Bali meeting ends without deal
Bali meeting ends without deal
Berni K. Moestafa, The Jakarta Post, Nusa Dua, Bali
Two weeks of talks on an action plan for sustainable
development in Bali ended on Friday at midnight, and failed to
reach a deal over a disagreement on whether developed countries
should pledge more aid and trade to finance the plan.
"There's no agreement, it's a deadlock," said Slamet Hidayat,
a member of the Indonesian delegation, late on Friday.
He added that negotiations on the action plan would continue
in the three months before the World Summit on Sustainable
Development in Johannesburg, South Africa, slated to begin in
late August.
Delegates from around the world descended on Bali in the
fourth and last leg before the Johannesburg Summit to align
economic development with social and environmental interests
under a 10-year action plan to be known as the Bali Commitment.
But talks at the United Nations (UN) fourth preparatory
committee meeting here were slow from the onset and fell into a
deadlock on Friday. Delegates remained divided between North and
South over the issue of finance and trade.
Negotiations went on until the early morning over the past few
days, with pressure from the Indonesian side to get delegates to
come to an agreement in Bali.
A last attempt to salvage the negotiations with a compromised
document by South African environment and tourism minister M.V.
Moosa failed to bridge the differences.
Slamet said that the negotiation block of Group 77 plus China,
in which Indonesia is a member, had accepted the document, which
only revised Chapter IX on the means of implementation covering
finance and trade issues.
Also accepting the document was Norway of the European Union
and New Zealand.
New Zealand is part of the JUSCANZ (Japan, United States,
Canada, Australia and New Zealand) negotiation block, which had
been adamantly objecting the proposed document.
"The U.S. and other members of JUSCANZ were against Moosa's
proposal while EU countries were mixed about it, Slamet said,
adding that the U.S. appeared to have the most objections.
He said that developing countries were pushing for more aid
from developed countries, reasoning that without funding, the
action plan could not be implemented.
The decision to end talks and freeze the action plan until
Johannesburg had yet to be approved by the plenary meeting, which
should have been held late on Friday night.
Since Wednesday, the meeting was joined by 118 ministers who
took part in the preparation for the political declaration for
the Johannesburg Summit but was not directly involved in the
negotiation of the action plan.
In his speech for the political declaration, the U.S.
representative to the UN Economic and Social Council and a senior
delegate member, Ambassador Sichan Siv, stressed the importance
of trade, domestic and foreign investment as development
resources, while omitting the word aid.
A delegate member of Venezuela, which leads the negotiation
block G-77 plus China, said Moosa's proposal was non-negotiable
and that it came under the rule "take it or leave it".
She said the U.S. and the EU began to negotiate it paragraph
by paragraph since Moosa's proposed document was handed out.
If delegates could not agree on Moosa's document, she said,
the G-77 plus China block would return to the original chapter IX
of the action plan drafted on June 2 and bring the remaining
contentious issues to Johannesburg.
The June 2nd draft plan of implementation for the World Summit
on Sustainable Development is the outcome from the first week of
talks in Bali.
Negotiations in Bali began with the Chairman's Text, which is
a summary of the three previous preparatory meetings in New York
made by the meeting's chairman, Emil Salim.
The former Indonesian environmental minister said he wanted
the Bali Commitment to contain definite targets, measured by time
and actions.
But what started out as a 39-page Chairman's Text covering 100
points, grew to a 158-point, 78-page draft plan, weakening the
plan with political rhetoric, a number of non-governmental
organizations (NGOs) said.
Various international and local NGOs have joined protests and
accused the JUSCANZ negotiation block of watering down the
Chairman's Text with words like "promote", "encourage" and
"explore".
Greenpeace managed to stage a late night protest inside the
conference building, which was effectively under UN control since
the meeting began.
It urged governments to prepare themselves better for
Johannesburg, taking the three months to commit themselves to
including the concrete time targets and action under the Bali
Commitment.