Key talks on Earth Summit 2 kick off in Indonesia

Tuesday, May 28, 2002
By Dean Yates, Reuters

JAKARTA, Indonesia — The United Nations on Monday opened a vital meeting in Indonesia where 6,000 delegates will try to bridge differences before an August summit that aims to cut poverty while saving the environment.
Some officials fear the World Summit on Sustainable Development, opening in South Africa in August and dubbed Earth Summit 2, will be a failure unless talks on Indonesia's resort island of Bali achieve clear commitments.

Already, environmentalists have expressed pessimism much will be achieved during two weeks of talks and accuse the United States, which is not sending anyone of cabinet rank to the ministerial meetings, of being a key obstacle. "The players are a very long way apart in terms of reaching any significant agreement," said Ian Willmore, senior press officer from Friends of the Earth. "If (Bali) doesn't work, then it means the Earth Summit won't work. In a nutshell, the U.S. wants ... to avoid signing up to binding international agreements on quite a wide range of areas on which other people might want to see progress.''

Much of the tough dealing is expected to take place from June 5 to 7 when hundreds of ministers from a range of portfolios, including the environment, sit down at the negotiating table.

The U.N. summit in Johannesburg will run from Aug. 26 to Sept. 4 and falls a decade after the landmark Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, where a blueprint was agreed for balancing the world's economic and social needs with its environmental resources.

Most objectives adopted at Rio have not been met, the United Nations said recently, adding it was counting on the more than 100 heads of state who will meet in Johannesburg to jumpstart the process.

Emil Salim, a former Indonesian environment minister who heads the U.N. committee paving the way for Johannesburg, played down concerns preparations were unfocused and behind schedule. "I sense a mood of optimism, a sense of getting conclusions (at Bali) so that Johannesburg will be successful," said Salim.

The Bali meeting follows three rounds of earlier talks.

JUST ABOUT EVERYTHING ON THE TABLE

Broadly, the draft plan calls for cutting poverty, improving sanitation and access to electricity, preserving natural ecosystems, changing harmful patterns of consumption, and focusing special attention on impoverished Africa.

Some targets were agreed at the U.N. Millennium Summit, which called for halving by 2015 the number of people living on less than $1 a day and who have no access to clean water. Johannesburg is supposed to ensure targets like that are met.

But potentially divisive issues include climate change, with Washington in the spotlight because of its rejection of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on cost grounds. This commits developed countries to cut greenhouse gas emissions linked to global warming. Kyoto is included in the draft action plan, but with a note that consensus has yet to be reached on its implementation.

Other contentious areas include reducing export subsidies in developed countries and deciding how globalization can benefit the poor.

Environmental groups have voiced concern the United States and oil-exporting nations will try to scale down the action plan because of fears about the impact it could have on business and profits.

Nongovernmental organizations said Washington's decision not to not send anyone of ministerial rank to Bali showed it was paying little serious attention to the process. Undersecretary of State for Global Affairs Paula Dobriansky will lead the U.S. delegation at the ministerial talks.

The United Nations recently put the number of people living in poverty at 1.2 billion, while at least 1.1 billion lacked access to safe drinking water and 2 billion go without energy.

The Bali meeting is also expected to draft the outlines of a political declaration to be endorsed by leaders in Johannesburg. The third plank of Johannesburg will be developing so-called partnership initiatives, where any groups, such as governments, businesses, or NGOs, can push implementation forward on specific undertakings without the need for global consensus on details.

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