Little wind blows at UN Earth Summit

FIVE years ago this month, Rio de Janeiro was turned into a virtual armed camp to protect over 100 heads of state or government who had come to Brazil's old capital to spell out what should be done to safeguard the future of this fragile planet of ours.

There was a palpable atmosphere of urgency about the occasion, almost a Flash Gordon-like sense of having 10 days to save the Earth. It caught the public imagination at the time and seemed, through Agenda 21 - its blue-print for sustainable development - to chart a new course for the planet.

Security is tight in New York, too, even without the presence of the tanks and armoured cars which were so evident in Rio. With over 60 world leaders to protect, the city's police department is taking no chances, so there are marksmen and sniffer dogs, road closures and other precautions.

What's missing is anything approaching the "spirit of Rio". It is almost as if the process of establishing a global partnership for sustainable development - which everyone says is needed - has run out of steam. Yet the environmental indicators, particularly on climate change, remain quite alarming.

The Earth Summit in 1992 was officially called the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED for short). It inaugurated two major conventions, on bio-diversity and climate change, and secured many other important commitments.

It was also great fun. Something like 17,000 NGO (non-governmental organisation) representatives descended on UNCED or, rather, its parallel event, Global Forum `92, which took over one of the city's parks and turned it into a colourful circus.

The UN General Assembly Special Session to assess what progress, if any, has been made since the great gathering in Rio five years ago, trades under a rather unfortunate acronym - UNGASS - which may even be symbolic of the amount of hollow rhetoric it is already generating.

Media interest is also limited. While Rio was a frenzied jamboree of 9,000 accredited print, radio and television journalists, only a tenth of this admittedly record number had been processed in New York as of yesterday morning, according to the UN's media accreditation unit.

The opening day of "Earth Summit+5" did not even make the ABC television network's main evening news programme (slogan: "More Americans get their news from ABC News than from any other source").

Yet the first session fairly bristled with world leaders delivering their views, including Germany's Chancellor Helmut Kohl, President Jacques Chirac of France and Britain's Prime Minister, Tony Blair. Perhaps the US networks are holding out for President Clinton's appearance tomorrow.

If the bland opening speech by his Vice-President, Mr Al Gore, was a foretaste of what's to come, it seems improbable that Mr Clinton will serve Lip a sizzling menu. Indeed, it has become apparent that the US is reluctant to enter into any new commitments which would have domestic political repercussions.

Take the novel proposal from the EU to impose a tax on currently tax-free aviation fuel and use the revenue to help developing countries achieve sustainable development.

This is anathema to the Americans because of a recent US Senate resolution barring financial support for the UN if it approves any form of taxation.

Yet the money must be found somewhere. With Overseas Development Assistance by the industrialised countries down from an average of 0.34 per cent of GNP in 1992 to 0.25 per cent today, it is hardly surprising that the world's poorest countries seriously doubt the commitment of their rich counterparts.

Environmental groups represented here are suspicious of a proposal put forward by Germany (with the support of Brazil, Singapore and South Africa) to restructure the faltering UN Environment Programme (UNEP). The idea is to create a World Environment Organisation, on the model of the World Trade Organisation.

Meanwhile, the world is faced with a major imponderable - the potential effects on the environment of the intensified globalisation of international trade since Rio. Even the OECD has conceded that its impact may effectively "swamp" environmental improvements.