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When John Major and the leader of the US delegation, William Reilly,
unveiled competing initiatives for surveying and cataloguing the planet’s
species, they set biologists from Britain and the US on a collision course.

John Major launched Britain’s ‘Darwin initiative for the survival of
the species’ when he addressed the Earth Summit on Friday morning. Based
on the ‘recognised scientific and commercial strengths in places like the
Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew and Edinburgh,’ he said, ‘it will involve international
studies of natural resources; help set goals for research; and build up
an inventory of the most important species and habitats.’

But Major had been beaten to the draw by Reilly who the day before unveiled
US plans for an international biodiversity survey and inventory. The initiative
was a cornerstone of Bush’s promise to the summit to ‘share our science
and to lead the world in a programme of continued research.’

Both plans clash with a third initiative being drawn up by the independent
World Conservation Union (IUCN).

Politically, the proposals could be controversial with the Third World.
The US proposal says ‘special attention’ should be paid to rapid assessment
of the biological wealth of wild lands and areas of marine biodiversity
threatened by pollution or development projects. The US proposes ‘a scientific
subgroup that would identify such areas round the world’.

A similar proposal was struck from the Biodiversity Convention by Third
World governments, which feared that it would open up their natural resources
to international control.

Anger at the revival of this proposal could be accentuated because the
US, intent on protecting its own commercial interests in patents and biotechnology,
has refused to sign the Biodiversity Convention.

In a second science initiative on the eve of Bush’s visit to Rio, Reilly
announced a research package as his government’s main follow-up to signing
the Climate Convention. He immediately faced charges that research was being
used as a substitute for measures to reduce his country’s emissions of carbon
dioxide, the world’s highest

In what was partly a reiteration of past pledges, Reilly said that the
US would:

spend $1.4 billion on research into climate change; this was ‘the largest
commitment of any country’

begin a programme of computerised monitoring of emissions of carbon
dioxide from power stations

spend $25 million over the next two years to help Third World countries
compile inventories ‘to get a clearer understanding of their emissions of
carbon dioxide and methane and of forest burning’.

He also committed the US to drawing up an action plan for greenhouse
gases by January 1993.

Major also announced a Global Technology Partnership Initiative aimed
at ‘giving developing countries more direct access to environmentally sound
technologies available in the UK’