Third World must not give in to rich at Earth Summit, says KL
KUALA LUMPUR — Third World nations must stand together and not give in to economic arm-twisting by developed countries during next month’s Earth Summit, Malaysia’s top Foreign Ministry official said.
Rich nations could use the summit in Brazil to forge new mechanisms to impose conditions on poor nations seeking more funds and technology to preserve their environment, Foreign Ministry Secretary-General Ahmad Kamil Jaffar said yesterday.
"There will be horse-trading," he told a group of foreign correspondents. "The industrialized countries will be buying votes and getting weaker South countries to move towards their position."
Malaysia hosted a conference for environment ministers of 55 developing countries last month to hammer out a joint Third World position for the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro.
The ministers endorsed a Kuala Lumpur Declaration which calls for a new fund for Agenda 21, a plan to tackle issues such as poverty, the atmosphere and toxic wastes, but the move was rejected by the US.
Less than a month after the conference, Malaysian officials said they feared some developing nations were moving away from agreed positions in the face of pressure from rich nations, especially the US.
Some Third World nations had backed down from earlier positions during two recent conferences, one in Nairobi on biological diversity and the other in New York on climate change, Mr Ahmad Kamil said.
Poor nations had sought specific targets to reduce or stabilize the emission of greenhouse gases, although this was rejected by the rich nations at a meeting on climate change earlier this month, he said.
At last week’s meeting on biological diversity, poor nations also failed to convince rich nations to back a new fund and mechanism to manage the global environment as an alternative to the World Bank’s Global Environment Facility (GEF).
The GEF, backed by industrialized nations, dispenses funds for development in developing countries.
Mr Ahmad Kamil said: "It is typical of some Third World countries and I am sure this will happen again in Rio.
"There is a lot of pressure from the developed countries. They impose conditions on the South on a take-it-or-leave-it basis."
He said Third World nations must unite at Rio, otherwise rich nations would use the Earth Summit, known officially as the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, to increase their influence on global situations.
"We see this new world order that developed countries are using the levers of power to influence global situations. We see the West and developed countries having all these levers of power to manage the world," he said.
"The power lies only In the hands of a few," he added.
Malaysian Prime Minister Datuk Seri Dr Mahathir Mohamad, one of the most vocal Third World leaders on development issues, will attend the Earth Summit although he wanted to boycott it initially for fear the West would use it as a forum for Malaysia-bashing.
Malaysia, home to some of the richest tropical forests in the world, has been criticized by Western environmentalists for indiscriminate logging, a charge it denies. — Reuter.
Source : The Straits Times, May 26, 1992
Recycling Point Dot Com
(C) 2000 All Rights Reserved