HOT AIR ON THE ROAD TO RIO

The United Nations Conference on the Environment and Development, which opens next week in Rio de Janeiro, is set to be one of the biggest political jamborees of all time: no one in politics or the media can resist the idea of a meeting to sort out the fate of the planet.

But it is unlikely that the Earth Summit will come up with the goods. On global warming, the central environmental issue at UNCED, the govern­ments of the industrialised and the de­veloping countries have completely dif­ferent priorities, with no sign that they are anywhere near a workable and substantive consensus on what needs to be done.

For the governments of the industri­alised countries, UNCED is essentially a matter of public relations. They all want to give their voters, worried about the environment, the impression that they are “doing something” about global warming. But, also for electoral reasons, none of them will agree to a radical cut in their own countries’ use of fossil fuels, which is the single most effective thing that could be done about the “green­house effect”. (The United States and Britain go even further: they won’t agree to any significant action on carbon diox­ide emission reductions.)

Far better, think the powers-that-be in the industrialised countries, to let their voters keep their high-energy-consump­tion lifestyles and to concentrate instead on forcing the developing world not to cut down forests or follow the industri­alised countries’ model of development.

Understandably, the governments of the developing countries do not see why they should take the lion’s share of responsibility for action to combat global warming, particularly when the rich countries caused the problem in the first place.

There is a widespread feeling that, af­ter a decade of unremitting austerity imposed by the World Bank and the Inter­national Monetary Fund as a “cure” for indebtedness, the poor countries are now being asked to forgo forever their dreams of affluence. It is hardly surpris­ing that Third World Governments want Rio to reassert the importance of devel­opment and the need for global redistri­bution of wealth and power.

The upshot of all this is that UNCED will probably come up with little more than vague declarations that develop­ment is very important and that every­one ought to do all they can to preserve forests and reduce greenhouse gas emis­sions. After Rio, it will be back to busi­ness as usual.

But it would be wrong to dismiss the Earth Summit as a complete waste of time. Even if it produces nothing but hot air, the simple fact that it is happening has already given a tangible boost to the public profile of the issues it was set up to address. That can only be welcome. Throughout the industrialised world, global development and the burgeoning environmental crisis are generally out of the po­litical limelight, a concern only for ex­perts and a small group of activists. The complacent consensus among politicians and pundits – apparently borne out by events – is that elections in the industrialised countries are decided by taxation policies and the voters’ sense of econom­ic well-being.

In the normal course of things, politi­cians steer clear of suggesting that the consumer society as we now know it is dependent on the pauperisation of the Third World and incompatible with the survival of the planet.

This is true of left-wing as well as right-wing parties. Labour might be better than the lories on the big environmental issues and develop­ment (it would be hard to be worse), but it remains dangerously cautious and am­biguous. At the election, Labour offered no more on global warming than a promise to stick to the EC’s target of re­ducing carbon dioxide emissions to 1990 levels by the end of the decade.

Despite an undoubted enthusiasm for public transport, the party has said nothing to suggest that it wants dramat­ic reductions in car use. Its energy poli­cy, despite gestures in the direction of renewable sources of energy, remains based on fossil fuels. On development, Labour’s commitment to increase aid to the 0.9 per cent of gross domestic prod­uct recommended by the UN was hon­ourable but, frankly, a drop in the ocean. The scale of the problems of global warming and development are such, however, that the politicians in the de­veloped world win have to grasp the net-or later – and the sooner the better. If all the hype surrounding UNCED increases the pressure on the politicians to cease beating about the bush, it will have been worth it.