Archived press release

Five year review of earth summit reveals "scandalous betrayal" of rio promises

27 June 1997

The second Earth Summit has failed to agree the clear vision needed to propel the world towards achieving just and sustainable societies. Instead, entrenched national interests have blocked debates characterised by horse trading, point scoring and posturing. The failure to agree on how to take the Rio agenda forward has taken place in the face of clear indications that all of the main environment and development indicators are heading in the wrong direction.

Kevin Dunion, Chairperson of Friends of the Earth International, said:

"This summit reveals a scandalous betrayal of the promises raised at Rio. After 5 years we have seen little progress in implementing Agenda 21. And now after two weeks of negotiations we have an utterly shameful outcome from Earth Summit Two. The political will demonstrated here is entirely inadequate to meeting the challenges of sustainable development."

A common pattern has been apparent throughout the negotiations:

The United States, Canada, Australia were prominent amongst those who have rejected international commitments and concrete targets, which conflicted with their current domestic policies and perceived short term economic self-interest.

The G77 countries, while justifiablly demanding new and increased international aid flows, refused to acknowledge that their own national policies and priorities should be amended towards a more sustainable development path and in some cases have sought to weaken commitments made at Rio.

The European Union, has played a positive role in suggesting some modest new initiatives, but this has obscured the fact that since Rio it has failed to meet existing commitments to, for example, cut CO2 emissions to 1990 levels and has actually reduced foreign aid by 25%.
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The consequences of the failure of this meeting are clear. The world is no nearer to agreement on targets and timetables to reduce the emission of the gases causing global climate change, undoubtedly the single greatest threat to the global environment.

No new money is being proposed and even attempts to fix a date to halt the decline in foreign aid have been refused. The deadlock over financial aid therefore remains a block to the success of future negotiations. Better conditions for technology transfer, a major demand of the developing countries,has sufffered a similar fate.

Instead of coming up with concrete actions to implement existing agreements to save the world's forests, less than four per cent of which are properly protected, governments have waged a pointless war of words over whether or not to negotiate a new forest convention.

Any honest assessment would conclude that there has been a scandalous lack of progress by national governments. This contrasts with the innovative activities and popular momentum provided by NGOs and local communities which UN Secretary General Kofi Annan praised on the final day of the Summit. NGOs now demand more effective input into the UN process to ensure that the initiatives they have developed are fed into negotiations and are seeking better national government support for their activities which contribute to meeting the Rio agreements.

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Published by Friends of the Earth Trust