EARTH SUMMIT II - Five years after Rio, what next? May 97
From 23 to 27 June 1997, many national leaders will meet again in New York at "Earth Summit II" to review progress since Rio. Much good work has been done since 1992. But all the fine speeches in the world won't conceal a credibility gap big enough for the whole planet to fall through. The truth is that almost every major problem discussed in Rio has grown worse...
In June 1992, at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, the leaders of more than 100 nations promised to protect the environment and meet human needs. They signed two treaties and issued a plan of action called Agenda 21.
From 23 to 27 June 1997, many national leaders will meet again in New York at "Earth Summit II" to review progress since Rio. Much good work has been done since 1992. But all the fine speeches in the world won't conceal a credibility gap big enough for the whole planet to fall through. The truth is that almost every major problem discussed in Rio has grown worse. For example:
* They signed a Convention on Climate Change, promising to prevent dangerous global warming.
In the last five years, global emissions of carbon dioxide have continued to rise, and we have seen the hottest years in recorded history.
* They signed a Convention on Biological Diversity, promising to protect threatened species.
Some scientists estimate that well over 100,000 species have been extinguished by human activity in the five years since the Earth Summit.
* The developed countries promised to provide "new and additional" resources to help protect the environment and meet human needs in the developing countries.
Today, total development assistance is even less than it was in 1992.
The leaders need to hear from you that we cannot continue with an approach to these problems that is clearly failing.
1. Of the many reasons why the promise of Rio has failed, here are three of the most important:
2. The international decision-making process is too slow, requiring almost 200 national governments to agree before global action is taken.
3. Most national governments don't give financial priority to solving global problems.
4. There's too little democratic accountability at the global decision-making level. As a result, it's difficult to generate effective public pressure for action. What can be done to overcome these obstacles?
* An environmental decision-making body should be established at the UN, able to set binding standards for protection of the planet without waiting for unanimous agreement.
In March 1989, twenty-four world leaders meeting in The Hague, The Netherlands, called for the creation of such a body. The leaders signing the "Hague Declaration" included President Mubarak of Egypt, Chancellor Kohl of Germany, Foreign Minister (later Prime Minister) Rao of India and Prime Minister Brundtland of Norway. But the idea sank from view at the Earth Summit.
* Reliable sources of global revenue should be created, such as a common levy on international money transfers or fees for use of the global commons.
A levy of just 0.05% on international currency exchanges could generate $150 billion a year to help protect the environment and meet human needs.
* A democratic chamber should be established within the United Nations to oversee the expenditure of the resources generated, and to participate in environmental decision-making.
A democratic chamber could be made up of directly elected representatives, or, to begin with, it could consist of members of national parliaments. It would give the UN the democratic legitamacy to take on these new roles.
Taken together, these three changes could transform the prospects for protecting the planet and meeting human needs. But the governments won't change unless you and other concerned citizens join together to let them know that the time for business as usual is over.
WHAT YOU CAN DO
* Please write to your president or prime minister. Urge him or her to go to Earth Summit II in June and to:
* State (or restate) your government's support for the Hague Declaration of 1989, and call for a new global environmental decision-making body.
* Support the idea of new global revenue sources for sustainable development and environmental protection.
* Call for the creation of a democratic chamber at the UN.
Write to: [name & address of your president or prime minister]
BACKGROUND
Earth Summit II
At the Earth Summit in Rio in June 1992, the assembled leaders said: "Humanity stands at a defining moment in history. We are confronted with a perpetuation of disparities between and within nations, a worsening of poverty, hunger, ill health and illiteracy, and the continuing deterioration of the ecosystems on which we depend for our well-being."
From 23 to 27 June 1997, world leaders will gather at a Special Session of the UN General Assembly in New York, which is being called Earth Summit II. Their purpose is to review progress on environment and development issues since 1992. Each country will give its view of what needs to be done, and they'll issue a joint statement highlighting areas for future action.
