No agenda for the Second Earth Summit

June 2002

No Agenda could be prepared in Bali for the Second Earth Summit

Recently ended the Conference attended by 114 ministers for the protection
of the World Natural Environment. They had intended to prepare the draft of
the Agenda for the Second Earth Summit. The Conference took place in the
island Bali (Indonesia). It had been expected that the exchange of views
would produced a document with objectives to attain in relation to the need
of reducing the poverty all over the world and about the protection of the
natural environment everywhere.

It was assumed that the Second Earth Summit would be the real start of the
Sustainable Development against the prevailing developmentalism that has
continuously disregarded the need to control actions that deteriorate the
natural environments. Many participants have thought that the Conference in
Johannesburg - ten years after the First Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro -
would confirm the urgent need of Agenda 21. "...blueprint for action that
calls for improving the quality of life on Earth by using natural resources
more efficiently, protecting global commons, better managing human
settlements, and reducing pollutants and chemical waste".

It did not happen what it was expected. The President of the Conference in
Bali, Emil Salim - previous minister of the Natural Environment of
Indonesia - expressed his disappointment saying that sufficient goodwill
was missing in several participants. He commented that "...till the last
moment we try to reduce the differences" and added that it was evident how
seriously divided is the world when the interpretations of the poor
countries about the future of humankind are confronted to the
interpretations of the rich countries.

One of the main reasons of disagreement is the position of the
representatives of U.S.A. who claimed that the aid for development was
conditioned by the efforts against corruption that would be implemented by
every country. Another difficulty was the demand of developing countries
asking the rich nations to open their markets to trade and transference of
technology. Instead of an open discussion on these and other questions,
Lynn Schloesser, member of the US delegation declared that his country
would do nothing beyond previous offers made in the two previous meetings
hold in Monterrey and Doha. He even claimed that "Commercial and financial
representatives from all over the world have agreed a Program and it must
be allowed its continuation without interferences."

Salim openly recognized that the failure in Bali means that the Summit in
Johannesburg will be necessarily difficult, however he still said that
"...it is not the end of the road, and is not yet a disaster." ONU remains
claiming that the Second World Summit must generate clear objectives,
concrete measures and dispositions and precise commitments in time.
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The Path to the Johannesburg Summit

Curtis Runyan
Magnar Norderhaug

World leaders will meet August 26 for the World Summit in Johannesburg,
South Africa, to address once again, the multitude of environmental threats
destabilizing the planet. The question at the top of the agenda: what
progress have countries made in the past 30 years to halt environmental
hemorrhaging, and where will we go from here?

In the 1960s, many people around the world began to face critical
environmental issues in their communities: forests were being destroyed by
acid rain, rivers poisoned beyond use by industrial wastes, cities choked
by pollution from automobiles and industry, Rural farmers hit by famines,
and once-rich resources reserves wearing thin.
        A few scientists began to speak out about the global
interconnectedness of these problems, and they warned that we humans were
quickly becoming victims of our own success-that we now had the ability to
entirely despoil the earth that sustains us.
        In 1972, at the U.N. Conference on the Human Environment in
Stockholm, Sweden, delegates from around the world came together to address
these warnings. while the conference produced a series of recommendations
for government action, environmental turmoil continued.
        Twenty years later, leading up to the U.N. Earth Summit in Rio in
1992, the Royal Society of London and the U.S. National Academy of
sciences-two of the world's most prominent scientific bodies-issued a joint
declaration calling for action. "The future of our planet is in the
balance. Sustainable development can be achieved, but only if irreversible
degradation of the environment can be halted in time: The next 30 years may
be crucial."
        The scientific warning have continued to grow in severity and
urgency, but progress on making change since the Stockholm conference has
remained painstakingly slow. And new international challenges-terrorist
attacks, military responses, and mounting tensions around the world-have
threatened to sidetrack the building momentum to address chronic
environmental problems. At the forthcoming Johannesburg World Summit,
environmentalists will aim to refocus the world on some of the most
critical threats to global security. That will mean seriously responding to
environmental tragedies and rapidly building on hard-won gains of the past
four decades, which are summarized in the following chronology.

1962
Marine biologist Rachel Carson publishes Silent Spring, calling attention
to the threat of toxic chemicals to people and the environment

1967
The Torrey Canyon oil tanker hits ground and spills 117,000 tons of oil
into the North Sea around Cornwall in the United Kingdom. The massive local
pollution helps prompt legal changes to make ship owners liable for all
spills.

1968
Paul Ehrlich publishes The Population Bomb describing the ecological
threats of a rapidly growing population

1968
Experts from around the world met for the first time at the U.N. Biosphere
Conference to discuss global environmental problems, including pollution,
resource loss, and wetlands destruction

1970
The first Earth Day is held in the United States. Millions of people gather
around the country to demonstrate against environmental abuse, sparking the
creation of landmark environmental laws including the Endangered Species
Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act.

1971
2,200 scientists, gathered for a conference in Menton, France, present a
message to the U.N. stressing the need for environmental action. "Solutions
to the actual problems of pollution, hunger, overpopulation, and war may be
more simple to find than the formula for the common effort through which
the search for the solutions must occur, but we must make a beginning".

