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The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) began on 3rd of June, 1992 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Government officials from 178 countries and between 20,000 and 30,000 individuals from governments, NGOs and the media participated in this event to discuss solutions for global problems such as poverty, the growing gap between industrialized and developing countries and how to relieve the global environmental system through the introduction of the paradigm of sustainable development. This global forum was necessary because twenty years after the first Earth Summit, some emerging issues have come to the fore, while others remain poignant. The 1972 Summit took place in the shadow of the Cold War rivalry between the East and West blocs and their obsessed nuclear arms race. However, after 1972, the world political arena had altered dramatically. The Cold War tensions had relaxed and the increase in awareness of the growing ecological crises such as famine and oil spills, and

107 environmental accidents like the Bhopal and Chernobyl (Oyeshola, 1995: 2) offered an opportunity to persuade nations, both rich and poor, to look beyond national interest and come to some kind of agreement over the management of the degrading state of the world’s environment.

It is true that countries went to Rio with different perceptions and goals. However, it must be affirmed that the rich, industrialized countries of the North had become used to a share of the world’s resources at a rate that was causing an increasing concern about the ecology of the planet and a threat to sustainable development

The Rio Conference is not an isolated conference. In fact, it is a continuation of previous dialogue of The Brundtland Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development which was produced under the title of Our Common Future, 1987. The central concern of the report was the increasing globalization of various crises like environment, development and energy and their interrelationships. The report is a landmark in respect of modern thinking about environmental problems and gives prominence to the language of sustainable development that must provide for future generations. However, the report provided little solid guidance on the exact components of what such a duty to future generations might entail. Rather, it called attention to the linkages between economic and environmental considerations and advocated greater use of international financing of environmentally beneficial projects and arrangements under which the debts of developing countries might be traded for commitments to conserve their biodiversity.

The primary goals of the summit were to come to an understanding of ‘development’ that would support socio-economic development and prevent the continued deterioration of the environment and to lay a foundation for a global partnership between the developing and the more industrialized countries based on mutual needs and common interests that would ensure a healthy future for the planet.

The UN summit focused on three broad areas captured by the concept and idea of Earth Charter’

covering a number of principles (Appendix 11) aiming at development and the protection of the environment. ‘Agenda 21’ is intended to be a global action plan for sustainable development and demand of the developing countries from the industrialized countries for a substantial increase in new funding to sustainable development of the South.

The Conference approved a set of five agreements namely, Agenda 21, The Rio declaration on Environment and Development, The statement of principles on forests, The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and The Convention on Biological Diversity. Agenda 21 is particularly significant.

Agenda 21 included plans for a Desertification Treaty, a Forestry Convention and the establishment of a United Nations Sustainable Development Commission (UNSDC) to supervise

108 its implementation. Agenda 21 provided for action at sub-national (local), national and international levels. It created two mechanisms for monitoring compliance of state, which was later implemented in ‘follow-up’ process. One of such mechanism is the standard UN provision for a follow up Conference in 1997. The other is for national reporting procedures to be implemented and subjected to further examination in a new UN forum on an annual basis through to 1997. Another institution established to promote the implementation of Agenda 21 is the Global Environment Facility (GEF) working in close association with UNEP, UNDP and several UN bodies. Although it was not expected that these institutions could directly implement Agenda 21 neither can it force others to do so. But it was expected to help shape broader international as well as domestic processes in a useful way.

The Earth Summit in Rio was inspired and guided by a remarkable document published in 1982 by the Brandtland Commission which tried to balance the arguments concerning North/South responsibility and suggests ways forward. Intended as a progress report on achievements since the Stockholm conference ten years earlier, the impetus for the report came from progressive nations and organizations. The commission noticed that the problems of environment and the insistence that something be done about them cannot be ignored. In order to arrest these problems, the Commission came out with the term sustainable development. This is described as economic progress which meets all our needs without leaving future generations with fewer resources than the present generation enjoys. It is a way of living from nature’s income rather than its capital account.

For wealthy nations, sustainable development means policies concerning issues such as recycling, energy efficiency, conservation, rehabilitation of damaged landscapes. Whereas, for the poor countries, it means policies for equity, fairness, respect for the rule of law, redistribution of wealth and wealth creation (Richard, 1992:16). The central question at the Earth Summit was how to protect the environment and still maintain development. This quest pitted development against developing countries with respect to financial aid and transfers of technology.

Industrialized states feared that issues of aid and debt relief would simply take on an environmental label which would make it more difficult for them to negotiate foreign aid agreements because domestic environmental groups also want their concerns accounted for.

