Earth Summit 2002 - Greenpeace

Bali, Indonesia, 29 May 2002: Ten years ago the greatest gathering of world leaders in history met at the Rio Earth Summit to discuss the state of the planet. The world was locked in a deepening environmental and social crisis and major change in consumption and production patterns was vital to make our economies sustainable. Rio resulted in a global action plan, but ten years later as heads of state prepare to meet again in August in Johannesburg for another Earth Summit, has anything changed? Are we out of the crisis -- or even closer to the brink?

Ten years ago Rio was a landmark in raised 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. Economic growth was a Holy Grail, and the gulf between North and South was widening.

Just ten industrialised countries, with less than a fifth of the world's population were discharging nearly three-quarters of the world's greenhouse gases and consuming nearly two-thirds of the world's manufactured energy resources. In the North, wasteful consumerism, dirty industry, and greed for profit had already caused pesticide poisoning, soil erosion, deforestation, air pollution, acid rain, oil spills, toxic and radioactive waste dumping.

At the time of Rio, the tragedy was that the same polluting practices were now being thrust into developing countries. As environmental standards pushed up costs in the North, corporations looked for countries where rules were lax and natural resources cheap.

Major flaws were being exposed in the existing pattern of loans to developing countries. Multilateral Development Banks, UN bodies, and bilateral aid agencies were actually putting much less money into developing countries than those countries were required to pay back. In the nine years up to 1990 the South had paid back around $45 billion a year over and above the money it had received.

Not only that, but many of those giving loans were working to open new markets for transnational corporations. Conditions attached to the money were influencing decisions in poorer countries and allowing dirty industry into their already stressed environments. Whether corrupt or just needy many Southern governments couldn't resist the cash however environmentally damaging.

Such was the scale of the crisis that the Rio Summit called for fundamental economic and political changes. Already, Chernobyl, in 1986, had punctured faith in nuclear power to provide clean fuel. Climate change had been "discovered" as a major public issue in 1988 and a new sense of urgency had dawned. With the Cold War over governments could stop worrying about a potential threat and focus on a real and immediate one -- the unsustainability of the world's current lifestyle.

Rio produced three major treaties on biodiversity, climate change and desertification, and Agenda 21 was a plan to focus governments on the environment and social equity. But ten years on few would dispute that the world is in a worst state than before. "Ten years after the 1992 Earth Summit, an assessment of the state of the world indicates that neither environment nor development has fared well," says the Worldwatch Institute, a non-profit public policy research organization, in their report State of the World 2002. "Nearly all global environmental indicators continue to be headed in the wrong direction."

And United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in a recent speech, "Developed countries in particular 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."

In Rio governments agreed that greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide released when burning fossil fuels, were fuelling climate change and must be cut. Today 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 percent 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 subsidize conventional energy sources, mainly fossil fuels with US$250-300 billion a year.

In Rio world leaders agreed to protect the diversity of the world's plants and animals. Today ancient forests, home to around two thirds of the world's land-based species are disappearing faster than ever. "More tropical forest was lost in the 90s than in the 80s," said the World Resources Institute. Yet Europe continues to import huge amounts of African timber each year and aid goes to misguided projects. In Cameroon, a road funded by EU aid has increased industrial logging and poaching of gorillas and elephants in a World Heritage Site.

In Rio governments agreed to protect biodiversity, stop genetic erosion, and regulate the use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Today international rules are still not in force, a Protocol on Biosafety agreed in January 2000 has been ratified only by handful of countries, and corporations are exporting GM seed with dire consequences. It is feared, for example, that traditional Mexican varieties of maize may already be polluted -- bad news for Mexico but also for the rest of the world which relies on pure Mexican maize for breeding new varieties to suit various environments.

Rio highlighted an urgent need for finance -- around US$125 billion a year in aid from industrial countries -- to bring about Agenda 21. In fact, little new money was committed, and according to the Worldwatch Institute, "Foreign aid fell from $69 billion in 1992 to $53 billion in 2000" while "the developing world's debt has risen 34 percent." Governments still spend many hundreds of billions annually for environmentally damaging subsidies, and military budgets have rocketed.

