Summary: February 26, 2002: Introductory remarks by Margot Wallström, European Commissioner for Environment, at the European Policy Center Dialogue Sustainability and Globalization: Towards Johannesburg. Brussels.
Thank you for the opportunity to address this EPC Dialogue on Sustainability and Globalization: Towards Johannesburg.
I have chosen to give my intervention the title "A Wake-Up Call for Global Sustainability".
We must inject a sense of urgency into our preparations for the World Summit on Sustainable Development that will start in Johannesburg 6 months from today, on 26 August.
We must also shake-off any sense of complacency surrounding the subject of global sustainability. Of course this is a vast and complex subject, but the European Union has to play the leading role in ensuring that Johannesburg delivers concrete progress towards sustainability goals. We cannot be paralyzed by the enormity of the task.
Within Europe we have made significant progress in recent years in improving and protecting the quality of our environment: air pollution and water quality on the whole are improving as result of European legislation.
But we still face enormous challenges. We still know far too little about the effects of the more than 10,000 chemicals many of them dangerous, which we come into contact with on a daily basis. Bio-diversity loss is also a major challenge - we have now experienced the failure of the first extinction of a priority European species listed under the 1992 Habitats Directive, namely a species of Pyrenean mountain goat. In addition, our waste mountain continues to pile up.
My duty as European Commissioner for the Environment is to continue to press for concrete and deliverable actions to bring about further improvements.
And we need to make our impatience heard on the global stage.
The tragic events of September 11th last year sent a shock wave around the world and are forcing a fundamental re-evaluation of the way we view security policy. As my colleague Chris Patten says, smart development assistance can be more effective than smart bombs.
But we can't afford to wait for a huge environmental catastrophe to strike us before we tackle the wide-ranging questions of global sustainability. That is why I believe the Johannesburg Summit must be a wake-up call for global sustainability.
From Stockholm to Johannesburg: The Story So Far
The issues confronting us are not new. We need a clear sense of the history behind us as we approach Johannesburg.
Those who have been in the environment business all along refer to the 1972 Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment as the start of a crusade to highlight the undeniable link between environmental concerns and human welfare.
By the time of the 1982 anniversary of the Stockholm Conference, environmental policy was gaining a foothold within governments. But the 1982 meeting in Nairobi confirmed that to many, the environment was still considered a luxury of the better off, the reserve of nature lovers and some natural scientists. The link between the economy and the environment was not widely understood.
The dissatisfaction of Nairobi led to the creation of the World Commission on Environment and Development known as the Brundtland Commission after its chair, the former Prime Minister of Norway Gro Harlem Brundtland. Once and for all Brundtland cemented the link between the economic development agenda and that of the environment. She used the term sustainable development to do so i.e. development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet
their own needs.
Many people do not like the term sustainable development. My own view is that it has indeed been adopted for a variety of reasons by many different politicians, businesses and civil society groups. But it remains a guiding political principle.
To me, it does not imply "greening through the back-door" as some would argue. On the contrary, it does mean developing governance structures that allow us to deliver mutually supportive economic, social and environmental policies. It means that we cannot pass the bill (whether environmental, social or economic) to our children and grandchildren for the choices we make today.
In the wake of Brundtland's work, the late 1980s was a remarkable time of activity for those in the environmental field. So when the world gathered in Rio in 1992 there was genuine hope that we would see real change. Those who were involved at that time speak of the excitement in the process and testify to the remarkable work of Maurice Strong in engineering the Agenda 21 document.
The Earth Summit was the largest gathering ever at that time of heads of state and government more than 120 participated. Many refer to the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) as a high water mark for sustainable development. But what did it actually deliver?
I fear that its concrete outcomes are not as well known, as we sometimes like to pretend.
In fact, five documents were finalized and agreed at Rio:
Agenda 21 established the agreed work programme of the international community for the period beyond 1992 and into the 21st century setting out the priorities for the conservation and management of resources for development.
Secondly, there was a statement of 27 principles guiding environment-and-development activities.
