environment and cultural challenge of the moment. It will need hard policies to make it work, and convincing people to reduce consumption will take time.
Despite the pessimism, the World Summit represents a golden opportunity for national leaders to steer the world towards a sustainable future. To succeed They will need to tackle some fundamental issues, such as how to ensure that economic measurements reflect the true value of natural resources (even if that means redefining what we mean by 鈥渨ealth鈥�), and how trade can be made to work for the poor.
Good as partnerships would be, they really amount to a plumbing job. Is it really the place of world leaders to be sorting out national power grid schemes for developing countries? They will need to put their 鈥� our 鈥� money on the table and meet the commitments they made in Rio on aid and debt relief. They will need to look to their own national self-interest and ask how that is compromising the needs of other countries.
These may sound like big 鈥渁sks鈥�, but Johannesburg is not the time for little questions. Sustainable development may seem unpalatable to some, but unsustainable development will soon become unbearable for all.