A Framework for the Future?

By Adam M. Roberts

More than one billion people-one-sixth the total world population-live in extreme poverty (earning less than one dollar a day). Roughly 900 million of these impoverished people live in rural areas depending on the natural land for their meager livelihoods. More than one billion people have no access to safe drinking water and twice as many have no adequate sanitation services. More than 50% of the world's wetlands have been drained. Roughly one third of the coral reefs globally have been destroyed. Around one third of the earth's human population has no electricity. To solve these overwhelming geopolitical crises, more than 20,000 delegates from 191 governments across the globe and tens of thousands of nongovernmental organization participants considered five core issues during the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD): water, energy, health, agriculture, and biodiversity.

The WSSD took place from August 26 through September 4, 2002 in Sandton, an upscale suburb of Johannesburg, South Africa. In an ironic twist, local authorities swept away the homeless, the beggars, the destitute from the area, so that delegates could discuss global poverty without seeing the very disturbing face of that horrible indigence which they confronted.

The Johannesburg deliberations followed ten years after the Rio Earth Summit, the promise of which arguably was not realized because of the absence of a concrete, coherent plan of action. The documents that evolved from Rio, notably Agenda 21 and the Convention on Biological Diversity, were important blueprints, but the road forward was not yet built-that was the task of the WSSD.

Animal protection issues only surfaced superficially throughout the conference, notably with respect to agriculture and biodiversity, although animal welfare and endangered species conservation are inextricably linked to global sustainability. As Pedro Sanchez of the Millennium Development Goals Hunger Task Force noted, "Nobody can be an environmentalist with an empty stomach."

The path of sustainable agriculture is in small scale family farming operations, which have thrived for centuries, not the industrialized agribusiness operations which destroy the environment, the family farm culture, and the family farmers themselves. Dr. M.S. Swaminathan, 1987 laureate of the World Food Prize, told me that he sees "corporate farms displacing peasant farming," and that "huge trans-nationals destroy the local community." Local community farming amounts to a "micro-enterprise" in which the means of production and the products and profits are enjoyed by the local people. Dr. Swaminathan asserted, "World trade policy is designed to kill micro-enterprises."

Sound agricultural policy is based on sound land policies that respect natural ecosystems and inhabitants. Biodiversity in these ecosystems is being lost at an astounding rate, and the conservation of endangered places and endangered species is vital to the healthy functioning of the planet. Some governments have already shown the bold political will to protect their slice of the natural world. The President of Costa Rica noted in his plenary remarks that 27% of his nation is set aside already as protected areas. The President of the West African nation of Gabon followed this wise lead by pledging to create a system of 30,000 square kilometers (about ten percent of the country) as protected areas, which he plans to translate into sustainable tourism opportunities. More sound commitments such as these are needed to ensure the long-term viability of the forests, mountains, and other vital natural habitats for wildlife.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair questioned whether the world's leaders possessed the political will to make the adjustments necessary to save the planet. In the end, delegates agreed to some 150 paragraphs of implementation items toward sustainable development and poverty alleviation. They agreed to halve the number of people who suffer from hunger and live in extreme poverty as well as the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water by 2015; significantly improve the lives of the 100 million people living in slums by 2020; restore depleted fish stocks "on an urgent basis" but by no later than 2015; and significantly reduce the current rate of biodiversity loss by 2010.

Some targets bring much potential. The implementation plan supports family farming by promoting "the conservation and sustainable use and management of traditional and indigenous agricultural systems and strengthen[ing] indigenous models of agricultural production." Part of the biodiversity protection measures include promotion of tourism "including non-consumptive and eco-tourism," both of which can bring revenues to local communities in an environmentally friendly way. Doing so, according to the Plan of Implementation, would "improve the protection of the environment, natural resources and cultural heritage."

The WSSD was full of paradoxes. Wealthy white westerners ate fancy hors d'oerves in the foyer before settling in for a talk cosponsored by the World Food Program about the hundreds of millions of rural people living in poverty. Delegates and observers drank purified bottled water while discussing the fact that over a billion humans lack safe drinking water and are at risk from waterborne diseases.

In the end, South African President Thabo Mbeki noted that "We are prisoners of the immediate." We lack the ability to determine long-term solutions for global ills. He wondered aloud why the accumulation of such enormous global wealth also produces such great human suffering. The next decade will reveal whether the delegates to the WSSD's biggest achievement was hiding poverty from the world in one city for two weeks, or setting a course toward eliminating poverty and protecting the natural world for generations to come.