News from Johannesburg (2)

  EU leads pledge to set goals for renewable energy

Paul Brown and John Vidal in Johannesburg

Earth summit's weak words spark 30-nation revolt

Dismay at the weakness of the Earth summit's outcome spilled into the
final plenary session in Johannesburg last week when European Union
delegates led a protest against the failure to agree global targets
for increasing renewable energy production.

The leaders of more than 30 government delegations promised to go
further than the summit declaration that renewable energy's share of
global energy production should rise. They agreed to conduct regular
reviews of progress towards ambitious targets at the national,
regional and "hopefully at a global level".

"Such targets are important tools to guide investment and develop the
market for renewable energy technologies," their statement said.
Support came from all 15 EU states, Iceland, Norway, Switzerland,
Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Romania, Slovakia, Brazil,
Argentina, Uganda, Mexico, and other Latin American, Caribbean and
Pacific states.

America's isolation on countering climate change was further
underlined last week when its only remaining ally, Australia, shifted
ground. The prime minister, John Howard, who had insisted that
Australia would not ratify the Kyoto protocol to cut greenhouse gas
emissions, said he would reconsider its position.

Another last-minute change was the restoration of a clause on human
rights whose original wording was resisted by the US, the Vatican and
Islamic states. At their insistence the clause omitted the right of
women to contraception and abortion, and hailed the superiority of
local cultural and religious values. The US stepped back when it was
pointed out that the clause would give tacit approval to such widely
condemned local traditions as genital mutilation.

An attempt by the US to dilute provisions on corporate accountability
and regulation was rejected, after objections by Ethiopia and Norway.

The US secretary of state, Colin Powell, was jeered and slow
handclapped during his speech. A wave of anti-American feeling was
unleashed when he blamed the land reforms of Zimbabwe's president,
Robert Mugabe, for pushing millions of people "to the brink of
starvation".

After long wrangling, agreement was finally reached on the political
text for the summit, originally written by the conference chairman,
the South African president Thabo Mbeki, which was also tough in the
area of corporate accountability. This was seen as a victory for
environmental groups in their campaign to curb the power of
multinationals. But these groups remained angry that so few targets
and timetables for action reached the final text. NGOs said that,
although the summit's action plan agreed to move towards phasing out
export subsidies, the world's governments had failed to grasp the
urgency of opening up agricultural markets to developing countries.

The Guardian Weekly 12-9-2002, page 5

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