Today, the power of big corporations has expanded massively as governments fail to control them. With the protection of the powerful World Trade Organisation they are increasingly allowed to foist their most hazardous, dirty and wasteful technologies onto developing countries which are sinking deeper into ecological and social decline.

According to the UN one fifth of the world's people live on less than a dollar a day. More than 40 percent of the world's population suffers water shortages, a fact which now accounts for 10 percent of diseases in developing countries. Polluted air and inadequate waste disposal facilities also contribute to disease, and infant mortality is ten times higher in developing countries than in the industrialised world.

Despite the good intentions of Rio, governments continue supporting the blatantly unsustainable, and national leaders still put material growth at the top of their agenda. Today the big picture is still "business as usual".

Another summit -- another chance

The Summit in Johannesburg will be a major test of governments' will to break the old established patterns that led us into crisis. One issue in particular -- energy -- will be a litmus test of their commitment. If the Summit is to achieve anything meaningful, industrialised countries must bite the bullet on climate change -- the biggest single problem facing the planet today. It means planning even bigger emissions cuts, and financing electricity for the poor, but via clean, sustainable, not dirty, affordable energy. Within the next 10 years the world could set itself on a less damaging trajectory, alleviate poverty AND combat climate change by boosting the development of global renewable energy markets.

With energy demand set to explode in countries such as India, China, Brazil, and South Africa, where more than two billion -- 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. Many countries have recognised that fossil fuels can only lead to destruction. Climate change threatens droughts, flooding, species and habitat loss, and increasing malaria and dengue fever. For poorer nations, crop failure, sickness, and loss of land can only worsen an already sorry situation. With this in mind India has developed the largest renewable energy project of any developing country. China, in the past five years, has actually reduced their emissions by around seven percent. Their reductions are better than anything the US has achieved so far -- yet it's the fact that China is not obligated by the Kyoto Protocol to make significant reductions that the US uses as a reason for pulling out of the protocol altogether.

Meanwhile, the US has actually increased their greenhouse gas emissions by 15 percent over 1990 levels, and is projected to increase them by at least another 15 percent over the next 10 years. They and other rich nations who profit from a fossil fuel economy -- the OPEC oil nations, Canada, and Australia -- are fighting emissions cuts and the massive development of a renewables industry.

Renewable energy would create a very different world. Just supplying electricity to the two billion who have none would create some 60,000 new businesses. With renewables, energy sources could be decentralised, using a variety of local resources -- rivers, mountains, oceans or wind.

Electricity would come from wind and solar power, small-scale hydro, biomass and other clean sources. We'd see wind farms offshore and solar PV panels integrated into all new buildings, even private homes. Money would go into clean energy projects such as sustainable hydro power stations, and local combined heat and power plants, rather than dirty fossil fuel power plants.

There would be a booming market in energy efficiency technologies. The wind-power industry has already expanded massively -- by 30-35 percent a year -- in recent years, but this would spread globally.

Since transport is the fastest growing source of greenhouse emissions we'd see a switch to cars run on alternative fuels. Hybrid cars combine a small petrol engine, with an electric motor and batteries, doubling the fuel efficiency. There'd be more sails on ships, and more trains.

With renewables, there'd be no need for nuclear reactors or centralized depots full of inflammable hydrocarbons …and less fear that terrorists could make them their targets. With less exploitation and locals more in charge of their own resources there'd be less likelihood of violence being caused by resentment.

It's also estimated that developing clean energy to help prevent climate change would cost less than dealing with the emergencies and refugee explosions that might be caused by it.

At the Earth Summit world leaders will choose our future. They know what causes poverty and environmental degradation and they know the solution. Those fighting change -- the ones made rich by oil and unsustainable technologies -- will again be there to try and scupper progress. Our future depends on the others rejecting "business as usual" and kick starting the revolution our planet needs -- a revolution called renewables.

Download a Greenpeace's Op-Ed on the Earth Summit: "The Big Bad Picture" (pdf)

Contact Remi Parmentier in Bali 08179710054, or +31 653504732
Susan Cavanagh in Bali 08179710052, or +316 212 96910