Posted on 08/08/2002 9:27:43 PM PDT by USA21
PARIS (Reuters) - A new U.S. cash handout to a global ecology fund and signs that rich nations will take a bigger role in cleaning up the planet could yet save this month's "Earth Summit" from failure, a top U.N. official said on Thursday.
U.N. Environment Program chief Klaus Toepfer said he had seen progress in tackling some of the issues that scuppered a preparatory meeting in June for the Johannesburg summit aimed at alleviating world poverty and protecting the environment.
"I believe there is a lot of activity going on to come to this Plan of Implementation and to have also the commitment of governments," said UNEP Executive Director Toepfer, who was briefing reporters during a trip to Paris.
The final "Plan of Implementation" is hoped to include firm pledges made at the meeting of over 100 heads of state and 60,000 delegates in Johannesburg from August 26 to September 4.
Toepfer said he was optimistic agreement could be reached on one of the toughest hurdles faced in Bali, that of rich countries acknowledging that they have caused most environmental problems and therefore have a greater duty to tackle them.
"This is a field where I believe a compromise can be achieved," he said.
Toepfer hailed Wednesday's move by the U.S. government to contribute some $500 million to a $2.92 billion replenishment by 32 donor nations of the Global Environment Facility (GEF), a fund aimed at helping poor countries clean up their environment.
"We have never had such a high replenishment of GEF...The situation for the summit is better as a result of this decision because (the facility) is a means of implementation (of summit accords)," he said.
Toepfer also pointed to aims within the Doha round of trade talks -- formally known as the Doha Development Agenda -- to help poor countries by removing the rich-country agricultural and other subsidies that exacerbate wealth imbalances.
Many fear the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development -- 10 years after the landmark Rio de Janeiro conference whose ambitious agenda has since fallen prey to broken promises -- will produce nothing but empty rhetoric.
With a mission including efforts to alleviate poverty, clean up global pollution and help secure water supplies, critics say the summit has bitten off more than it can chew.
Developing nations have complained that some targets under discussion -- such as a plan to halve by 2015 the number of people living on less than $1 a day -- are so long-term as to make it impossible to hold countries accountable to commitments.
Many involved in the summit have been disappointed that President Bush -- who pulled the United States out of the Kyoto protocol to combat global warming -- has not yet said whether he will attend in Johannesburg.
But Toepfer noted his father, former President George Bush, had gone to the Rio conference at very short notice.
STOP SPENDING OUR HARD EARNED TAX DOLLARS GEORGE! My pocket is NOT a bottomless pit!
What has this got ot do with an ecology fund?
This is raiding the Social Security fund by $500 million. I wonder how many Americans are in favor of transferring money paid by workers into the SS fund, just to see it re-transmitted to a bunch of 3rd world despot dictatorships Swiss bank accounts.
This is another argument for privatizing Social Security. If the individual workers controlled their own private retirement funds, Congress wouldn't have all that money at hand to spend willy nilly as they choose.
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