Thirdly, there was a statement of principles on forestry.
In addition to these documents, two conventions were negotiated in parallel with the Rio process, namely:
The Convention on Biodiversity; and,
The UN Convention on Climate Change.
As well as these five documents, the Earth Summit decided to establish a Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) under the umbrella of the UN Economic and Social Committee (ECOSOC). It is this body, the CSD, which is charged with the main responsibility of preparing for Johannesburg.
So what will be bringing home in our luggage from the Rio+10 meeting in Johannesburg I wonder?
At just six months away from the Summit, it is clear that heads of state and government will not be signing any major new Conventions at the start of September. But before setting out my stall on what I believe we should be bringing home from Johannesburg, let me address the question of the implementation deficit.
< b>The Implementation Deficit
We cannot keep coming back from world gatherings with impressive commitments and fine words that we then leave in the corner of our offices to gather dust. Our implementation deficit will quickly turn into a credibility gap, notably vis-à-vis the developing world.
Progress towards the goals established at Rio has been slower than anticipated and in some respects conditions are worse today than they were ten years ago.
Why has progress been so slow? Let me give you just two reasons.
One reason is that the industrialized world's unsustainable patterns of consumption and production have remained unchanged. This, for me, lies at the heart of the problem of globalization. Market liberalization and trade are indeed opening up new economic opportunities. But the western model of production and consumption is simply not viable as a model for the global economy. For example, if the Chinese were to follow the American model of having one or two cars in every garage and were to
consume oil at the US rate, China would need over 80 million barrels of oil a day. But the world only produces around 74 million barrels a day at present!
A second major reason for the obvious gap in implementation is that the financial resources required for implementing Agenda 21 have simply not been forthcoming.
Official development assistance (ODA) actually declined from 0.35% of donor countries' GNP in 1992 to 0.22% in 2000. The target of 0.7% of GNP, which has been repeated so many times, still remains a distant prospect. Within the EU, the only 4 Member States to have met this target are Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands and Luxembourg.
Of course, ODA is not the only way to channel financial resources to the developing world. Trade and private capital flows are quantitatively much more important and have increased significantly since 1992. Net Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) flows to developing countries grew steadily throughout the 1990s to reach a total of $120 billion in 2000 compared with $30 billion in 1992.
But as we know, FDI flows are highly volatile and have focused on only a small number of countries - with ten developing countries receiving 80% of total FDI flows to the developing world. Such finances rarely stimulate investment in public services and infrastructure, which are both foundation stones for sustainable development.
Agenda 21 is a very comprehensive document consisting of over 40 chapters, over 100 programme areas and 3,000 recommendations. But unless we tackle the issues of financing and our consumption and production patterns, commitments and recommendations alone will not be up to the task.
Worsening Trends: The New Wake Up Call
As European Commissioner for the Environment, I often feel caught between the prophets of impending doom at one extreme of the debate and the "no worries" brigade at the other extreme. The latter's skepticism may be born of ignorance. This is positive in some respects as they can sometimes be won over by objective arguments. But skepticism is more often rooted in worn-out ideas, short-term profit motives, rigid structures and conservatism.
I sometimes like to borrow from Paul Harrison, a British expert on environmental matters who has written a number of entertaining and instructive books on global environmental issues. He begins his 1993 book "The Third Revolution" with a description of the plot in Shakespeare's Hamlet:
"Claudius is swift in the commission of evil: there is no chink of delay between thought and deed.
But Hamlet: Hamlet knows from the outset that something is wrong.
By the end of Act One, he knows exactly what is wrong.
At the end of Act Two, he knows what needs doing.
Act Three brings his best chance of killing Claudius with least damage. He lets it pass.
Then Polonius, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, Ophelia, Laertes and Gertrude all die unnecessarily.
Hamlet waits until circumstances force his hand.
Before he does what had to be done all along, Hamlet has less than half an hour to live".
