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If the leaders gathered at this week's World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg really want to save the environment, they should concentrate less on eco-rhetoric, and more on promoting the free-market conditions that permit poor nations to become rich: The simple truth is that countries grow cleaner as they grow wealthier -- no matter whether they've self-consciously dedicated themselves to "sustainable" policies (whatever those are) or not. Singapore, the wealthiest state in Asia, is also its cleanest, despite being one of the continent's largest per capita manufacturers. Canada and the United States -- which Friends of the Earth...

August 30, 2002 Today's Special: Fillet of Springbok Fun at the World Summit on Sustainable Development By Ronald Bailey Johannesburg—United Nations meetings are an acquired taste. You have to love things like "nonpapers," "the Vienna Process," and press conferences by the "Group of Like-Minded Megadiverse Countries," not to mention a whole lot of speeches as high-minded as they are long-winded. But once you're hooked. your're hooked. I had my first experience at the Earth Summit in Rio ten years ago, and now you just can't keep me away from UN confabs. My last fix before this one was the...

Earth Summit delegates feast while discussing starvation 27-08-2002, 11:45 The Michelangelo Hotel, South Africa Delegates to the United Nations World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, who are meeting to discuss starvation and poverty, are feasting on extravagant foods and fine wines flown in from around the world. British newspaper “The Sun”, which exposed the story on Tuesday, also claimed that hundreds of trees had been cut down around the conference center to make room for limousines bringing delegates in to discuss how to prevent damage to the environment. Known as the “Earth Summit”, the UN conference opened on 26...

There is a crisis in the Conservative movement. It is a blind spot that threatens everything the movement stands for. It is Sustainable Development, the theme of the United Nations conference in Johannesburg. However, the conservatives who have always been there to fight off such utopian, socialist nightmares now seem to slumber blissfully in their ignorance at the very moment when vigilance is most urgently needed. Sustainable Development is the greatest threat ever perpetrated against the American ideal of liberty. Under Sustainable Development there can be no free enterprise, no individual liberty or private property. As I attend traditional...

Summit: U.S. Offers $2.56 Billion in Partnerships JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, August 29, 2002 (ENS) - The United States announced five programs worth $2.56 billion today at the World Summit on Sustainable Development. The initiatives are aimed at providing poor people with access to clean water, sanitation, clean energy, relief from HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, and protection for Congolese forests. Announcing the programs, Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs Paula Dobriansky said they will leverage government funding with financial support from the private sector to help developing countries move toward sustainable growth. She said the five major partnerships, coupled...

<p>There was a story last week about the unaccountable accounting on the Air Force's Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle program.</p> <p>This is a program in which the government gave Boeing and Lockheed Martin, the manufacturers of the Delta, and Atlas and Titan launch vehicles, respectively, millions of dollars in funding to help them both improve the performance and reliability of the systems, and to reduce their cost. The catch is that these are ostensibly commercial systems, so this is in effect a taxpayer subsidy of what should be in theory private enterprise.</p>

August 26, 2002 A Summit Misconceived Their hearts are in the right place... By Ronald Bailey Johannesburg, South Africa - The World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) is supposed to be aimed at eradicating global poverty, but many of the measures favored by negotiators and activists would increase poverty, not alleviate it. The problems are stark. Some 1.1 billion people lack safe drinking water; 2.2 billion are without adequate sanitation; 2.5 billion lack access to modern energy services; 11 million children under the age of five die each year in developing countries from preventable diseases; and despite an abundance...

August 27, 2002 Listening to the Poor What Western environmentalists could learn from real poor people By Ronald Bailey Johannesburg, South Africa - During a thirty-minute taxi ride to the National Exposition Center in Johannesburg - where the "civil society" Global Forum groups are holding sessions - I had a chance to talk with our driver Issac, a 60 year old black resident of Johannesburg. Issac is a twin and one of nine children. His father raised cattle in the Northern Province. I told him that I, too, grew up on a farm and thought it was very hard...

August 28, 2002 Fueling the Future What energy sources will drive the 21st century? By Ronald Bailey Johannesburg, South Africa — "The priority has to be getting energy access to poor people no matter what the source," said Greenpeace spokesman Steve Sawyer at the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). He was responding to my question about whether the 2 billion or so people without access to modern energy services should nonetheless be able to get access to energy from whatever source, renewable or not? It is indeed progress that radical groups like Greenpeace now recognize poor...

August 29, 2002 "Profit Beats Poverty" Farmers and Street Peddlers from India and Africa March for Free Trade By Ronald Bailey Johannesburg—"Profit Beats Poverty," "Say No to Eco-Imperialism," "Free Trade Is Fair Trade," and "People or Pandas?" were just a few of the placards carried by 300 or so protesters at the Sandton Convention Center, where delegates from 190 countries are meeting at the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD). The marchers, pushing a broken-down sound car, wound through the swank Sandton business and shopping district north of downtown Johannesburg. Sandton is where the Johannesburg Stock Exchange is located...

