Thanks to all-night sessions and Koh’s lightning-fast gavel, 178 nations agreed on an 800-page blueprint for environmentally benign development in poor countries. They cranked out a nonbinding declaration of ecoprinciples and mustered enough signatures to pass into international law pacts to preserve the planet’s species and to stave off global warming (NEWSWEEK, June 15). For the first time in history, nations vowed to take into account global environmental concerns when making internal economic decisions. Said British Prime Minister John Major, “Nobody should underestimate what has been achieved.”
But the real yardstick of success was neither rhetoric nor treaties (which some nations signed less because they agreed with them than because they were so vague). The true measure was cash. Despite suspicions that the Third World’s request for funds for environmentally sound development was the old foreign-aid plea in green garb, the North anted up. Japan will increase aid for such “sustainable development” from about $800 million to $1.4 billion a year through 1996. Europe pledged $4 billion. Germany met the Third World’s longstanding demand that rich nations contribute 0.7 percent of their GNP to foreign assistance. Bonn will send more than $6.3 billion a year in an effort to ease the poverty that drives nations to savage their environment.
America, in contrast, found itself in the role of cranky Uncle Scrooge. President Bush offered an unspecified amount of aid to help nations inventory their species, to find out what exists before it becomes extinct. He pledged an underwhelming $25 million to help countries analyze and find ways to reduce their greenhouse-gas emissions and $150 million to help protect the world’s forests, and he called for an international conference this year to discuss progress. At a press conference just before he left Rio, Bush defended America’s record. " Policy is not going to be dominated by the extremes," he said. While vows to staunch global warming are a start, he said in his coolly received speech, " what matters more is the road from Rio."
As other nations start down that road, they are concluding that it may not matter how often the United States joins them. Washington watered down the climate pact and refused to sign biodiversity, yet neither move torpedoed Rio. Before the Berlin wall fell, either might have. Sen. Albert Gore of Tennessee called environmental protection the “single organizing principle of the planet now.” Nations such as Germany and Japan, who see environmental stewardship as good economics, have seized the initiative on an issue they think will define the coming decades. If they’re right, the United States could find itself a world leader without many followers.