Commitments and Reality
The inescapable reality is that the dire situation the governments described in 1992 is even worse today. Here are a few of the commitments the leaders made at the Earth Summit, and what has really happened:
* In the Convention on Climate Change signed in Rio, their stated goal was to prevent dangerous global warming. The industrialized nations agreed to return their emissions of carbon dioxide to 1990 levels by the year 2000.
In the last five years world-wide emissions of global warming gases have risen, even though climate scientists are telling governments that reductions of more than 50% will be needed. Few of the industrialized countries will meet even their minimal commitment for the year 2000.
* In the Convention on Biological Diversity, governments pledged to identify where species are being wiped out, and to take steps to end the destruction. Developed countries promised to provide "new and additional" resources for the conservation of species and ecosystems in developing countries.
Five years after Rio, one leading authority, Harvard University's E.O.Wilson, estimates that at least one species is being extinguished every 20 minutes, due to expanding human activity. Scientists are warning that if things continue as they are we may wipe out half of the life forms on our planet within the next century. Clearly, the Convention is not being fully implemented.
Meanwhile, a recent report by BirdLife International shows that aid for biodiversity (both bilateral and multilateral) from most donor nations has been cut sharply since 1992.
* Agenda 21 promised action to combat poverty, change consumption patterns, provide clean water and health care, protect the atmosphere, forests, rivers and oceans, combat desertification, and much more, with new and additional resources to be made available for these tasks.
In the last five years, a quarter of humanity has grown poorer, more people than ever lack access to clean water, pollution has increased, desertification has spread, consumption patterns remain fundamentally unchanged, forest destruction continues and development assistance has declined.
If we continue in this way, humanity's prospects are bleak. But how can we change our approach before it's too late?
Changing the Way We Deal with Global Problems
To generate greater political will to solve global problems, citizens, national legislators, editorial writers and others need to do all they can to press their governments for action. This is the goal of most of EarthAction's work. At the same time, we need to change the way we deal with planetary problems of poverty and environmental degradation. Otherwise, even with increased political will, we are still all too likely to fail.
Here are three areas requiring urgent attention.
1. Environmental decision-making
One of the fundamental obstacles to progress is the way humanity makes decisions about protecting the global environment. Negotiations on matters like global warming or ocean pollution require everyone to agree before collective action is taken. This means that a powerful nation or group of nations can block progress altogether.
This is a recipe for inaction. Imagine trying to make decisions within a country if all members of the national legislature had to agree before anything could get done.
The existing United Nations Security Council, charged with keeping the peace, has two qualities that are urgently needed to protect the global environment. First, decisions are made by roughly two-thirds majority vote. Second, decisions of the Security Council are binding on all member states of the United Nations.
We need a comparable decision-making body for the global environment (without the Security Council's veto for great powers.) This could be done by creating a new body, or by transforming an existing institution at the UN, such as the Commission on Sustainable Development or the Trusteeship Council.
Recognizing the weakness of our current international decision-making, a group of world leaders meeting in The Hague, The Netherlands in 1989 called for a new body along these lines to help protect the atmosphere. The text of their statement, called The Hague Declaration, is attached.
2. Resources for sustainable development
A second fundamental obstacle to progress is lack of resources. We must somehow find a way to mobilize more funding for: promoting renewable energy to replace fossil fuels; protecting the world's remaining forests; combatting desertification; ensuring that everyone has access to food, clean water, shelter, basic education, family planning and primary health care; paying for an expanded UN system for conflict prevention, and other pressing global priorities.
Many of these priorities require funding on a different order of magnitude from that available today. Based on the cost estimates emerging from major UN conferences in the 1990s, the cost of protecting the environment and meeting the basic needs of the world's poorest citizens would approach $150 billion a year.
The current crippling lack of funds for the UN system, and the shrinking resources for development assistance, strongly suggest that the necessary funds are unlikely to come from national budgets alone. Solving global problems of poverty and environmental degradation is not a top priority for most national governments. It isn't what they are elected to do.
