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                                                                                EARTH SUMMIT, Page 44

SUMMIT TO SAVE THE EARTH

Rio's Legacy


Despite the squabbles, the Earth Summit could go down in history
as a landmark beginning of a serious drive to preserve the planet

By EUGENE LINDEN/RIO DE JANEIRO -- With reporting by Ian
McCluskey/Rio de Janeiro


    At its midpoint a week ago, the giant Earth Summit in Rio
seemed to be on the verge of completely disintegrating. Angered
by Washington's refusal to sign the "biodiversity" treaty to
protect the world's plants and animals, several poorer nations
considered withdrawing their support for the pact and even spoke
of reviewing their position on the agreement to combat global
warming. At summit headquarters trivialities and private agendas
derailed serious debate over the plan of action called Agenda
21. Arab delegates pushed for oblique references to emotional
and irrelevant issues like the plight of Israel's occupied
territories, while oil states worked to strip out any language
implying that petroleum might be bad for the environment.

    Across town in pleasant Flamengo Park, 7,892 nongovernmental
organizations from 167 countries at a satellite conference called
the Global Forum added to the confusion. The meeting seemed part
New Age Carnaval, part 1960s teach-in and part soap opera. Vying
for attention with religious leaders and research groups were
such fringe organizations as H.E.M.P. (Help End Marijuana
Prohibition). Asked what the drug had to do with sustainable
development, spokesman Ron Tisbury had his offbeat sound bite
ready: "Anything you can build with petrochemicals, you can make
out of marijuana." The media began using words like farce and
fiasco to describe Rio, and one participant called the conference
the "greatest fraud ever perpetrated."

    But just before more than 100 world leaders arrived for
the grand finale of treaty signings, it seemed to dawn on
participants from both rich and poor nations that the atmosphere
had to change -- and fast. With the whole world watching a
conference advertised as a last-chance meeting to save the
planet, no one had anything to gain from abject failure.

    This realization altered the rhetoric and to a degree the
actions of the participants. The delegation from India, which
had produced some of the more provocative observations about the
sins and obligations of the rich nations, announced that it
would sign the biodiversity agreement, helping stem the brewing
revolt by the poor nations. Senator Albert Gore of Tennessee
noted that a tacit understanding was developing between family
planning advocates and the Catholic Church that would allow poor
nations to take more aggressive steps on the vital question of
population. Participants of all stripes emerged from meetings
with smiles pasted on and offered a chorus of variations on the
theme: "If nothing else happens, the summit is still a success
because . . ."

    Ambassador Enrique Penalosa, head of the Colombian
delegation, said the two-year preparation period had brought the
issues of sustainable development -- prog ress without
destruction of the environment -- before hundreds of officials
from developing countries, each of whom would impart those
lessons back home. "Even if the conference had been an apparent
failure on specific treaties, it would be a success," said
Penalosa, "because for the first time we are alerting the planet
that development is not necessarily good if it sacrifices future
generations." Others took the line that the summit's battered
compromise agreements represented first steps that could be
built upon in the future -- just as the toothless 1985 Vienna
Convention set the stage for later tougher agreements
establishing timetables for the phaseout of ozone-destroying
chlorofluorocarbons.

    Still others applauded the creation of a U.N. Sustainable
Development Commission, modeled on the Human Rights Commission,
which will use public criticism and pressure to hold governments
to account for achieving the goals laid out in Rio. Whether the
new commission becomes a real watchdog will be determined later
this year when U.N. nations decide whether to make it a body
composed of government ministers or of officials at the margins
of influence.

    Gus Speth, president of Washington's World Resources
Institute, believes the summit could still produce his dream of
a global bargain between rich and poor nations, but only if the
meeting's treaties are developed during the next three years to
spell out obligations, goals and monitoring. The price of
failure for the world community could be a new cold war between
the North and the South, warned U.N. Secretary-General Boutros
Boutros-Ghali.

