It
was a very small news
item,
a few days ago, one
that undoubtedly was
missed
by many if not most
newspaper readers. What
it said was
that, between 1995
and 2000, a study showed,
the
disparity in pay between
male and female executives
in American industry
grew wider. This, of
course,
despite all the words
that have been written
about "equal
pay for equal work"-
all the corporate policy
statements, all the
statutes and laws,
and, yes, all
the international conventions
that supposedly bar
all forms of discrimination
against women.
Which
is not to say that those words are worthless or that
the effort that was expended to have them approved
was wasted. But one still has to ask, as the late Peggy
Lee used to ask: Is that all there is?
You don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand
that, for some people at least, talking about
something serves as an excuse for not doing anything
about it. (It comes under the same heading as
naming a committee to study the problem--and,
as this PrepCom winds its way to completion,
we can count on receiving a considerable number
of committee reports.)
For most of us, though, talking about a problem
is a useful first step toward dealing with that
problem and, ultimately, solving it. It's a necessary
step, of course, but only a beginning.
Which brings us back to the PrepCom now under
way to prepare for the World Summit on Sustainable
Development (also known as Earth Summit 2), scheduled
to be held in Johannesburg, South Africa, from
Aug. 26 through Sept. 4 of this year.
The
summit is being convened on the tenth anniversary
of
the original Earth Summit, which was held
in Rio de Janeiro and produced, among other things, "Agenda
21," supposedly a blueprint for global sustainable
development in the 21st Century. And here we
are, two years into the century, and we are discussing
it all over again. We are still negotiating (and
re negotiating) texts. We are still quibbling
about words on paper. But are we paying attention
to what fate those words will suffer after the
closing gavel is sounded in Johannesburg?
We
might do well to consider what has happened
to the words
that were approved 10 years ago
at the first Earth Summit. Among other things,
that conference "reaffirmed" the pledge
made by the donor countries to raise the level
of their official development assistance (ODA)
to 0.7 percent of their GDP. But in the years
that have passed since Rio the actual level of
ODA has fallen, not risen. At the same time,
the number of poor people in the world has grown
dramatically and the gap between rich and poor
nations has widened.
Some of the people taking part in the PrepCom
are talking about these problems. And there will
be still more talk about them when we get to
Johannesburg. And, no doubt, the talk will continue
next spring when the Commission on Sustainable
Development meets for the eleventh time in its
history.
There can be no question that we have made a
significant effort toward taking that all-important
first step toward solving our planet's problem
of sustainability. The question is this: How
prepared are we to follow through with whatever
else it takes to make sure that this problem
really gets solved? Or are we just going to keep
on talking as the problem worsens?
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