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Maurice Strong was tired, emotional and stone-cold sober. ‘We got an
agreement, but without commitment,’ he said on Sunday, as the Earth Summit
closed.

Strong, secretary-general of the event, was torn. Was he bound by a
promise to admit to failure if that was the outcome? Or was completion of
the negotiations – the largest assembly of world leaders in history – in
itself a success to be acclaimed?

Attended by 114 heads of state and government, the summit in Rio de
Janeiro approved the giant Agenda 21 document, intended as a blueprint for
a sustainable future, plus the Rio Declaration and a statement of forest
principles. More the 150 nations signed conventions on climate and biodiversity.
But Strong told delegates in his closing address: ‘We don’t have the means
to carry it all through.’ The documents were fuzzily worded and shorn of
controversy. And few nations had yet opened their pockets to pay for it.

But partly as a result of this summit, he said, ‘you cannot talk about
the environment without also talking about terms of trade, equity and flows
of resources’. But asked if it had been a success, he replied: ‘You can’t
describe it in those terms.’

One measure of achievement was money. Before the summit, Strong had
defined success as a minimum of an extra $10 billion a year of ‘new money’
from Western countries to finance summit commitments in the Third World.
Now, he said, ‘I guess we have something like $6 to $7 billion.’ But
$5 billion of that rests on the supposition that Japan will, as it hinted
in a statement, increase its aid budget by 50 per cent over the next five
years.

Firmer commitments of around $250 million a year each came from the
US, France, Germany and the Netherlands. And there was an initial announcement
from the Japanese of around $500 million specifically for pollution prevention
and habitat protection. Britain offered a maximum of an extra £60
million, provided its proposal for an enlargement of the Global Environment
Facility, run by the World Bank, is accepted later this year.

To the last, few nations were prepared to make concessions in a global
cause. George Bush retreated to the Sheraton hotel, where he told the White
House press corps that he was ‘President of the United States, not president
of the world and I’ll do what is best to defend US interests’.

Stopping just short of outright condemnation of Bush, Strong answered
a question about Bush’s statement by saying: ‘We must change our attitudes.
That message hasn’t got through to everybody. Current lifestyles in North
America are not sustainable.’

Third World nations, under the banner of the Group of 77, refused to
countenance any international oversight of their forests or other resources.
And they may have fatally weakened the body to be set up to monitor progress
after the summit, the Sustainable Development Commission.

A central feature of the commission was intended to be a system of regular
national reports on progress in conservation and sustainable development.
Britain’s environment minister, David Maclean, said confidently early in
the summit: ‘The commission will have a total picture of follow-up and implementation
of Agenda 21 through national reports.’ He added that there was ‘still some
limited resistance to satisfactory language in this’. That resistance turned
into a rout, leaving a final text which simply invites nations to submit
reports if they wish.

Strong does not accept that this is the end of the matter: ‘I hope there
will be a reporting process. The fact that it is not explicitly provided
for here doesn’t mean it won’t happen. I shall try to push for it.’

Strong also commended the idea of an independent Earth Council. He proposed
that the UN should organise ‘a major accountability meeting in three or
four years’.

Agenda 21 has tackled a huge range of issues without providing the firm
blueprint for policy-makers that was intended. In several fields of science
and technology, notably on the transfer of ‘green’ technologies to the Third
World and on safety in biotechnology, the tortuous wording defied interpretation,
and was frequently qualified with the phrase ‘where appropriate’.

Echoing a theme of his opening address, he mourned the failure of both
the summit and the negotiators for the Climate Convention to act effectively
to control the greenhouse effect, ‘the most urgent crisis we face’. Raising
his sights far beyond the European discussion of stabilising emissions of
carbon dioxide at current levels, he demanded urgent action to cut greenhouse
emissions by 60 per cent.