UN leader Ban Ki-moon is battling to rescue a
summit of more than 100 world leaders in Rio de Janeiro in two weeks
which he says must guide the world away from a "tragic" end.
The UN Conference on Sustainable Development is
taking on the vast challenge of transforming environmental, social and
economic policy to cope with a world population past seven billion,
exhausting dwindling resources and straining cities to the limit.
Ban and specialist groups have however accused
governments of putting national interests before the common good in
months of agonising negotiations before the Rio event to mark the 20th
anniversary of the Earth summit in the same city.
Rich nations have been hit economic crisis and
want austerity. Poor nations complain that past promises to give extra
cash and new technology to battle climate change, poverty and epidemics
have still not been carried out.
With US President Barack Obama, Britain's Prime
Minister David Cameron and Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel staying
away from the so-called Rio+20 summit, the UN secretary general is now
furiously lobbying leaders to get an action plan agreed.
"We have to now have a correct vision where we
are heading. Whether we are heading toward mutual prosperity, common
prosperity, or whether we are going toward very negative tragic
consequences for humanity," Ban said Monday in Saudi Arabia.
"The negotiations have been painfully slow," he said in a recent meeting with reporters.
"This planet has limits and we have to do
something for coming generations," he added, highlighting the droughts,
floods, food shortages and the frantic exploitation of minerals that
blights various parts of the world.
Ban says governments should be more flexible. "They should rise above national interests or group interests."
The summit will touch on just about every social
and environmental problem facing the world ranging from food security,
global health, livable cities to oceans and climate change.
Thousands of pages of proposals for the Rio+20
final agenda, were cut to 200 pages in the first talks last year, only
to mushroom back up to 275 under review. It is still an 80-page
blockbuster.
Rich and poor nations cannot agree how to define the green economy and set out a plan for its development.
The summit aims to set out new Sustainable
Development Goals that would take in the eight Millennium Development
Goals on improving health and eliminating poverty but add new targets to
protect the environment and the Earth's resources.
For now, there is no accord how many goals there
should be and what they should be. The 193 UN members have proposed 26
areas – ranging from health to livable cities and protecting oceans and
mountains – for which new goals should be set, according to Ban.
Diplomats say rich nations cannot agree among themselves how to police the new era of sustainable development.
There have been calls for the strengthening of
the UN Environment Programme, which is based in Nairobi, to turn it into
a super agency. Other nations want a Sustainable Development Council
with the same moral authority as the UN's Human Rights Council to name
and shame.
"Every indication is that governments are
basically set to endorse more of the same. From everything we know from
scientists and civil society we need a major course correction.
And
that's the big gap we are staring in the face," said Antonio Hill,
Oxfam's campaign advisor for the summit.
Jeffrey Huffines, UN representative for the World
Alliance for Citizen Participation (Civicus), which represented
non-government groups in the summit preparations, said "big differences"
remain.
Huffines highlighted the "lack of trust" between rich and poor and the absence of top leaders such as Obama.
"Whether or not the heads of state of some of the
more powerful countries come, we will go back to our respective
countries where we will hold our governments accountable to agreements
made in Rio," he said.
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