Developing states argued that although they supported protection of the environment, they would be unable to implement programmes without financial and technical assistance (Stevenson, 2001:

536-537)

In spite of its shortcomings, the Conference was still a productive one in terms of the various contributions it made. On forests situation, the conference was able to take action on over 100 action proposals for sustainable forest management based on the forest principles adopted in Rio on intergovernmental panel on forests. In relation to the issue of fresh water, the summit made recommendations which it implemented to combat water shortages. As regards climate situation,

109 the summit took action to combat the problem by signing the UN convention on climate change which was ratified by 166 countries after reaching negotiations to strengthen the commitment.

The meeting in Rio de Janeiro symbolized the concerns with the environment and the political issues surrounding sustainable development. The conduct of the summit illustrated the politics of environmental protection. As in Stockholm, preliminary negotiations made it clear that environmental issues can be very political (Rouke, 1999: 546). In particular, the North and the South were at odd on many issues. The industrialized world objected to and were able to defeat efforts by the developing countries to force the North to set binding time tables to cut down on the use of fossil fuels and to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases that contribute to global warming. For its part, the South resisted and was able to defeat destructions on the use of forest resources proposed by the North. ‘Forests are clearly a sovereign resources not like atmosphere and oceans which are a global commons’, said We Lian Ting, Malaysia’s Chief negotiator. He continued, ‘We cannot allow forests to be taken up in global forums’ (New York Times, June 12, 1992: P.A9).

In the end, 153 countries signed both the Biodiversity and the global warming conventions and other countries signed one or the other. President George Bush attached a reservation to his signature of the Global Warming Convention saying that the United States would not be bound by the timetables for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. He also refused to sign the Biodiversity Convention on the grounds that it did not protect intellectual property rights in biotechnology.

However, President Bill Clinton marked the annual Earth Day, April 21, by signing the biodiversity pact and rescinding the US reservation to the time tables in the Global Warming Convention.

In retrospect, the Stockholm and Rio Conferences highlighted the concern of the North vis-ã-vis environmental degradation. Stockholm prepared the road to Rio. The Earth Summit laid out a hopeful path. The North that signed the Global Warming Convention agrees to a voluntary programme to stabilize emission at their 1999s levels by the year 2000. It also resolved that in 1997 they would reconvene in Japan to review their progress in restraining the emissions of carbon dioxide (C02) and other gases that most scientists agree are causing the mean global temperature to rise slowly but potentially disastrous (Rouke, 1995: 556).

There are two observations that stand out as to what happened in Rio. Firstly, it was not a conference about the environment at all. Rather, it was a conference that was concerned about the world’s economy and how the environment affected it. Secondly, this was the first meeting of world leaders since the end of the cold war. The old East/West agenda was dead, attention was then focused on North/South relations. Rio did not only mark the beginning of a new era but a triumph for that small band of campaigners who set out at Stockholm about twenty years earlier (Richard, 1992: 16).

110 A number of international environment instruments were agreed upon from Stockholm to Rio.

These agreements covered a wide range of issues, of both a general and specific nature, as well as being global, regional and bilateral in their application. Examples of these agreements are the 1979 Geneva Convention on Long-Range Trans-boundary Air Pollution, the 1973 Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships as modified by the 1978 Protocol (MARPOL 73/78), the 1973 Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), the 1989 Basel Convention on the Control of Trans-boundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal and the 1991 Espoo Convention on Environmental Impact Assessment in a Trans-boundary Context.

The politics of Earth Summit demonstrated that the North and South are not able to reach a workable compromise in respect of environmental degradation. Stockholm testified to this position and Kyoto Conference (1997) had established it. The combined ‘effect of poverty and an unequal trading system, perpetuates unsustainable development, environmental degradation and poverty (Oyeshola, 1995: 29). The world cannot afford any non-collaborative and concerted campaign in effectively controlling and halting environmental degradation in its sustainable development effort. Any delay may result in the destruction of the earth resource base and human lives and indeed jeopardize the future of generations yet to be born (Oyeshola, 1995: 29).

Kyoto Protocol Conference 1997 The Kyoto Protocol was adopted at the Third Conference of Parties (COP3) to the Framework Convention on Climate Change. COP3 was able to agree a programme of measures aimed at reducing the concentration of ‘greenhouse’ gases in the atmosphere in order to address the problem of global warming and consequential adverse climate changes. These measures are notable in moving away from a focus upon setting strict emissions targets as the preferred method for securing reductions in overall greenhouse gas concentrations.

A legally binding reduction target for carbon dioxide (the main greenhouse gas) of at least 5 percent (below 1990 levels) between 2008 and 2012 has been imposed on most industrialized countries in the Kyoto Protocol (Art 3(1)). However, a system of differentiated targets within the rolling time scale has also been agreed between the main industrialized actors namely the EU, the US and Japan. Their targets are 8, 7 and 6 percent respectively. Provision was also made for the achievement of these targets not merely by emissions reductions but also through the implementation of forestry projects as ‘sink’ to remove these gases from the atmosphere.