LONDON--At
the recent UN World Summit on Sustainable Development
in Johannesburg, delegates discussed, among other
things, the megatrends of the age: Population, urbanization,
the pressures on the environment from rapid economic
development, and the climate changes that result
from unsustainable growth.
Johannesburg was a jamboree,
to be sure; a vast and disparate cast of characters
such as those gathered in South Africa for the summit
can scarcely be expected to agree on so vast and disparate
an agenda.
Still, progress was made on narrow but specific
set of issues that lie between poverty and
the environment. For example, a pledge was
made to cut by half the number of people
with inadequate water and sanitation--and
to try and do so by 2015. Agreement was also
hammered out on fisheries and farming.
Big business played a prominent role at
the Johannesburg Summit; at the 1992 Earth
Summit in Rio de Janeiro, the corporate community
was relatively low key. HSBC, a big bank.
plans to spend $50 million over next five
years on seconding 2,000 of its staff to
work on projects run by environmental groups
such as Earthwatch. Alcan, a Canadian company,
will help villages in Bangladesh to remove
arsenic from water supplies.
Despite the limited success of Johannesburg,
the era of huge talkfests is coming to an
end. These conferences simply cost too much
(Johannesburg's tab is reported to be around
$65 million). In their place, we need to
depend on meetings organized by think tanks
where business and representatives of nongovernmental
organizations as well as opinion makers can
meet together for constructive dialogue.
Such dialogues can result in recommendation
that could influence policy makers in governments.
I recently attended a conference at the
Aspen institute in Colorado. Business executives,
government policy makers and academics discussed
bilateral relations between the two major
democracies in the world, India and the United
States. Among the topics: Security, cross
border terrorism, health, and also how a
war with Iraq would effect India's relations
with Iraq in the South Asian region. Presentations
were made on the current status quo between
India and Pakistan and also the ever present
nuclear danger.
Participants then moved on to Washington,
where they met with US Secretary of State
Colin L. Powell and one of his predecessors,
Henry A. Kissinger, who offered a historical
perspective of American foreign policy.
The Aspen Institute meeting was a success
in that the Indian side was able to impress
its counterparts on the American side that
enhanced trade with India would effectively
lead to constructive dialogue for the South
Asian region between the two Administrations
based on a shared agenda rather than a heavy
handed US approach based on power and might.
(Bansri Shah, a writer based in London and
Bombay, starts a column for Earthtimes with
this contribution.)
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