[A-List] A good time to save the world

[Mark Jones <markjones011@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

A good time to save the world

Blair can lead at the Earth Summit

Leader
Sunday August 25, 2002
The Observer

Over the past month we have enjoyed the jibes about junketing and the jokes
about hot air generated by 60,000 delegates attending the Earth Summit in
South Africa. Now it's time for world leaders to confound the cynics and
make this largest-ever international conference work. They meet as large
tracts of Europe suffer the consequences of man-made climate change, 2.1
billion people have inadequate water supplies and 40 per cent of children
in the developing world are underweight or starving.
The World Summit on Sustainable Development straddles two pillars -
environment and development. The rich have had more to say about the former
(since it immediately affects our well-being) than about the poverty that
blights the lives of some three billion people (who might reasonably
welcome a share of our pollution if it were accompanied by a small share of
our wealth). But the two are co-dependent. The rich world cannot maintain
the pretence that its ambition for the poor is Western-style development.
If we all lived the way that George Bush jealously protects for the US we
would need the resources of three additional planets.
Last week the view that economic growth for rich and poor alike has to be
sustainable found a new champion in the World Bank. It warned of
dysfunctional cities, dwindling water supplies, and increasing inequality
and conflict worldwide without united effort on a radical blueprint for
sustainable development.
The delegates at Johannesburg cannot create a new planet over 10 days but
there is consensus on some priorities. The Kyoto Protocol on legally
binding emission reductions must be brought into force. The US (responsible
for 25 per cent of emissions) has said the earliest it will consider this
is 2012. The world must go ahead without it. Equally urgent is the
dismantling of trade barriers which deny developing countries fair access
to rich country markets. Europe is a prime offender here. Third, new
cleaner technologies are urgently needed to deliver electricity and water
to the billions without them (a role for the private sector, which is
showing a welcome interest in the Earth Summit). Finally, the rich world
must continue to work at more generous terms of debt relief and aid linked
to democratic governance rather than failed economic orthodoxies.
Tony Blair and his Ministerial team go to Johannesburg with good track
records on most of these issues. Having failed to persuade President Bush
to attend and take a moral lead, the Prime Minister is in a strong position
to seize the role himself. He should. It's not impossible to change the world.