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - A delegation of U.S. congressional Democrats accused the Bush administration on Thursday of blocking plans to alleviate poverty and promote clean economic growth at the U.N.'s Earth Summit. "The U.S. administration is becoming somewhat of an obstructionist in terms of meeting the goals of sustainable development," California Congressman George Miller told a news conference. Talks to cut poverty, increase access to fresh water and promote economic growth while repairing environmental damage run from August 26-September 4 in Johannesburg, a decade after the first Earth Summit in Rio. The Democrats' comments were the latest salvo in their battle...

Where conferences on "sustainable development" are concerned, Schumacher's precept, "small is beautiful," has been long abandoned. Tomorrow 65,000 delegates will descend on Johannesburg for "Earth Summit 2002" -- the World Summit on Environment and Development. These will include 106 government heads, 10,000 officials from 174 countries, and 6,000 journalists. The BBC team alone could top 100. Twenty UN bodies will be represented. A second parallel conference, comprising a kaleidoscope of lobbyists from ornithologists to oil magnates, has already received 15,000 registrations. Sustaining the whole caboodle will be 27,000 police, who may well be relieved that George W. Bush will not...

INTERVIEW - Lomborg urges Earth Summit to focus on povertyCOPENHAGEN - A top Danish environmentalist said next week's gathering of world leaders for the Earth Summit should concentrate on finding ways to alleviate poverty rather than "unrealistic" environmental issues. "It is not realistic to believe that people struggling to find their next meal would worry about the environment 50 years ahead," Dr. Bjorn Lomborg, author of controversial book "The Sceptical Environmentalist", told Reuters in an interview. "Sustainable development does not make sense until (the living standards) of these people have been brought to a level where they start to...

August 21, 2002 Changing Everything Ronald Bailey prepares to cover the World Summit on Sustainable Development By Ronald Bailey More than 100 presidents, prime ministers, and other potentates will convene over the next couple of weeks (August 26-September 4) in Johannesburg, South Africa, in a desperate attempt to save the Earth. The occasion is the United Nations' World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), which is aimed at revolutionizing how the world's economy operates. This economic, social and environmental revolution must occur because, it is claimed, humanity is on an unsustainable path that is leading toward global catastrophe. Indeed, all...

Latin America, Caribbean to Seek Relief at Summit MEXICO CITY, Mexico, August 7, 2002 (ENS) - Deforestation, loss of biodiversity, unplanned urbanization and vulnerability to natural disasters, along with the growth population and poverty, are the problems facing Latin America and the Caribbean, concludes a new UN regional assessment launched here Tuesday. Mexican President Vicente Fox will address these issues at the World Summit on Sustainable Development later this month, Mexico's top environment official said. The findings are detailed in Global Environment Outlook 3, a state of the world report published by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). “A...

Sustainable Development Called Security ImperativeWASHINGTON, DC, August 6, 2002 (ENS) - Sustainable development is a security imperative, writes Secretary of State Colin Powell in a special publication of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). UNEP will publish a special edition of its magazine, "Our Planet," to coincide with the upcoming World Summit for Sustainable Development, containing articles on environmental issues by a variety of international leaders, including Powell. In his article, Powell describes sustainable development as a "compelling moral and humanitarian issue" and says that delivering environmentally friendly development is vital for delivering a more stable world. "Poverty, environmental...

Address by the Honorable Walter J. Hickel Commonwealth North April 4, 2002 - Hotel Captain Cook, 12 noon Crisis in the Commons: the Alaska Solution Thank you for the opportunity to talk today about a new book ….which I hope will be a handbook for Alaska leadership for generations to come… …and a guide for those parts of the world… … that are struggling with how to fight poverty, the breeding ground of terrorism. The idea in this book is much bigger than one person or one generation. And I hope that many of you in this room will pick...

Human Development in the Arab World: A Study by the United NationsBy: Dr. Nimrod Raphaeli* Under the joint auspices of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development a recently published report, Arab Human Development Report 2002 (Creating Opportunities for Future Generations), diagnosed human development in 22 Arab countries in a forthcoming and even blunt manner.[1]Methodology and Main FindingsThe UNDP has customarily measured the Human Development Index (HDI) in terms of four variables: life expectancy, adult literacy, education enrollment ratios and gross domestic product per capita.[2] This report transcends the UNDP's traditional criteria...

Greenleaf Publishing invites contributions for a book on the topic of "Business and Human Rights: Dilemmas and Solutions" to be edited by Rory Sullivan (Amnesty International (UK) Business Group and Queen Mary College, University of London). Rationale The globalisation of the world economy offers both unprecedented opportunities for companies as well as unprecedented threats, as companies increasingly find themselves, their partners or their contractors mired in zones of conflict or in countries where human rights violations are occurring. Companies are subject to ever-increasing scrutiny of their supply chains, their investments, their employee relations, their impacts on communities, and their influence...

March 29, 2001 Old Rum Distillery Buried as Ground Shifts on Its Fate By CLAUDIA ROWE LBANY, March 28 — Nearly every time a shovel breaks ground for downtown development here, it strikes something from the deep past: In recent years, archaeologists hired to do pre-construction surveys have found Dutch cemeteries, American Indian artifacts and, most recently, an 18th-century rum distillery. And just as often, the shovel keeps on going: All of those discoveries have been unceremoniously reburied. Just last Friday, the city dumped backfill over the distillery's vine-tied wooden fermentation vats to make way for a six-story parking garage....