Many of the high-level commissions which have examined our global problems in recent years have concluded that new sources of automatic global revenue will be essential if we are to generate funding on the scale needed. A number of ideas for global revenue sources have been suggested by national governments at the Commission on Sustainable Development and elsewhere.
Many have suggested that funds to promote sustainable development should come from "user fees" for use of the global commons. Proposals that have been put forward range from a levy on airline tickets or on aviation fuel, to a global carbon tax. Much attention has been given to the idea of generating revenue with a small levy on the new global markets, such as the currency market. There has been some discussion of raising funds through an international lottery.
These proposals don't envisage UN tax collectors. The fees would be levied by national governments, but the proceeds devoted to global priorities, at least partly through global institutions.
3. Democratic accountability at the global level
Today, for the first time in history, a majority of the world's people are free to express their opinions and to vote in multiparty elections. If the United Nations is to become more effective in solving global problems, the spread of democracy must include our global institutions.
This could be achieved by creating a democratic chamber within the UN system, which could, together with the national governments, play a major role in decision-making to protect the global environment and in determining the expenditure of global revenues.
Such a body could be made up of directly elected representatives, or it could to begin with consist of members of national parliaments. A system of representation could easily be devised to ensure that small nations would not be overwhelmed by a handful of large countries.
A democratic chamber at the UN would bring three great benefits:
* It would increase the democratic accountability and legitimacy of the United Nations, which is essential if the UN is to assume new roles in protecting the planet, such as those discussed above.
* Being directly accountable to the public, it would give ordinary people the opportunity to be far more involved than they are today in deciding the fate of our planet. This is crucial, since only world-wide public pressure is likely to bring about the necessary changes in global priorities.
* In the case of an elected chamber, it would introduce representatives at the UN whose primary responsibility would be the protection of the whole planet, which is not the primary responsibility of a national government. Even if it consisted of national members of parliament, at least some of them could speak for the global interest, whereas most national representatives are employed by governments to represent national interests.
The idea of a democratic body at the UN was raised not long ago by, among others, the high-level Commission on Global Governance, co-chaired by then Prime Minister Ingvar Carlsson of Sweden and former Commonwealth Secretary-General Shridath Ramphal.
These changes may not come about tomorrow. But it is quite possible that in the long run they are necessary to ensure a safe future for humanity. If so, it's worth devoting energy now to bringing them about, even as we do all we can to persuade national governments to do more within the present international structures.
Call for a Safer World
PLEASE NOTE: This is a draft document, on which EarthAction is seeking comments. There is no need to sign it yet. It will be sent later to all EarthAction Partner Organizations in final form, ready for signature by those who wish to support it.
WE ARE NEARING THE YEAR 2000, and the human journey has still only begun. Yet all we have achieved, and all our hopes for the future, could be lost if we fail to solve our global problems of war, nuclear weapons, hunger, environmental degradation and the abuse of human rights.
AS CITIZENS OF ONE PLANET, we unite our voices on behalf of a better future for the world's children, and for the Earth itself. We are people from different countries and cultures, but we share a conviction greater than all our differences: that by working together we can build a just, peaceful and ecologically sustainable world.
WE CALL ON THE WORLD'S GOVERNMENTS to take the following steps to build a more effective and democratic United Nations system, through which humanity can cooperate to safeguard the security of all the world's citizens:
* STRENGTHEN THE UN's CAPACITY FOR PREVENTIVE DIPLOMACY to ensure that the United Nations acts in good time to help resolve dangerous conflicts before blood is shed.
* CREATE A UN RAPID DEPLOYMENT BRIGADE able to respond immediately to genocide or aggression and protect innocent people.
* ESTABLISH AN INDEPENDENT INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT able to prosecute any individual for genocide, war crimes or crimes against humanity.
* LAUNCH A PROCESS OF BALANCED, WORLD-WIDE DEMILITARIZATION, with an international agency to verify compliance with nuclear and conventional disarmament measures.
* ESTABLISH AN ENVIRONMENTAL DECISION-MAKING BODY able to set binding standards for protection of the planet without waiting for unanimous agreement among almost 200 governments.