Hamlet's indecision and procrastination are a perfect illustration of our own predicament. I think we are still somewhere near the beginning of the play. But we already know what is wrong in terms of our unsustainable impact on the globe. Let me highlight a few examples.
Population: in the last 50 years we have added more people to world population than during the preceding 4 million years since man first stood upright. The earth's present population of 6 billion is projected to rise to 9 billion by 2050. Just think through what that means with our current production and consumption patterns!
Bio-diversity: in 1996, 25% of the world's 4,600 mammal species and 11% of the 9,700 bird species were at significant risk of extinction. More than 20% of the world's 10,000 freshwater fish species have become extinct, threatened or endangered in recent decades.
Forests: between 1990 and 2000, around 140 million hectares of forests were lost. That is a total area larger than the combined size of Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and The Netherlands.
Water: water tables are falling so that while consumption is rising by 2% to 3% annually, resources are consumed faster than they can be replenished. At least 1.1 billion people still lack access to safe drinking water and about 2.4 billion have no adequate sanitation.
Desertification and soil degradation: these continue to be major problems. Nigeria is losing over 500 square kilometers of productive land to desert every year. Southern parts of Europe are also severely affected. The loss of topsoil from wind and water erosion now exceeds natural formation of new soil. In Africa, the annual loss of livestock production from the cumulative degradation of rangeland is estimated at around $7 billion, a sum almost equivalent to the entire GDP of
Ethiopia.
I could go on. But we cannot allow the enormity of the task to paralyze us into inaction. We must also recognize that there are some positive signs too, not least in the following areas:
- in the health care sector, in reducing child and infant mortality rates;
- in hunger reduction; and,
- in providing access to education, safe water and sanitation.
New advances whether in the form of wind turbines or hydrogen cell technology also offer the hope of a break with unsustainable trends.
That is why I still believe we are somewhere nearer the start of the play than its end, but it would be a tragedy to wait until some terrible disaster befalls us before taking effective measures. To continue the literary metaphor, Claudius represents the shocking depletion and waste of resources, the poisoning of our natural environment, climate change and the other challenges, which we must take decisive action to control.
The Johannesburg Outcomes: Tackling Poverty and the Environment
So we know the nature of the problems we have to address in Johannesburg. We shouldn't, therefore, try to re-invent the wheel. Instead we must focus on concrete implementation and a renewed sense of commitment.
In a nutshell, Johannesburg is not just about the environment. The examples I have given underline why Johannesburg must be about tackling the complex linkages between poverty and the environment.
Thirty years have passed since Indira Gandhi declared at the Stockholm Conference that poverty unites, and that the battle against poverty is also a struggle for a better environment.
After the events of recent months, Johannesburg cannot tackle environmental issues in isolation from the grim fact of life that for too many people, poverty and exclusion are the daily reality. The World Health Organisation estimates that poor environmental quality contributes to 25% of all preventable illness in the world today. The poor are typically on the frontline.
While East Asia has been making progress, average income in Sub-Saharan Africa has fallen by an average of 1% per year between 1975 and 1999. The region also faces major difficulties in integrating itself into the global economy and has gained little benefit so far from trade liberalization. In sub-Saharan Africa, 46% of people still live on less than $1 a day and life expectancy is 49 years compared to over 60 in all other regions.
That is also why we have to see the World Summit this summer as part of a continuum of action stretching from Doha through Monterrey to Johannesburg and beyond.
The new trade round launched in Doha last November must improve market access for developing countries.
The UN Ministerial Conference on Financing for Development in Monterrey next month will address finance for sustainable development.
Johannesburg must then build on these agreements in tackling the poverty/environment interface.
Our approach to globalization and sustainability must be one of strengthened multilateralism across the agendas of environment, trade and development co-operation. The ratification of the Kyoto Protocol by enough parties to bring it into force before Johannesburg would equally sent an important signal.
Against this backdrop, the UN Commission on Sustainable Development is continuing its preparations for Johannesburg.
Following their most recent discussions in New York, it seems that the world is coming to the consensus that there are two types of outcomes to expect from the Summit:
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