To Ensure the Future of the Planet?

Maurice Strong, secretary-general of the upcoming Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, described the primary purpose of the summit as "to lay the foundation for a global partnership between developing and more industrialized countries, based on mutual agreements and common interests, to ensure the future of the planet."

Some feel the Bush administration, in contrast, views environmental issues as cannon fodder in the partisan war between the Republicans and Democrats. Bush has threatened to skip the June 1-12 gathering—known formally as the U.N. Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED)—unless it produces a treaty the administration feels "serves U.S. interests."

June 5, 1992, will mark the international observance of World Environment Day and is the 20th anniversary of the U.N. Conference on the Human Environment, convened in Sweden in 1972. Since then, however, the health of the planet's environment has been dangerously injured with substantive increases in ozone depletion, global warming, and production of toxic substances.

Leaders from environmental organizations around the world are viewing the Earth Summit as a historic moment when governmental leaders can be challenged to take more effective measures to bring development and industrialization questions in line with the growing worldwide demand that the planet's environment be protected.

The U.S. Citizens Network on UNCED has described the Earth Summit as "a window of opportunity." The Citizens Network is comprised of more than 160 national and grassroots environmental organizations that have bound together to help focus national attention on the significance of UNCED and to hold the U.S. government more accountable on the U.S. role concerning the degradation of the global environment.

The United States presently emits the largest volume of gases that damage the environment; fully one-quarter of the world's carbon dioxide emissions, which are a leading contributor to global warming, come from U.S. sources. A treaty limiting carbon dioxide emissions to 1990 levels is a major goal of the Earth Summit. Yet, in recent negotiations in preparation for UNCED, the United States was the only dissenting vote (139-1) on a binding international treaty, claiming it would put added stress on the U.S. economy mired in a recession.

In a time of extreme economic downturn, there is a tendency to triage other social interests. The problem is that the destruction of the vital ecological equilibrium of our planet has nearly reached an irreversible crisis stage. Any further triage of the global environment will not only prevent long-term economic development by the nations of the world, it will threaten the very existence of humanity. The Bush administration's record on environmental protection exhibits a greater interest in protecting the perceived needs and agenda of America's polluting industries than protecting the environment from further degradation.

AT STAKE at the Earth Summit, according to the Citizens Network, is "the ability of this nation to work with others to chart a path to a sustainable future founded on environmentally sound and equitable policies." Representatives of this national network—along with leaders from church, civil rights, and other groups from the United States—will join in Rio thousands of persons from nearly every nation in the world to participate in the official and parallel events of UNCED.

Although the heads of state of most of the member states of the United Nations will be present at the Earth Summit, Bush has yet to confirm his intention to attend. At a time when the posture of the United States toward the U.N. has received expanded support from the administration on other international concerns, the issue of achieving greater global cooperation on preventing further environmental degradation has received less than enthusiastic support.

The United States did vote in favor of the U.N. General Assembly Resolution 44/228 that authorized UNCED to "elaborate strategies and measures to halt and reverse the effects of environmental degradation in the context of strengthened national and international efforts to promote sustainable and environmentally sound development in all countries." Subsequent to the adoption of Resolution 44/228, a divisive debate on the specifics of the agenda of UNCED evolved between the developed and developing nations.

The debate around the Earth Summit goes beyond North-vs.-South conflict on questions of underdevelopment and overdevelopment. At the heart of the debate is the view by the "developing" nations that the issues of environment, economic development, and social justice are all inextricably linked together and to approach these issues as separate and distinct questions is no longer feasible or desirable.

On the other hand, the developed nations, led by the largest economic powers (the United States, Japan, Great Britain, and Germany), would like for the gathering to concentrate more on assessing risks and "managing" environmental hazards and would prefer the conference adopt international standards on the environment that would not limit future economic development.

On April 4, 1992, the representatives of the developing nations were successful in getting the full 161-member U.N. Preparatory Committee on UNCED to agree to a draft declaration that calls for "encouraging environmentally responsible development." In light of the ongoing debate among nations prior to the conference, this draft declaration takes on added importance.

THE GOAL OF the Earth Summit is to produce and adopt five categories of agreement:

• An Earth Charter, now called the "Rio Declaration," that embodies principles governing economic and environmental behavior of peoples and nations to ensure "our common future."
• Agenda 21, a strategy for action in all major areas affecting the relationship between the environment and the economy, focusing to the year 2000 and into the 21st century.
• The resources necessary to implement the agenda by making available to developing nations required financial and technical assistance.
• Agreement on developing and strengthening institutions to facilitate the implementation of the agenda.
• Conventions on climate change and biological diversity.

The church community in the United States is also now actively preparing to send various denominational and ecumenical delegations to the Earth Summit. The World Council of Churches and the National Council of Churches will have representatives in Brazil for participation at UNCED. One of the issues that the church community has raised concerning the summit is the socioeconomic impact on the people of Rio while the conference is in session.

The government of Brazil has taken extraordinary steps to remove the thousands of homeless people, particularly children, from the streets of Rio, away from public sight. Ironically, Brazil's attempt to hide from the public its poor and homeless masses is itself indicative of the need to have a more comprehensive understanding of the term "development," as all nations are having to deal with the rising numbers of the poor. In fact, the emerging term "environmental justice" is an expression that has come from grassroots engagement with these issues.

The environmental justice movement is a multiracial, multicultural, multilingual grassroots environmental movement with the capacity to create a new national political will. Like the civil rights movement, the environmental justice movement is organizing and mobilizing constituencies across the lines of race, class, and religion into a potent social and moral force for change. The first national People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit last fall (see "Transforming a Movement," January 1992) brought together Native American, African American, Latino American, and Asian Pacific American leaders with representatives of national environmental organizations to envision a broader and stronger environmental movement.

The Earth Summit this summer will not be the end or the beginning of the global environmental movement, but it will be an important step in the right direction: a move toward stronger accountability and compliance with international covenants to protect the environment and to promote sustainable development.