* CREATE RELIABLE SOURCES OF GLOBAL REVENUE through fees on international activities such as currency transactions, air travel or global pollution, to generate resources to support the United Nations, to protect the global environment and to help meet the basic needs of the world's citizens for food, clean water, shelter, education and health care.
* ESTABLISH A DEMOCRATIC CHAMBER WITHIN THE UNITED NATIONS to oversee the expenditure of those resources, and to participate in environmental decision-making.
WE CALL ON OUR GOVERNMENTS to give the highest priority to the challenge of building a safer world.
[Signature of spokesperson for your organisation, name and address, indication of number of members represented.]
The Call for a Safer World is intended to show our governments the breadth of support for a more effective and democratic United Nations. It will be presented to national governments, and to the Secretary-General of the United Nations.
You are invited to sign the Call as an individual, or if appropriate on behalf of an organization you belong to. If you are a member of parliament or congress and represent a constituency, you may wish to sign it on behalf of your constituents, as their democratic representative.
The Call is initiated by EarthAction, a network of more than 1,800 citizen groups in 143 countries. EarthAction's purpose is to enable thousands of citizens, organizations, legislators and editorial writers to act together simultaneously around the world on critical global issues. Eight to twelve times a year EarthAction distributes materials on one concrete issue to the members of its worldwide network, which they can use to take action. EarthAction has no connection with any political party or religious creed.
If you wish to indicate your support for one or more, but not all, of the goals of the Call for a Safer World, please tick the appropriate items and your support will be listed separately. If you support all of its goals, please don't tick these boxes.
* Strengthened UN preventive diplomacy
* UN rapid deployment brigade
* International criminal court
* Global demilitarization and international verification agency
* Environmental decision-making body
* Global revenue sources
* Democratic chamber within the UN
The Hague Declaration
On March 11, 1989, 24 world leaders met to call for a new global decision-making body to protect the atmosphere. Such a body should be able to make decisions to prevent global warming, with measures to ensure compliance, without waiting for unanimity among almost 200 governments. What follows is an abridged version of their statement, the Hague Declaration. All of the substantive content of the Declaration appears here. The full text is available from EarthAction. The signatures of the original signatories follow the text. The Declaration was later endorsed by a number of other national leaders. We have listed all signatories as of 18 April 1997.
The right to live is the right from which all other rights stem. Guaranteeing this right is the paramount duty of those in charge of all States throughout the world.
Today, the very conditions of life on our planet are threatened by the severe attacks to which the earth's atmosphere is subjected.
Authoritative scientific studies have shown the existence and scope of considerable dangers linked in particular to the warming of the atmosphere and to the deterioration of the ozone layer.
According to present scientific knowledge, the consequences of these phenomena may well jeopardize ecological systems as well as the most vital interests of mankind at large.
Because the problem is planet-wide in scope, solutions can only be devised on a global level. Because of the nature of the dangers involved, remedies to be sought involve not only the fundamental duty to preserve the ecosystem, but also the right to live in dignity in a viable global environment, and the consequent duty of the community of nations vis-a-vis present and future generations to do all that can be done to preserve the quality of the atmosphere.
Therefore we consider that, faced with a problem the solution to which has three salient features, namely that it is vital, urgent and global, we are in a situation that calls not only for implementation of existing principles but also for a new approach, through the development of new principles of international law including new and more effective decision-making and enforcement mechanisms.
What is needed here are regulatory, supportive and adjustment measures that take into account the participation and potential contribution of countries which have reached different levels of development. Most of the emissions that affect the atmosphere at present originate in the industrialized nations. And it is in these same nations that the room for change is greatest, and these nations are also those which have the greatest resources to deal with this problem effectively.
The international community and especially the industrialized nations have special obligations to assist developing countries which will be very negatively affected by changes in the atmosphere although the responsibility of many of them for the process may only be marginal today.