    If any clear message has come out of this meeting, it is
that the 178 nations represented will all have to change if the
agreements are to have any teeth. Statements from the poorer
nations tended to place all blame for the earth's woes on the
rich nations and assert that these polluters should pay the
developing world to protect its ecosystems. Speth called this
attitude a "prescription for long-term disaster since it will
lead people to wait for money before they take actions that are
in their own interest." Moreover, because of the billions of
dollars in development assistance wasted through corruption and
bad planning, the poorer nations are going to have to accept
that donors and agencies will attach conditions to new spending.

    For its part, the World Bank, positioned to be the primary
distributor of funds to the developing nations, will have to do
a better job of integrating environment and development in its
investments. Some participants observed that the summit might
have achieved more if it had lowered its sights and addressed
the environmentally damaging consequences of present
international assistance and domestic subsidies. World Bank
initiatives like the Tropical Forestry Action Plan were billed
as efforts to halt the destruction of rain forests, but in many
cases the plan became an instrument of deforestation by
fostering projects to open virgin forests to loggers. World Bank
president Lewis Preston announced at the summit that the
institution was willing to contribute $1.5 billion of its
profits toward environment-related projects, but the bank still
must show that it knows how to use these and other funds wisely.

    The European nations and Japan have been hailed as summit
heroes for their willingness to support its agreements, but they
will have to bolster their declared commitment to reducing
greenhouse gases with realistic programs. For instance, part of
Japan's strategy to stabilize CO2 emissions calls for building
20 nuclear power plants by the year 2000 and 40 by 2010. It
stretches credibility to assume that Japanese citizens, already
worried about nuclear risks, will agree to this massive
initiative in their crowded communities. Similarly, countries
like Italy have found an easy way to meet targets of greenhouse
emissions by buying power from their neighbors, essentially an
accounting trick that allows nations to claim they are
addressing global warming without coming to grips with energy
efficiency.

    The U.S. has been hammering at the "easy rhetoric" of
other nations, but it has yet to accept the responsibilities of
the world's largest economy. It has a strong story to tell in
such concrete measures as the Clean Air Act, transportation
legislation, a pending energy bill and an ambitious Green Lights
energy-conservation program. Together these may enable the U.S.
to beat the target of stabilizing greenhouse emissions at 1990
levels by the year 2000. But instead of seizing leadership and
galvanizing industry to compete with Japan and Europe for an
emerging market for clean technologies, the Bush Administration
has taken up the cause of the environmentally handicapped,
limply replaying arguments developed by the coal,
electric-utility and railroad lobbies that meeting the
greenhouse target would cost jobs and harm the economy.

    Saddened by the isolation of a country with a distinguished
history of environmental programs, many delegates felt that the
U.S. has squandered an exquisite opportunity to invest meaning in
the new world order. Said retiring Senator Timothy Wirth of
Colorado: "I'm afraid that history is not going to treat the U.S.
kindly when it looks back at the summit."

    Given the lack of leadership by governments, Maurice
Strong, the summit's secretary-general, hopes ordinary people
will force politicians to live up to the obligations articulated
at Rio. He plans to make his own contribution to this
grass-roots movement by heading an Earth Council, which he sees
as a watchdog organization like the Helsinki Watch groups that
sprang up after the 1975 Helsinki accords on human rights. The
Earth Council's goal would be to ensure that institutions such
as the Sustainable Development Commission actually do their job.

    Most summit participants agree that the best hope for the
future comes from changes in values prompted by grass-roots
concerns. Said Spencer Beebe, president of the American
environmental group Ecotrust: "Saving the planet has never been
an issue of money but rather a matter of the resourcefulness and
motivation of individuals."

    At the Global Forum, fears about the future produced a
melange of naive, unworkable and contradictory -- and
occasionally inspiring -- notions of how the world might correct
its course. But deepening and widening concern may yet lead to
a coherent ethic that guides people toward life-styles that
minimize damage to the biosphere. The more than 300,000 pledges
by children to do something for the planet that were posted on
bulletin boards next to the Tree of Life in Flamengo Park raise
hopes that the next generation may mature with a deep awareness
of the perils of waste and pollution. The question is whether
they will learn that lesson in schools, or whether it will be
imposed upon them by a world run to ruin by their parents.