- At the end of its first week the World Summit is teetering
on the brink of failure, with 14 key issues still in dispute and tempers
beginning to fray. Delegates are visibly bracing themselves for disappointment
next week, when 109 heads of state are expected to arrive in Johannesburg.
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- In negotiations into the early hours of Friday morning,
the European Union (EU) proposed that 14 topics in the draft action plan
on which officials had failed to agree should be left to ministers to decide.
This, however, has not been accepted by other countries.
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- The disputed issues included the setting of targets for
improving sanitation and increasing renewable energy, which are both opposed
by the United States. There is also deep disagreement between the EU and
the US on whether arrangements to ensure free trade should overrule agreements
to protect the environment.
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- According to some reports, this caused the EU delegation
to withdraw from talks in the middle of the night. Officials from the British
delegation denied that there had been a "walk out", but accepted
that EU negotiators had been absent for a short period.
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- Progress was "so damn difficult", one insider
said, that the EU was "shaking the tree". A group of environmental
and aid groups including Friends of the Earth, Oxfam and WWF (formerly
the World Wildlife Fund) are also pulling out of the talks on trade because
they are so dissatisfied at the pro-globalisation agenda.
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- Two agreements
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- Another issue still in dispute here is the commitment
to cut the pollution that causes climate change, agreed in Kyoto in 1997.
There are even fears for targets to protect wildlife and the 'precautionary
principle' governing possible environmental damage, which were both agreed
at the Earth Summit in Rio ten years ago.
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- Environmentalists fear that the EU's tough overnight
stance is a final fling before it submits to an "abject compromise".
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- Instead of being 'Rio plus ten' as it was originally
called, the summit could end up as 'Rio minus ten', they say. However this
verdict is not accepted by official delegations, which still hope for modest
progress.
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- Jeffrey Sachs, special adviser to the UN secretary, Kofi
Annan, was not hopeful. "I don't think it is right to say Rio minus
ten, but I do think we are not making the breakthroughs," he told
New Scientist. "I'm not prejudging the outcome, but I'm worried."
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- Only two agreements have been reached so far in Johannesburg,
but both have been dismissed by environmentalists as weak. One is to reduce
pollution from toxic chemicals in a way that would "lead to the minimisation
of significant adverse effects" by 2020. The other is to restore "where
possible" depleted fisheries by 2015.
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- http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992744
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