Financial institutions and development agencies, be they international or domestic, must coordinate their activities in order to promote sustainable development.
Without prejudice to the international obligations of each State, the signatories acknowledge and will promote the following principles:
(a) The principle of developing, within the framework of the United Nations, new institutional authority, either by strengthening existing institutions or by creating a new institution, which, in the context of the preservation of the earth's atmosphere, shall be responsible for combating any further global warming of the atmosphere and shall involve such decision-making procedures as may be effective even if, on occasion, unanimous agreement has not been achieved;
(b) The principle that this institutional authority undertake or commission the necessary studies, be granted appropriate information upon request, ensure the circulation and exchange of scientific and technological information (including facilitation of access to the technology needed), develop instruments and define standards to enhance or guarantee the protection of the atmosphere and monitor compliance herewith;
(c) The principle of appropriate measures to promote the effective implementation of and compliance with the decisions of the new institutional authority, decisions which will be subject to control by the International Court of Justice;
(d) The principle that countries to which decisions taken to protect the atmosphere shall prove to be an abnormal or special burden, in view, inter alia, of the level of their development and actual responsibility for the deterioration of the atmosphere, shall receive fair and equitable assistance to compensate them for bearing such burden. To this end mechanisms will have to be developed;
(e) The negotiation of the necessary legal instruments to provide an effective and coherent foundation, institutionally and financially, for the aforementioned principles.
HAGUE SIGNERS as of APRIL 18, 1997
Helmuth Kohl
Chancelier de la République Fédérale d'Allemagne
Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany
Gareth Evans
Ministre des Affaires Étrangéres et du Commerce d'Australie
Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade of Australia
Paulo Tarso Flecha de Lima
Secrétaire Géneral des Relations Extéricures de la République Fédérative du Brésil
Secretary General of External Relations of the Federative Republic of Brazil
Brian Muironey
Premier Ministre du Canada
Prime Minister of Canada
Félix Houphouét-Boigny
Président de la République de Côte d'Ivoire
President of the Republic of Côte d"Ivoire
Muhammed Hosni Mubarek
President de la République Arabe d'Égyptie
President of the Arab Republic of Egypt
Felipe González
Premier Ministre d'Espagne
Prime Minister of Spain
François Mitterand
Président de la République Française
President of the French Republic
Miklos Németh
Premier Ministre de la République Populaire Hongroise
Prime Minister of the Hungarian People's Republic
P.V. Narasimha Rao
Ministre des Affaires Étrangéres de l'Inde
Minister of External Affairs of India
Emil Salim
Ministre d'État pour la Population et l'Énvironnement de la République d'Indonésie
Minister of State for Population and Environment of the Republic of Indonesia
Giorgio Ruffolo
Ministre de l'Environnemnet d'Italie
Minister of Environment of Italy
Masahisa Acki
Ministre d'État du Japon
Minister of State of Japan
Hussein Ibn Talal
Roi du Royaume Hachémite de Jordanie
King of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan
Daniel Toroitich arap Moi
Président de la République du Kenya
President of the Republic of Kenya
Edward Henech Adami
Premier Ministre de la République de Malte
Prime Minister of the Republic of Malta
Gro Harlem Brundtland
Premier Ministre du Royaume de Norvége
Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Norway
Geoffrey Palmer
Vice-Ministre Président de Nouvelle-Zélande
Deputy Prime Minister of New Zealand
Ruud Lubbers
Premier Ministre du Royaume des Pays-Bas
Prime Minister of the Kingdom of the Netherlands
Abdou Diouf
Président de la République du Sénegal
President of the Republic of Senegal
Ingvar Carlsson
Premier Ministre du Royaume de Suéde
Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Sweden
Hedi Baccouche
Premier Ministre de la République Tunisienne
Prime Minister of the Tunisian Republic
Enrique Colmenares Finol
Ministre de l'Environnment de la République du Venezuela
Minister for Environment of the Republic of Venezuela
Robert Gabriel Mugabe
Président de la République du Zimbabwe
President of the Republic of Zimbabwe