Next weekend, over 100 world leaders will meet in Johannesburg for the UN World Summit on Sustainable Development, writes Frank McDonald. One thing is certain, "business as usual" is not a viable option
Ten years ago in Rio de Janeiro, the largest gathering of world leaders in history adopted a global plan of action to put Planet Earth on course to achieve the elusive goal of "sustainable development" - in effect, decoupling economic growth and environmental degradation.
Next weekend, a decade after the first Earth Summit, over 100 world leaders, as well as thousands of officials, environment and development activists, business lobbyists and journalists, will be flying to Johannesburg for the UN World Summit on Sustainable Development, billed as the second Earth Summit, or "Rio+10".
The Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, will be among them, at least for a few days towards the end. So will the Minister for the Environment, Mr Cullen, and the Minister of State for Overseas Development Co-operation, Mr Tom Kitt, plus a 35-strong delegation of officials and NGO (non-governmental organisation) representatives.
At Johannesburg, the principal item on the agenda will be to seek solid commitments from the rich, industrialised countries to implement the pledges they made in Rio on a whole range of environment and development issues. If that happens, the summit will be a success. If it doesn't, no PR smokescreen will fudge its failure.
Mr Cullen takes some comfort from the fact that a 200-strong US delegation will be led by Secretary of State Colin Powell, who recently described sustainable development as a "security imperative". Like many others, Mr Cullen sees it as essential that the US "signs up" for any implementation programme; otherwise, it would have no meaning.
The omens were not good, at least until recent weeks. Previously, the US had been accused by Friends of the Earth International (FoEI) of opposing any new commitments emerging from Johannesburg. FoEI even branded the US, Canada and Australia as an "axis of environmental evil" for their obstructionist tactics in the preparatory negotiations.
For whatever reason, the US has become more engaged in the process in recent weeks. Though President Bush will not be present, at least some elements of his administration, notably Mr Pelew, are concerned that the US, having already reneged on Kyoto, would be seen to play a positive role at the summit.
Until lately, there was some doubt that all of the European Union heads of government would go to Johannesburg. Given that the EU regards itself as a moral leader on environment and development issues, even as "the light of the world in this arena, that would have been politically fatal. They are all now going to the summit, however.
The disastrous flooding in central Europe this week, threatening to engulf such historic cities as Salzburg, Prague and Dresden, will have brought home to politicians the catastrophic - and costly - damage caused by extreme weather events; these were precisely the type of consequences of climate change predicted more than a decade ago.
Similarly, the brown pollution cloud up to three kilometres deep that currently hangs over east Asia may be taken as a dire warning of much worse to come if rapidly developing countries such as China pursue the same path of unsustainable growth that the rich, developed nations have followed since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution.
In the face of such evidence, the thesis advanced by Danish statistician Born Romberg in his controversial book, The Sceptical Environmentalist, that nearly everything is getting better in the best of all possible worlds, appears to be not only increasingly threadbare but also suffused by a breath-taking level of smugness and complacency.
Ten years ago, as Greenpeace has noted, Rio was a landmark in raising awareness. For the first time, world leaders faced the fact that aspects of industrial development - trade, technology and the power of corporations and financial institutions - were causing degradation of the environment and the lives of billions of the world's poor."
A decade later, there is general agreement that neither environment nor development has fared well. Indeed, according to the Worldwide Institute, a non-profit Washington-based policy research organisation, in its report State of the World 2002, nearly all global environmental indicators continue to be headed in the wrong direction.
In Rio, it was agreed that the greenhouse gases blamed for causing climate change must be cut. But today, as Greenpeace has said, global carbon dioxide emissions are rising and climate change worsening faster than we predicted. Experts estimate that by 2010, CO2 emissions will be up 48 per cent on 1990 levels.
"The Kyoto Protocol has agreed cuts, but these are only a fraction of what's needed to reduce global warming, and even these have been undermined by the world's biggest CO2 emitter, the US, refusing to take part.
Meanwhile, governments subsidise conventional energy sources, mainly fossil fuels, with $250-300 billion a year."
In Rio, world leaders pledged to protect the biological diversity of the Earth's plants and animals. Today, ancient forests - home to around two- thirds of the world's land-based species - are disappearing faster than ever. Indeed, according to the World Resources Institute, more tropical rain-forest was lost in the 1990s than in the 1980s. The Rio summit also highlighted the urgent need for finance - around $125 billion a year in aid from industrial countries - to fund Agenda 21, its sustainable development programme for the 21st century. In fact, foreign aid fell from $69 billion in 1992 to $53 billion in 2000 while the developing world's debt has risen by 34 per cent.
Even as military budgets have skyrocketed, one fifth of the world's people still live on less than a dollar a day, according to official UN figures. More than 40 per cent suffer water shortages, a fact which now accounts for 10 per cent of diseases in developing countries, where infant mortality is 10 times higher than in the industrialised world.
"Developed countries ... have not gone far enough in fulfilling the promises they made in Rio - either to protect their own environments or to help the developing world defeat poverty", said the UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan. And he reminded them of their responsibilities to rehabilitate the Earth, describing it as "our one and only planet".
WEHAB is the acronym that denotes the five key areas on which progress must be made - Water and sanitation, Energy, Health, Agricultural productivity and Biodiversity. Only by dealing with these issues will Johannesburg be seen to tackle problems arising from poverty, unsustainable consumption and environmental degradation.
According to Mr Cullen, there is a reasonable chance of reaching agreement on a water programme for developing countries, particularly in Africa. But he believes it must be extended to include sanitation as well, since the two are so inextricably linked. "A fierce effort is being made to ensure the environment is not sidelined," Mr Cullen said. The energy issue is likely to prove more difficult, which is why Greenpeace sees it as the litmus test for the second Earth Summit - in particular, the willingness of rich, industrialised countries to provide poor, developing nations with clean, sustainable alternatives to burning fossil fuels, thereby helping to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
"With energy demand set to explode in countries such as India, China, Brazil and South Africa, where more than two billion people - a third of the planet - don't even have electricity, it's crucial that renewables such as wind and solar, and not fossil fuels and nuclear power, are the chosen energy source", according to Greenpeace. But whether Johannesburg will be able to recapture the spirit of the first Earth Summit in Rio and restore the momentum felt so palpably in its immediate aftermath 10 years ago is still an open question, even with just a week to go.
One thing is abundantly clear - a continuation of "business as usual" will get us nowhere.