EARTH SUMMIT: The United States again found itself isolated at the closing session of a major UN summit yesterday when its delegation here entered a number of caveats and remained mute as the EU and others committed themselves to promoting renewable energy.
After the US and OPEC countries blocked specific targets to boost the share of renewables such as wind and solar power, country after country announced that they would adopt specific targets to increase the use of renewable energy as "an essential element to achieve sustainable development".
Apart from all 15 EU member- states, others who said they were backing this goal include Norway, Iceland, Switzerland, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina and other Latin American countries as well as several Caribbean and Pacific states.
The summit adopted a ringing political declaration which recognised that the "deep fault line" - South Africa's president, Mr Thabo Mbeki, had used the word "apartheid" - between the rich and poor parts of the world "poses a major threat to global prosperity, security and stability".
Unless action was taken to deal with these disparities in a way that "fundamentally changes" people's lives, it warned that the poor of the world might lose confidence in the democratic process and see their political representatives as "nothing more than sounding brass and tinkling cymbals".
Accordingly, targets, timetables and partnerships had been adopted at the summit "to speedily increase access to basic requirements such as clean water, sanitation, energy, health care, food security and the protection of biodiversity", with a view to achieving "the common goal of sustainable development".
However, as Friends of the Earth International pointed out, only two new targets with timetables attached were included in the Johannesburg Plan of Action - the detailed document hammered out over the past 10 days in negotiations between delegations representing a total of 187 countries.
"The Bush administration has been the single biggest obstacle toward achieving progress at this summit," it said. "US refusal to agree to targets and timetables is particularly egregious given the disproportionate share of global resources it consumes and environmental damage it does".
Anger among other delegations at the hardline stances adopted by the US on issues ranging from corporate accountability to renewable energy boiled over yesterday when its Secretary of State, Mr Colin Powell, was barracked repeatedly during his speech at the final plenary session.
Despite its own Enron and Worldcom scandals, the US sought yesterday to water down the text in dealing with corporate accountability agreed earlier this week. When this move was rejected, its delegation said it would outline its interpretation of what this meant.
The summit might easily have fallen apart. "We've had a narrow escape. It's better than we feared, but much, much less than it should have been", said Mr Jan Pronk, the former Dutch environment minister, who has been acting as special envoy for the UN Secretary General, Mr Kofi Annan.
According to him, there was "a huge gulf between those inside the hall and people's expectations". Delegates had been "so bogged down reinforcing past positions" that they had only turned to implementation yesterday.
