Letter From Washington: Decisions Loom
> BY BONNER R. COHEN
Copyright © 2002 by The Earth Times. All rights reserved

Years in the planning, the WSSD will be attended by heads of state, business leaders, high-level government officials, experts in such fields as the environment, agriculture, energy, biotechnology, economics, and public health - not to mention lobbyists of every persuasion. The conference's agenda is as ambitious as it is controversial. It will focus on five key areas: water and sanitation, energy, health, agricultural productivity and biodiversity, and the protection of ecosystems.

"We have to change," says Nitin Desai, Johannesburg Summit Secretary General, "from the present model of development to sustainable development or else we risk further jeopardizing human security everywhere." Desai's comments were prompted by the release of a UN report designed to provide background information for the Johannesburg summit.

The report, "Global Challenge, Global Opportunity," says that, if current trends continue, nearly half of the world's people will suffer from water shortages within the next 25 years. According to the report, air pollution kills nearly 3 million people a year, 300 million suffer from malaria, 1 million lack access to clean water, and 2 billion lack access to proper sanitation facilities. There are over 2.5 billion people who depend on firewood for their cooking and heating -- a major cause of indoor air pollution. At the same time, people in developed countries use up to ten times as much fossil fuel as those in developing countries, the report says. While acknowledging gains in agricultural productivity, the report says this has contributed to deforestation.

The news isn't all bad, however. The UN report points to promising trends, such as the decline in the rate of population growth, which often means smaller families and a greater investment in children's education, nutrition, and health care. Poverty is declining in Asia and Latin America, and hunger is on the wane in all regions. Meanwhile, the standard of living in many Asian nations is slowly catching up with that prevailing in developed countries.

If nothing else, the UN report amply demonstrates the explosive nature of the topics to be addressed at Johannesburg. Yes, malaria rates have grown at an alarming rate in recent decades, but this is attributable to the decision -- considered "progressive" at the time - to reduce and, in some cases, eliminate the use of the insecticide DDT. DDT is by far the most effective and cheapest means to combat the threat of malaria and other mosquito-borne diseases. Based on little more than Rachel Carson's unsubstantiated allegations in her 1962 bestseller, "Silent Spring," that DDT causes cancer, policies were adopted that sent millions of people in poorer countries to premature death. Public health policies in developing countries are generally set by agencies in developed countries, with results that are not always in the interest of the former.

The report is also on the money in pointing to the serious health effects of indoor-air pollution resulting from the widespread use of firewood for cooking and heating in poorer countries. Those using firewood are availing themselves of the only source of energy at their disposal, and therein lies the problem. Providing these people with reliable sources of energy that will enable them to live longer, healthier lives will also help them to escape the bondage of poverty. However, global energy-suppression policies, such as those that lie at the core of the Kyoto Protocol, will accomplish the exact opposite. Though fashion would have it otherwise, fossil fuels, which the world has in abundance, are far and away the best means to end dependency on firewood, dung, and other unhealthy sources of energy. But it has, in certain circles (well represented at Johannesburg), become just as fashionable to condemn fossil fuels today as it was to attack DDT three decades ago. Just as millions paid the ultimate price for the DDT witch hunt, even more could suffer if elites forget that nothing in this world works without energy.

Another area addressed in the report, and deserving close scrutiny at Johannesburg, is something most people in wealthier nations take for granted: water. The key issues here are access and purification. Water is unevenly distributed around the world. The Middle East, North Africa, and the Southwestern US, among other regions, have long been familiar with water shortages. Increasingly, shortages are occurring even in places that have access to relatively large amounts of water. China is facing severe surface and groundwater supply problems as it irrigates croplands to feed its enormous population. The Ganges River in India and the Chao Phraya River in Thailand, both of which are in monsoon regions, now experience times of the year when little or no water reaches the ocean. Even as global population growth slows, demand for surface water and groundwater will increase. Promoting technologies such as desalination of sea water, should be a major focus of attention at the WSSD.

The other component of the water issue is purification. Lack of access to safe drinking water is one of the major causes of disease and premature death in Sub-Saharan Africa and other poorer parts of the world. Half the world's diseases are transmitted by or through water. In developing nations, they are so pervasive that a child dies every eight seconds from a waterborne disease. Yet water-purification technology, primarily through chlorination, has been available in wealthier nations for nearly a century. Since chlorination was introduced in the US, for example, such diseases as cholera, typhoid, and hepatitis A have been virtually eliminated. By contrast, even under the best of circumstances, drinking water disinfection in developing countries is often sporadic or nonexistent. Closing this gap should be a top priority for Johannesburg.

UN Secretary General Kofi A. Annan expressed the hope that progress in the areas covered at the summit "would offer all human beings a chance of achieving prosperity that will not only last their own lifetime, but can be enjoyed by their children and grandchildren."

Yet where noble ideals are proclaimed, hustlers are never far behind. Even before the summit gets underway, organizers of something called the Johannesburg Climate Legacy Project are out to prove that a fool and his money are quickly parted. Eager to put the bite on summit attendees, the group notes that "transport from their homes around the world to the conference site in Johannesburg, and electricity used to stage the gathering, are among the uses of fossil fuels that will emit the gases linked to global warming."

Mary Metcalfe of the Department of Agriculture, Conservation, Environment and Land Affairs, of Gauteng Province, where the conference is taking place, explains that "we are measuring the carbon dioxide emissions of the Summit. These emissions will be off-set through the investments in carbon-reducing sustainable projects across South Africa. I urge all delegates to take responsibility for their own CO2 emissions. It is one small step toward a sustainable climate and will be an important contribution to innovative alternate energy projects in South Africa."

Elaborating on the nature of this "contribution," Metcalfe explains that "companies, individuals, and governments can sponsor this offset by making donations to a dedicated Trust Fund, and in so doing, on this world stage, make one of the most important commitments in modern history to a sustainable future. There is a web site where delegates can calculate how much CO2 their trip will generate and offset it. $10 will offset one metric tonne of CO2 emitted by the summit."

It should be pointed out to the ladies and gentlemen of the Johannesburg Climate Legacy Project that speaking and exhaling are also major sources of human-induced emissions of CO2. So before reaching for their wallets, delegates should be mindful that each time they open their mouth, they are moving the planet one step closer to a climate disaster and calculate their offset accordingly.

Finally, in what only can be described as exquisite timing, Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe has chosen the opening of the WSSD to provide a case study on what sustainable development should not be. In the name of "land reform," Mugabe is forcing thousands of Zimbabwe's white farmers off their land. Farmers whose land is seized by the government receive no compensation for their loss of property. And instead of the land being redistributed to poor black farmers, as promised, it winds up in the hands of Mugabe's cronies. In one fell swoop, Mugabe has destroyed property rights, ignored the rule of law, and so devastated his country's agriculture that his people are now facing famine.

Mugabe's misdeeds are a sober reminder that, as long as despotic governments are in place, there is little that can be done for the downtrodden of the earth.

(Bonner R. Cohen is a senior fellow at the Lexington Institute in Arlington, Virginia.)