Archived press release

Earth summit betrayal

3 September 2002

After nine days of talks, the Earth Summit is now drawing to a close. We have analysed the final text and found precisely TWO new and specific targets in the whole thing:

1. To halve by 2015 the proportion of people who…do not have access to basic sanitation” (para 7)
2. Establishment of marine protected networks … including representative networks by 2012 (para 31c).

And that’s it. In every other case, existing commitments are simply reaffirmed, watered down, or trashed altogether. Paragraph 19(e) contains the disgraceful promotion of “clean” fossil fuels, a betrayal of the Kyoto Protocol to combat climate change. Paragraph 22 talks about dangerous chemicals but is only “AIMING to achieve by 2020 that chemicals are PRODUCED IN WAYS that lead to the minimisation of significant adverse effects on human health” (!). Paragraph 42 talks of “a significant reduction in the CURRENT RATE OF LOSS of biological diversity”, a clear step backwards from the UN agreement on biological diversity made just 6 months ago. Paragraph 5(a) promises to “URGE the developed countries … to make concrete efforts towards the target of 0.7% of GNP as official development assistance”. We could go on, but the list of weasel words and lost promises is nearly endless.

Friends of the Earth International strongly supports the idea of the Earth Summit. We desperately need binding international agreements to fight environmental threats to our common home, and such agreements require negotiations, open to media and civil society. But the so-called “Plan of Implementation” agreed at this summit does not begin to deal with the scale of the problems the world faces. It is a betrayal of millions of poor and vulnerable people and their communities around the world.

The chance to hold back the tide of damage caused by the dominant neoliberal economic ideology that dominates the developed world and institutions such as the World Trade Organisation has been lost. Instead around 200 references to the WTO and its rules have been included in the Action Programme. Even campaign victories such as preventing a commitment to make multilateral environmental agreements subject to WTO rules remain partial - since further discussions on this issue will now take place at the next WTO Ministerial in Cancun, Mexico.

One significant success was achieved by Friends of the Earth, after close discussions with the South African and other Government delegations – the inclusion of language which would promote intergovernmental agreements on corporate behaviour and accountability. However, the US is still attempting to undermine these words though manoeuvres around a “Letter of Interpretation”. FOEI will now be working for a UN conference on corporate accountability by the end of 2003, an objective advanced by the draft Political Declaration produced by the South African Government which seeks to place the issue before the UN General Assembly.

FOEI will now be taking its campaign for corporate accountability and for the primacy of environmental protection social solidarity over free market ideology to the Cancun WTO Conference. See you all there!

Commenting, Charles Secrett, Director of Friends of the Earth, said:

“The Earth Summit should have been about protecting the environment and fighting poverty and social destruction. Instead it has been hijacked by free market ideology, by a backward-looking US administration, and by the global corporations that help keep reactionary politicians in business.

So, after nine days of waffle and horse-trading we have only two significant new targets to protect the environment and fight poverty and deprivation. This is a betrayal of the millions of people around the world who looked to this Summit for real action. It is an indictment of the world leaders who came to this Summit and lacked the vision and commitment to face the scale of the world’s problems. Nothing could make us more determined to fight on for the environmental action the world needs. See you all in Mexico!”

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Published by Friends of the Earth Trust