1972
Economist Barbara Ward and microbiologist René Dubos publish Only One Earth
for the Stockholm Conference. The book warns that human actions are
undermining the Earth's ability to support us.

1972
Participants from 114 countries come to Stockholm, Sweden for the U.N.
Conference on the Human Environment. Only one environment minister attends,
as most countries do not yet have environment agencies. The delegates adopt
a set of 109 specific recommendations for government action and push for
the creation of the U.N. Environment Programme.

1972
The Club of Rome, a group of economists, scientists and business leaders
from 25 countries The Limits to Growth, which predicts that the Earth's
limits will be reached in 100 years at current rates of population growth,
resource depletion, and pollution generation.

1972
Researchers report that three-quarters of the acid rain falling in Sweden
is caused by pollution originating in other countries.

1973
Women living in Himalayan villages in Northern India begin the Chipko
movement to protect trees from clearing by commercial logging, which has
begun to cause severe deforestation, soil erosion, and flooding in the
region

1973
Arab country members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries
(OPEC) reduce oil exports to Europe and initiate an oil embargo against the
United States for its support of Israel in a war with Egypt and Syria.
Ineffective policies to reduce oil dependence leave industrial countries
vulnerable to Iran's 1979 revolution and subsequent reduction in oil
production sparking a second energy crisis.

1973
The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna
and Flora (CITES) restricts trade in roughly 5,000 animal species and
25,000 plant species that are near or threatened with extinction. While the
treaty has a broad mandate, inadequate enforcement in the following years
allows a billion dollar black market in wildlife trade to flourish.
1973
The Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships (MARPOL)
restricts the release of pollutants from ocean-going vessels. It regulates
dumping and accidental spills of oil, garbage, plastics, and sewage.

1974
Chemists Sherwood Portland and Mario Molina find that chlorofluorocarbons
(CFCs) can destroy ozone molecules and may threaten to erode the Earth's
protective ozone layer

1976
The U.N. Conference on Human Settlements in Vancouver British Columbia,
Canada, drafts 65 recommendations for countries about how to best to
provide shelter. Conference participants agree that adequate shelter is a
basic human right.

1977
Indigenous protestors in the Philippines force the World Bank to withdraw
the financial backing for the construction of four large dams along the
Chico River. The effort to block the projects energizes a global movement
to protect rivers and resist new dam building

1979
The reactor core at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in
Pennsylvania partially melts down and releases radiation into the
surrounding communities.

1979
The Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution helps combat acid
rain and regulate pollution traveling across national borders. A number of
protocols have been added to this "framework" treaty, which regulate
emissions of nitrogen oxides, sulfur, heavy metals, persistent organic
pollutants, and several other pollutants

1981
The AIDS virus is detected in clinical studies. Within the following two
decades the virus has rapidly spread throughout the world and has killed
millions of people and undermined development efforts in many countries.

1982
Mexico and other developing and Eastern bloc countries come close to
defaulting on $250 billion in international loans sparking a debt crisis.
Lenders extend additional loans to these countries to prevent default,
setting the stage for future debt disasters

1982
The Law of the Sea provides a comprehensive framework for ocean use and
contains provisions on ocean conservation, pollution prevention and
protecting and restoring species populations

1982
The UN Environment Programme organizes a special Stockholm + 10 conference
in Nairobi. The attendees agree to a declaration expressing "serious
concern about the present state of the environment," and establish an
independent commission to craft a "global agenda for change", paving the
way for the release of Our Common Future in 1987

1983
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. National Academy of
Sciences publish reports finding that the build-up of carbon dioxide and
other "greenhouse gases" in the Earth's atmosphere will lead to global
warming.

1984
An estimated 10,000 people are killed and many more are injured when Union
Carbide's pesticide plant in Bhopal, India leaks 40 tons of Methyl
Isocyanate gas and sends a cloud of poison into the surrounding city of 1
million.

1985
Scientists discover a "hole" in the Earth's ozone layer, as data from a
British Antartic Survey show that January ozone levels dropped 10 percent
below those of the previous year.

1986
One of the four reactors at the Soviet Union's Chernobyl nuclear power
plant explodes after a botched "safety test" and completely melts down. The
explosion sends radioactive particles as far away as Western Europe,
exposing hundreds of thousands of people to high levels of radiation.

1987
The World Commission on Environment and Development publishes Our Common
Future (The Brundtland Report) which concludes that preserving the
environment, addressing global inequities and fighting poverty could fuel,
not hinder, economic growth by promoting sustainable development. "Attempts
to maintain social and ecological stability through old approaches to
development and environmental protection will increase instability."

1987
The Montreal Protocol, which has been strengthened since its inception, now
requires industrial countries to phase out production of a number of
ozone-depleting chemicals by 1996, and developing countries by 2010.

1987
The Basel Convention controls movement of hazardous wastes across borders
and now outlaws exports of wastes from developed to developing countries
for final disposal.

