Tribune leader, 29 May 1992
The United Nations Conference on the Environment and Development,
which opens next week in Rio de Janeiro, is set to be one of the biggest
political jamborees of all time: no one in politics or the media can resist the
idea of a meeting to sort out the fate of the planet.
But it is unlikely that the Earth Summit will come up with
the goods. On global warming, the central environmental issue at UNCED, the governments
of the industrialised and the developing countries have completely different
priorities, with no sign that they are anywhere near a workable and substantive
consensus on what needs to be done.
For the governments of the industrialised countries, UNCED
is essentially a matter of public relations. They all want to give their
voters, worried about the environment, the impression that they are "doing
something" about global warming. But, also for electoral reasons, none of
them will agree to a radical cut in their own countries' use of fossil fuels,
which is the single most effective thing that could be done about the
"greenhouse effect". (The United States and Britain go even further:
they won’t agree to any significant action on carbon dioxide emission reductions.)
Far better, think the powers-that-be in the industrialised
countries, to let their voters keep their high-energy-consumption lifestyles
and to concentrate instead on forcing the developing world not to cut down
forests or follow the industrialised countries' model of development.
Understandably, the governments of the developing countries
do not see why they should take the lion’s share of responsibility for action
to combat global warming, particularly when the rich countries caused the
problem in the first place.
There is a widespread feeling that, after a decade of
unremitting austerity imposed by the World Bank and the International Monetary
Fund as a "cure" for indebtedness, the poor countries are now being
asked to forgo forever their dreams of affluence. It is hardly surprising that
Third World Governments want Rio to reassert the importance of development and
the need for global redistribution of wealth and power.
The upshot of all this is that UNCED will probably come up
with little more than vague declarations that development is very important
and that everyone ought to do all they can to preserve forests and reduce
greenhouse gas emissions. After Rio, it will be back to business as usual.
But it would be wrong to dismiss the Earth Summit as a
complete waste of time. Even if it produces nothing but hot air, the simple
fact that it is happening has already given a tangible boost to the public
profile of the issues it was set up to address. That can only be welcome.
Throughout the industrialised world, global development and the burgeoning
environmental crisis are generally out of the political limelight, a concern
only for experts and a small group of activists. The complacent consensus
among politicians and pundits - apparently borne out by events - is that
elections in the industrialised countries are decided by taxation policies and
the voters’ sense of economic well-being.
In the normal course of things, politicians steer clear of
suggesting that the consumer society as we now know it is dependent on the
pauperisation of the Third World and incompatible with the survival of the
planet.
This is true of left-wing as well as right-wing parties.
Labour might be better than the lories on the big environmental issues and
development (it would be hard to be worse), but it remains dangerously
cautious and ambiguous. At the election, Labour offered no more on global warming
than a promise to stick to the EC's target of reducing carbon dioxide
emissions to 1990 levels by the end of the decade.
Despite an undoubted enthusiasm for public transport, the
party has said nothing to suggest that it wants dramatic reductions in car
use. Its energy policy, despite gestures in the direction of renewable sources
of energy, remains based on fossil fuels. On development, Labour’s commitment
to increase aid to the 0.9 per cent of gross domestic product recommended by
the UN was honourable but, frankly, a drop in the ocean. The scale of the
problems of global warming and development are such, however, that the
politicians in the developed world win have to grasp the net-or later - and
the sooner the better. If all the hype surrounding UNCED increases the pressure
on the politicians to cease beating about the bush, it will have been worth it.
