From Rio to Joburg

Hira Jhamtani, Board member of KONPHALINDO, an environmental NGO based in Jakarta.

In June 1992, Rio de Janeiro saw a celebration of the spirit to save earth and humankind through the Earth Summit. World leaders, civil society groups and international agencies came together to pledge their commitment to the Earth.

The "Spirit of Rio", as it was often called, gave birth to an awakening about linking environment with development in the new paradigm of sustainable development.

It was about the spirit of North-South (developed and developing countries) partnership, about the engagement of non-governmental organizations and other major groups in the development process.

Agenda 21 and the Rio Declaration brought hopes that the sustainable development paradigm would be carried forward into practical programs and policies that would deal with the environment and development crises.

Today, it is time to ask if the Spirit of Rio is still alive?

To answer the question, let us look at some statistics and information presented in the WorldWatch Institute's latest "State of the World" report.

Global emissions of greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, which most scientists believe causes global warming, have increased more than nine percent in the past 10 years.

According to the Forest Resources Assessment 2000 by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, forest areas worldwide decreased by 2.2 percent since 1990.

About 27 percent of the world's coral reefs, a crucial habitat for marine species are now severely damaged due to pollution, warming sea water, mining and fishing; at the time of the Earth Summit only 10 percent were damaged.

On the economic front, according to the report, the 1990s saw unprecedented economic growth - adding more than $10 trillion a year to the global economy.

But it was also a decade that left the number of people living in poverty nearly unchanged at more than one billion people. Despite the prosperity, the gap between rich and poor is widening in many countries.

A remarkable irony is that while people in wealthy countries are living longer than ever, some 14,000 to 30,000 people continue to die each day in developing nations from water-borne diseases. So, let us ask again, where is the Spirit of Rio?

The international community, world leaders and international agencies are reluctantly admitting that the promises and hopes raised in Rio have largely not been fulfilled.

Even as early as five years after the Earth Summit, the Spirit of Rio had weakened considerably. The Rio Plus Five Summit in 1997 ended without a political statement of commitments because the differences between the North and South countries were too wide to bridge.

Ten years down the road, the reality is different.

The State of the World Report said that under-funding of environmental initiatives, the stagnation in foreign aid spending, and the indebtedness of developing nations, have hampered environmental and social progress.

Indeed foreign aid spending declined, from US$69 billion in 1992 to $53 billion in 2000. On the other hand, total debt burden in developing countries and nations in economic transition increased by 34 percent since the Earth Summit, amounting to $2.5 trillion in 2000.

A striking example is the fact that while the UN Environment Program (UNEP) is struggling to maintain its annual budget of roughly $100 million, military expenditures by the world's governments are running at more than $2 billion a day.

In essence, the sustainable development paradigm has not been given a chance to be tested in implementation.

In addition, sustainable development had to compete with the paradigm of globalization that was gaining more strength than ever the years after Rio, especially as it was institutionalized in the several agreements of the World Trade Organization (WTO), established in 1994.

Many WTO agreements undermined chapters of Agenda 21 and the Rio Declaration. The best example would be the undermining of technology transfer envisaged in Agenda 21 and many Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs) by the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), an agreement under the WTO aimed at tightening intellectual property rights regimes in member states.

TRIPS, to a certain extent, has hindered transfer of technology, even environmentally sound technology. TRIPS also triggered problems in public health, due to patent regimes for drugs including live saving essential drugs such as for HIV/AIDS. This was partially addressed during the fourth Ministerial Meeting of the WTO in Doha, November 2001.

The WTO has a dispute settlement system based on retaliation and sanction which gave it a strong enforcement capability.

The agreements reached during the Earth Summit, on the other hand, did not have a strong compliance system.

Thus governments are more inclined to implement agreements under the WTO rather than agreements of the Earth Summit.

At the institutional level, the United Nations (UN), the international organization given the mandate to arrange the conduct of sustainable development, is being undermined through a lack of funding and political support.

Therefore, now more than ever, communities need to reinvoke the spirit of Rio. The question is can it be done at the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) to be held in Johannesburg, September this year.

The WSSD is supposed to produce a set of implementation agenda towards sustainable development and institutional arrangements, to be strengthened by the political declaration of world leaders committing towards that agenda.

However, judging from the negotiating text prepared and produced during the three meetings of the preparatory committee (PrepCom) held at the UN headquarters in New York, there seems to be reluctance on the part of the delegates to make such a commitment.

For sometime during PrepCom III in late March-April, the text amounted to about 100 pages of normative and empty statements that do not really reflect commitments to sustainable development.

The latest text, produced by the Chairman on May 9, contains the said implementation agenda but still having the weak language in terms of real commitments. For instance, many proposed actions do not have a time frame while contentious issues remain on sections such as energy, coastal ecosystems, trade and finance, and on institutional arrangements.

The text will be negotiated in Nusa Dua, Bali during PrepCom IV, with the hope that a considerable amount of consensus will be reached. Elements of political declaration will also be discussed to be agreed upon by leaders in Johannesburg.

In addition, a list of partnership arrangements (often called the type 2 outcome of the WSSD) will also be finalized to be announced in Johannesburg. The type 2 outcome has been criticized by civil society groups as undermining real long-term political commitment to a sustainable development action plan, as there is no criteria, measurement and accountability for the outcome.

Thus the PrepCom in Bali will be important to pave the way to forge real commitments by world leaders in Johannesburg. There are high hopes that Bali, being a place with spiritual and relaxing characteristics, may perhaps be able to reinvoke the spirit of Rio among governments and civil society groups.