Why the Earth Summit must fail

W. Bradnee Chambers, UN University Institute of Advanced Studies, The Daily Yomiuri, Asia News Network, Tokyo

The issues are not right, there is no political will, and the world is not ready for yet another summit on sustainable development right now. So let it fail, and let it fail miserably.

Why? So that it can eventually succeed.

What is needed more than anything as the summit's outcome is for sustainable development to make its way out of the political wilderness and back onto the mainstream political agenda. Today it is not a priority -- leaders are too worried about terrorism, globalization and the threat of recession.

In fact, many diplomats can hardly believe that it has already been 10 years since the last Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. They do not know where to begin negotiating or what their next step should be. This time around there are no common rallying points such as a new treaty on climate change.

This loss of direction was reflected in the preparatory negotiations in New York and Bali. Governments were recycling texts from other processes or attempting to bring in issues like trade and competition that are beyond the summit's reach.

There are important issues that must be dealt with, such as poverty, financing, education and governance, but the preparatory negotiations and the draft negotiating text so far have not put in place the deep political action that is required. And with only days until the World Summit on Sustainable Development is set to open in Johannesburg, there is no word of any major government initiatives.

Poverty discussions have become clouded by the rhetoric that it can be eradicated rather than alleviated. Putting in place the financial assurances that would work for more immediate targets would be more sensible. Developing countries need on-the-ground assistance for practical matters such as cleaner drinking water, sanitation, indoor air pollution and infectious diseases.

This can only be achieved through better technologies, education and improved financing. Yet developed countries are not ready to commit more money to sustainable development so soon after their billion-dollar commitments to the Kyoto Protocol's funds and at the Monterrey Financing for Development Conference in Mexico in March.

A new standard on education for sustainability that can create a skilled labor force to harness science and technology for sustainable development, has not gained enough recognition in the negotiations and is not likely to emerge as a significant issue. Many of the world's academies, university associations and the United Nations University are calling on the summit to create a greater role for education in the implementation of Agenda 21.

Governance is perhaps the biggest disappointment so far. It was an issue that should have been relatively easy to solve compared with poverty and finance. There has been a massive proliferation of organizations working on environmental issues; these treaty secretariats and UN and specialized agencies could be more effective if they worked together.

At the level of sustainable development, which is the ordering principle that tries to bring the environment, social and economic sectors together under one roof, there is no coordination. Issues such as health, food security and trade are still organized and tackled in relative isolation from environmental issues.

Institutions such as the Commission for Sustainable Development or the UN Economic and Social Council simply do not have the power and legitimacy to coordinate powerful organizations such as the WTO. So you wind up with fragmentation.

So let the summit fail to succeed. Taking the wrong course of action now and creating a false sense of security that we are doing enough for the environment and development is far too dangerous. Besides, in the last few years we have seen better results after major failures. The Biosafety Protocol on genetically modified organisms failed in Cartagena, Colombia, but succeeded a year later in Montreal. The Sixth Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change failed in The Hague, but succeeded a year later in Bonn; and the Seattle WTO ministerial disaster was a wake-up call that led to the successful launch of a new round of trade negotiations in Doha last year.

A major failure might be just the recipe for governments to take international cooperation on sustainable development more seriously. At least it might bring the kind of attention needed to understand the priorities and the course of action in the next 50 to avert the catastrophes that mainstream scientists are warning us to avoid.