Earth may get second chance in Johannesburg

The Jakarta Post, Nusa Dua, Bali

After failing to garner more support from developed countries in Bali for sustainable development measures, delegates are now looking toward the United Nations (UN) world summit in Johannesburg, South Africa, next August for a second chance.

However, some delegates say the chances of a better deal are slim.

Two weeks of negotiations on a plan to implement sustainable development measures ended in deadlock in the early hours of Saturday morning last week. Exhausted negotiators decided to end the talks in Bali and bring the unresolved issues to Johannesburg for a last-ditch attempt.

In the meantime, the opposing sides will continue their talks in Brazil, which was the host of the first 1992 Earth Summit, said Emil Salim, the chairman of the UN pre-summit meetings in Bali.

"We hope we can bridge our differences there," Emil said on Monday, adding that the meeting would take place from June 23 to June 25 in Rio de Janeiro.

At the meeting, he would transfer his chairmanship to South Africa, where world leaders are expected to endorse the action plan with a political declaration.

According to him, 80 percent of the action plan on sustainable development has been finalized in Bali. "Yet, it is the remaining 20 percent that is of most importance."

Emil was referring to Chapter IX on means and implementation, which requires developed countries to lend financial support for the plan.

Delegates in Bali decided that Indonesia and South Africa should draw up another draft on Chapter IX, focusing on the common ground between the conflicting parties.

The two countries tried to revise the chapter in Bali in a final attempt to salvage the negotiations. But the developed countries, spearheaded by the U.S., turned down the draft.

It remains to be seen whether the two can produce a better Chapter IX than they did in Bali, and, on top, get the U.S. to agree to it.

"I was asked by South Africa to help them out," Emil said, adding that it was not uncommon for summit preparatory meetings to fail to come up with an agreement before the actual summit.

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that have been tracking the negotiating process since the first preparatory meetings, said the three months would allow delegates to hammer out stronger commitments into the draft plan.

Initially to be called the Bali Commitment, the unfinished draft plan of Implementation for the World Summit on Sustainable Development drew fire from NGOs as lacking the strength to create real change.

The negotiations in Bali were about implementing the promises made under the Rio declaration at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro.

The declaration introduced sustainable development as the antidote to the overexploitation of the Earth's natural resources.

Current economic development shifts most of the earth's natural resources to rich nations leaving developing countries with a damaged environment out of which the poor must attempt to survive.

That means that nearly two-thirds of the world's population, who live in poverty, mainly in developing countries, pay for the developed countries' current high living standards.

Concerns have increased that the pace at which natural resources are dwindling will deprive the Earth of the resources to support future generations.

Over the next 25 years, the Earth's population will grow by another two billion, mainly in developing countries.

The Rio declaration drew on this iniquity to call on nations to align economic development with social and environmental concern through sustainable development.

But 10 years later, the changes have been minimal. The greatest resistance has come from developed countries unwilling to change their lifestyles and invest in sustainable development, NGOs have charged.

Emil blamed this on the declaration's absence of clear targets, defined by timetables and adequate funding.

The Chairman's Text that he drafted and on which the negotiations' in Bali were based included time-bound measures. They were mostly deleted in the two weeks of negotiations.

Developed countries agreed to accept only the previous targets promised during the United Nations Millennium Summit in September 2000.

NGOs and developing countries warned that the Johannesburg summit would become meaningless without new targets.

The delegates in Bali were largely divided into three negotiating blocks: developing countries under the Group 77 plus China, the European Union and the so-called JUSCANZ group, with JUSCANZ standing for Japan, the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

JUSCANZ was against pledging new financial resources after developed countries agreed earlier this year to allocate US$30 billion by 2006 at the summit on financing development in Monterey, Mexico.

Other paragraphs, such as reforming the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the phasing out of subsidies that hurt developing countries, were also bracketed, the latter despite EU protests.

An Indonesian delegate warned that the developed countries could use the three months before Johannesburg to approach developing countries bilaterally and "buy their votes" by offering them aid.

Activist Anthony Hill of Oxfam International said such lobbying was already happening in Bali.

"From what I understand, the United States is talking individually not only here but in capitals, and is seeking deals with developing countries, holding off progress," Hill said last Thursday amid signs that the negotiations in Bali were heading nowhere.

Also clouding the next summit is the apparent reluctance of U.S. President George W. Bush to come to Johannesburg.

His father George Bush reportedly only attended the 1992 Rio Summit at the last minute following international pressure.

Without the U.S., the Johannesburg declaration would lack teeth as the country is the world's largest economy.

A UN official urged governments on Monday to show greater political commitment lest the Johannesburg summit collapse.

"If ... people quickly don't regroup and start pulling some plans together, then we're going to be in trouble," UN Development Program (UNDP) head Mark Malloch-Brown was quoted as saying by Dow Jones