Hopes and Disappointments in Johannesburg

by Dr Sylvain Ehrenfeld, a Population Studies expert and co-leader of the IHEU's UN NGO delegation at New York and Phyllis Ehrenfeld

A vital issue facing the world today is the question: Can coordinated international effort reduce poverty by promoting development, while still preserving the Earth’s natural resources? The recent Summit on Sustainable Development held in Johannesburg is the third conference to confront this difficult problem. Not surprisingly, the meeting, attended by many world leaders and ignored by President Bush, was highly contentious. The most heated issue was the setting of firm timetables for reducing oil and gas consumption and greenhouse gas emissions from oil and coal. The world is facing the risk of possibly devastating climatic change, mostly induced by the industrially developed countries. The US, Canada and Japan, and the oil-producing countries, the heaviest polluters, successfully blocked efforts to set timetables for the conversion from oil and gas to renewable sources of energy. There was some good news, however: Russia and China will ratify the Kyoto Treaty, setting restrictions on the release of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases. This assures that the Kyoto Climate Treaty will go into effect, although much weakened by US non-participation, as the US produces 25 per cent of the world’s greenhouse gases. The US has aroused considerable anger and concern by resisting the Kyoto Treaty, claiming that it only applies to industrialized countries. The problem is made more difficult because non-industrialized countries need to use resources for development. However anti-pollution devices, which the US is a leader in producing, are too expensive for their economies.

The Summit achieved one important result: a promise by the attending nations to help supply affordable energy to some 2 billion people who have no access. Regrettably, there was no defined timeframe, and not much support for the effort to boost renewable power. Another contentious issue was trade. Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, repeated in his speech the usual mantra that trade is the engine of development.

However this is notably self-serving since the US and the European Union are under no obligation to phase out their massive subsidies for agriculture and certain industries, subsidies which make many Third World exports non-competitive, worsening their economies and promoting poverty.

Some progress was made on the immediate basic needs for improvement in primitive sanitation and impure drinking water, conditions which presently produce great numbers of illnesses and preventable deaths. The Summit agreed on several goals: halving the number of people without sanitation, presently 2.4 billion, by 2015; minimizing harmful effects from chemical production by 2020; halving decline of fish stock by 2015; and significantly reducing the number of endangered species by 2010. The latter is important both as a measure of the total health of the planet and a reflection of the health of the people who inhabit it.

Confronted by the disappointment of environmentalists on issues such as renewable energy, the UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, responded that in spite of excessively high expectations, the world’s agenda had moved forward. Emerging from these conferences with their heated divisions and inevitable conflicts of interest, the question has to be put: are they a waste of time? The answer must be no. Conferences are useful for several reasons. First, the persistent reiteration of these vital global issues is necessary to bring about real action. Secondly, they energize the groups promoting these issues, on whose advocacy the world’s well-being may depend. Thirdly, many leaders are persuaded into commitments which can be monitored if efforts for improvements are not maintained. Finally, where else in the public realm can world issues be discussed with so much passion and knowledge?