1988
Biologist E. O. Wilson publishes Biodiversity, a collection of reports from
the National Forum on BioDiversity in the United States. The book details
how humans are rapidly undermining the Earth's ability to support its
diversity of species.

1988
Brazilian labor, and environmental leader, Chico Mendes is murdered by
rural cattle ranchers. Representing 70,000 rubber tappers, Mendes had
advocated using Brasil's forests sustainably as extractive reserves rather
than clearing them for timber and grazing. The killing brings international
attention to the widespread liquidation of tropical rainforests around the
world.

1989
An inexperienced crewman runs the Exxon Valdez oil tanker onto a reef in
Alaska's Prince William Sound, dumping 76,000 tons of crude oil. The spill,
the largest ever in the United States, covers more than 5,100 kilometers of
pristine coastline with oil and kills more than 250,000 birds.

1991
The Iraqi army, retreating from its occupation of Kuwait, destroys tankers,
oil terminals and oil wells, setting many on fire. The fighting and
sabotage leak approximately 1,25 million tons of oil, the worst oil spill
in history.

1992
Bringing together 1,575 scientists from 69 countries, the Union of
Concerned Scientists issues its World Scientists' Warning to Humanity,
which states that "human beings and the natural world are on a collision
course".

1992
The Convention on Biological Diversity mandates that countries formulate
strategies to protect biodiversity and that industrial countries help
implement these strategies in developing countries.

1992
Most countries and 117 heads of state participate in the groundbreaking
U.N. Conference on Environment and Development, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
(The Earth Summit). Participants adopt Agenda 21, a voluminous blueprint
for action that calls for improving the quality of life on Earth by using
natural resources more efficiently, protecting global commons, better
managing human settlements, and reducing pollutants and chemical waste.

1992
The Convention on Climate Change sets non-binding CO2 reduction goals for
industrial countries (to 1990 levels by 2000). The final treaty calls for
avoiding human alteration of the climate but falls far short of
expectations, largely due to lack of support from the United States.

1994
The World Conservation Union (IUCN) publishes a revised Red List of
endangered and threatened species, creating a world standard for gauging
threats to biodiversity. Current versions list 11,000 threatened or extinct
species out of about 1.75 million documented species (The Red List
estimates that the total number of species on Earth is about 13 to 14
million).

1994
183 countries send delegates to the Conference on Population and
Development in Cairo, Egypt, where they set up a decades-long plan to
stabilize and reduce population growth-a plan that emphasizes the
importance of women's education and access to reproductive health care.

1995
Writer and activist Ken Saro-Wiwa is hanged in Nigeria for leading the
Ogoni people's protests against environmental destruction of their lands by
Royal Dutch/Shell, Chevron, and other international oil companies.

1995
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC), a group of hundreds
of prominent climate scientists assembled by the U.N. in 1988, releases a
report concluding that "the balance of evidence suggests that there is a
discernible human influence on global climate".

1995
Representatives from 180 countries meet at the Conference on Women in
Beijing, china, to draft an agenda to improve the lives of women and girls.
The resolution includes calls for taking action to reduce soil erosion,
deforestation, and other forms of environmental degradation which often
leave women and their families impoverished.

1996
Theo Colborn, John Myers, and Dianne Dumanoski publish Our Stolen Future,
which warns of reproductive threats to animals-including humans-due to the
release of billions of pounds of synthetic chemicals into the environment,
many of which mimic and disrupt natural hormones.

1997
Forest Fires around the world burn more than 5 million hectares of forests
and other lands. More tropical forests are burned in 1997 than in any other
year in recorded history

1997
The Kyoto Protocol strengthens the 1992 Climate Change Convention by
mandating reductions of 6 to 8 percent from 1990 emission levels by 2008 to
2012 for industrial countries. But the protocol's controversial
emissions-trading scheme and debates over the role of developing countries
cloud its future.

1998
The ozone hole over Antarctica grows to 25 million square kilometers (the
previous record, set in 1993, was 3 million square kilometers)

1999
Massive protests in Seatle help shut down international trade negotiations
and spotlight the environmental and social shortcomings of the World Trade
Organization.

2000
The Biosafety Protocol implements a more precautionary approach to trading
genetically altered crops and organisms, and requires exporters to receive
prior consent from destination countries before shipping genetically
altered crops.

2000
The Treaty on persistent Organic Pollutants requires the complete phase out
of nine persistent, highly toxic pesticides and limits the use of several
other chemicals, including dioxins, furans and PCBs

2001
U.S, President George W. Bush announces that the United States will not
ratify the Kyoto Protocol, saying that the country cannot afford to reduce
CO2 emissions

2001
The $3 billion Humane Genome Project reports that the human gene count is
only about 30,000-about the same as that of a weed or a mouse-not 100,000
as expected. News of the finding adds to the concerns about the wisdom of
current efforts at genetic manipulation, including inserting genes into
food crops and re-engineering animals or humans.

2001
The IPPC releases a new report citing "new and stronger evidence that most
of the observed warming of the last 50 years is attributable to human
activities". The new study projects that at current rates, temperatures
will increase by 1.4 to 5.8 degrees by 2100.
Received on Tue Jun 25 01:37:25 2002