- JOHANNESBURG - The biggest
conference on the Earth's future got off to a sombre start in here on Monday
with warnings that the planet's ability to sustain human life is shrinking
while most of its six billion people are mired in poverty.
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- The UN Earth Summit got under way under iron security.
However, on the other side of the city, hundreds of angry African farmers
and subsistence fishermen demonstrated in protest at their dwindling access
to the land and over their depleted catches, a result of over-fishing by
industrial trawlers. Twelve Greenpeace activists were charged with breaching
security at Africa's only nuclear power plant after taking inflatable boats
to the facility near Cape Town at the weekend, scaling a building and unfurling
anti-nuclear banners. They appear in court again on Friday.
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- Mustering thousands of people, the UN World Summit on
Sustainable Development kicked off to appeals for action on alleviating
poverty and protecting the environment. "Poverty, underdevelopment,
inequality within and among countries, together with the worsening global
ecological crisis, sum up the dark shadow under which most of the world
lives," warned South African President Thabo Mbeki, who is chairing
the summit.
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- But, he said: "For the first time in human history,
human society possesses the capacity, the knowledge and the resources to
eradicate poverty and underdevelopment". The 104 heads of state and
government, who have said they will attend the summit's climax September
2-4 must produce a political declaration that is "an honest pledge"
for change, Mbeki urged.
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- Klaus Toepfer, executive director of the UN Environment
Programme (UNEP), said that if the world wanted to address its worsening
environmental crisis, it could not turn its back on pervasive poverty.
Scientists have a long catalogue of evidence about the planet's environmental
problems. They range from vanishing species, deforestation and over-fished
seas to soil erosion, water pollution and climate change caused by the
reckless burning of fossil fuels.
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- David Nabarro, director for sustainable development and
healthy environments at the UN World Health Organisation, said governments
should consider health care to be an investment, not a cost. He said the
extra money would lead to "a six-fold increase in the value of production
and save eight million lives. Rich nations, he hoped, would provide at
least half the additional 30 billion required.
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- The 71-page action plan, the summit is working on, is
a draft of non-binding recommendations, but is important because it will
shape the world's environment agenda for the next decade. Because of that,
it has become a battleground for squabbling. It has pitched the United
States against Europe over setting a timetable for reaching key development
goals, while developing countries are demanding their rich counterparts
do more to lower trade tariffs and agricultural subsidies.
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- Diplomats from more than 30 key countries met behind
the closed doors over the weekend in a bid to bridge the differences. Britain
will press for targets and timetables to ease global poverty and seek to
"persuade" the United States to drop its resistance on the issue,
British delegation sources said. Britain wants agreement on a declaration
committing to halve by 2015 the proportion of people lacking access to
improved sanitation, a "target for increasing the global share of
new or modern renewable energy sources in primary energy supply" and
a commitment to ensuring by 2020 that chemicals are produced and used only
in environmentally-friendly ways.
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- US President Bush's administration is opposing all attempts
for anything other than voluntary, rather than binding, summit text on
matters such as aid and incentives for alternative energy.
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- http://jang.com.pk/thenews/aug2002-daily/27-08-2002/main/main13.htm
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