The sustainable development agenda has largely been written by the industrialised countries, yet very few of them are willing to follow it in their own policies.  Northern scientists discovered the threats to the global environment – to the stratospheric ozone shield, to the world’s climate systems, to the survival of our gene pool – and all these have been caused almost entirely by actions over the past two centuries in their own countries.  Their governments persuaded the rest of the world that something needs to be done urgently to mitigate these problems, and convened various conventions and conferences like the Montreal Protocol, the Earth Summit at Rio de Janeiro and the Basel Convention.  Promises were made that if the countries of the South would sign the agreements, money and technology would be made available to help them design more sustainable development strategies.

Where are we, so many years after the various agreements were signed?  Basically, nowhere.  Industrialised countries have not been able to slow down their carbon dioxide emissions, much less able to bring themselves to reduce energy consumption or even increase energy prices.  Now, they are trying to pass the onus on to others through artifices such as tradeable permits, joint implementation, and even outright demands for the larger Third World countries like China and India to reduce their carbon emissions.  Joint implementation may well offer a sensible device to find least cost ways to improve energy efficiency, but it cannot be used to allow the developed countries to evade their responsibility to introduce more sustainable methods in their own countries.

Less than one per cent of the international price tag to implement the Rio Agenda 21 has actually found its way into the GEF.  And even that is controlled so rigidly that it can only contribute to the two basic themes of climate change and biodiversity conservation.  There is basically no international money available for the implementation of Agenda 21, which reflects some of the concerns of the poor.  And even this agreement is itself a much curtailed programme for sustainable development, greatly watered down through a process of negotiation with tight fisted donors, wary of taking on additional responsibilities.

The Special Session of the UN General Assembly later this month is going to be yet another exercise in hypocrisy.  Things won’t change much until the North realises that its own interest lies in a more equitable world, where the people of all countries feel that they have a stake in the future of the planet and live with enough hope to want smaller families and a more long term relationship with nature.

Towards the end of the year, the Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change at Kyoto will show how seriously governments take the imminent threats to the environment, and how much political will they bring to solving them. 

There are good grounds to feel a bit pessimistic.

It is the third world that is under the greatest threat from global warming.  We often do not realise it, but whole countries, whole cultures will disappear if the sea rises by the one or two meters predicted if business carried on as usual.  One third of Bangladesh will be inundated and an even greater fraction of its grain producing area will no longer be good for agriculture.  Hundreds of millions of people will be displaced in the third world.  The dollar value of damage in the North may be significant, but the human suffering in island and coastal developing countries will be much, much greater.

At Kyoto, the developing countries must take the initiative and hold the governments of the world accountable to the commitments they have made in the Framework Convention.  Any attempt to sidestep or delay the introduction of energy reducing measures in the North has to be firmly resisted, particularly by thinking people in the North itself.   q

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