UN stages 'rescue mission' to heal rift over Earth Summit
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.The prospects for embarrassing failure at next month's Earth Summit in Johannesburg will dominate a preparatory meeting at the United Nations next week in which delegates from 25 countries will attempt to forge an agenda for heads of government.
"Basically, this will be a rescue operation for the summit," one Western diplomat conceded yesterday.
The South African hosts are growing increasingly concerned that the meeting will unravel even before it starts, with the possibility that some heads of government will stay away rather than participate in a meeting that threatens to embarrass them.
Billed as the World Summit for Sustainable Development, the meeting is meant to be the largest United Nations gathering in history. It was designed to give new momentum to a process that began with the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit in 1992.
However, disagreements over proposals to set concrete targets for protecting the environment from the effects of industrial development led to deadlock at a preparatory ministerial meeting in Bali in June. It is those differences that delegates will try to overcome next week.
Gerd Leipold, the head of Greenpeace, suggested yesterday that his group would rather see the summit collapse than adopt a compromise text without proper teeth. "At some point when things are not really moving, it's better to have a failure than a foul compromise," he said.
Already, the summit is shaping up as yet another showdown between the United States and the rest of the world. While European nations support clear targets to contain the impact of development on the environment, notably global warming, the US is resisting them. It prefers a vaguer formula that would leave it to groups of countries to set their own environmental standards.
The White House indicated that it might be five years before the US has completed research into the effects of global warming and finalised a strategy of its own. A senior official also defended the decision by President George Bush to withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol on curbing global warming. James Connaughton, chairman of the White House council on environmental quality, said: "The Kyoto Protocol would have cost our economy up to $400bn [£257bn] and caused the loss of up to 4.9 million jobs."
Next week's meeting will involve senior officials, but not ministers, from 25 countries deemed "friends of the chair" by South Africa.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments