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August 28 2002: The South African president, Thabo Mbeki, has opened the world summit on sustainable development, held this week in Johannesburg, with a call for an end to 'global apartheid' and 'islands of wealth, surrounded by a sea of poverty'. Here is the best journalism in links.
Special report: World summit 2002
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Official site: EarthSummit2002.org
Key resource: UN human development index 2002
Useful weblog: DailySummit.net
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The earth is not inexhaustible
'We the hosts of the Stockholm, Rio de Janeiro and Johannesburg conferences call on governments and citizens of the world to seize the opportunity of the world summit on sustainable development to prove that a new paradigm is possible, and that sustainable development can be a reality for all.' So Mr Mbeki, Brazilian president Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Swedish prime minister Goran Persson introduce the aims of the summit in the International Herald Tribune.
International Herald Tribune
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Mbeki the mythmaker?
But a Neue Zürcher Zeitung editorial accuses of Mr Mbeki of 'self-promotion', and has a harsh response to his vision of 'global apartheid': 'the western nations, at least, are ill-prepared today to commit to a highly mythologised struggle between rich and poor, if only because of a reluctance to relieve those issuing such shrill demands for equality of some responsibility for themselves.'
Neue Zürcher Zeitung (Switzerland)
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The risk of failure
The summit could end up as a 'ludicrous exercise in hot air', the South African press association reports, if the fundamental differences between developed and the developing nations lead to a failure to agree. From South Africa's Daily Dispatch.
Daily Dispatch (South Africa)
Contentious text - Centre for Science and Environment (PDF)
No one agrees on the solution - Anthony Browne, Times
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An overdue agreement?
The first major breakthrough in Johannesburg is a deal to restore heavily depleted fish stocks by 2015. But as National Geographic reports, some scientists believe the current collapse in coastal ecosystems could have been caused by overfishing hundreds or even thousands of years ago.
National Geographic
28.08.02: Summit agrees deal to save fish
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The poor and hungry
Jacqui Goddard, reporting for the Scotsman in Mponela, Malawi, reports on the case of HIV-positive mother Filipina John. whose death is being hastened by malnutrition. A total of 3.2 million are facing starvation in the country.
Weblog special: food crisis in Africa
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The small food producer
Small producers across the world are being put at risk by increased international trade in food, warns the Ecologist magazine. It interviews Anjamma, a farmer with four acres of land from Andhra Pradesh in India, who is protesting against British plans to fund large-scale agriculture in the region.
Ecologist
Oxfam debate on opening markets - Ecologist
Special report: globalisation
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The trouble with aid
More than 2 million are in immediate need of food aid in Zambia, Oxfam has warned. But Zambia's agriculture minister Mundia Sikatana, launching the African small-scale farmers' caravan to the summit, warned this week that 'trade and not aid' is the path out of poverty. Small farmers have too long been neglected, he told the Lusaka Post.
allAfrica.com
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World without water
Fresh water ecosystems are among the most vulnerable on earth, writes Jamie Pittock, director of the WWF's living waters programme, in the International Herald Tribune. Degradation of water sources due to poor management of river basins - such as deforestation, overgrazing and diversion to large-scale agriculture - can lead to desertification and shortages.
International Herald Tribune
Special report: spreading deserts
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Who owns water?
That water is a privately owned resource, sold for profit by large companies at the expense of those who cannot afford it, offends Ginger Adams Otis of the Village Voice.
Village Voice (US)
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Environmental refugees
Fisherman Marat Fomenko is an environmental refugee: he lost his livelihood in Aralsk, Kazakhstan, after Uzbek rivers were diverted upstream for large-scale agriculture. There could be 150 million others like him by 2050, writes Mark Townsend in the Ecologist, which he says makes talk of a British refugee crisis 'piffling'.
Ecologist
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Losing the eco-war
'The United States, which is the most environmentally as well as economically influential country in the world, didn't really accomplish very much,' says Lester Brown, director of the Earth Policy Institute, interviewed in the Daily Yomiuri. He thinks it a 'great mistake' that US president George Bush will not be attending the conference, and adds: 'We reached a point where no elected politician in Washington wanted to be seen in public with the CEO of a tobacco company ... the same thing will happen with oil companies.'
Daily Yomiuri (Japan)
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Going for growth
James Glassman, writing in the Earth Times, puts the view that economic growth increases wealth, and increased wealth inevitably produce societies that are 'cleaner, healthier and more stable and that use global resources more efficiently.' Later in the article, he shows his hand: 'I will admit that the word "sustainable" bothers me. While imprecise, it carries connotations of constraint, of limits to growth ... A goal of sustainable development sells the world short.'
Earth Times
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How the rich pollute the world
But while the US and Canada have had some success in improving local environments, these gains have come at the expense of natural resources throughout the world, the UN's environment programme says. The Environment News Service reports.
Environment News Service
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A new way of thinking
Seiichi Kondo, deputy secretary-general of the organisation for economic cooperation and development, says traditional economic and scientific models have failed to address the external costs of development, such as environmental damage and unintended social change. Writing in Asahi Shimbun, he says an integrated approach is needed.
Asahi Shimbun (Japan)
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A sense of slipping backward
'Discord is all but assured' at the summit, says David Arnold of the Boston Globe, because there is little consensus on how to address the problems. He interviews Nitin Desai, secretary general of the summit, who feels that there has been a 'slipping back' on many core aims since the Rio summit in 1992.
Boston Globe (US)
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Summit must fail to succeed
Bradnee Chambers of the Daily Yomiuri goes further: 'A major failure might be just the recipe that is needed for governments to take international cooperation on sustainable development more seriously.'
Daily Yomiuri (Japan)
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Looking to the future
But Amartya Sen, Nobel memorial prizewinner for economics in 1998, argues that the summit is necessary to make up such lost ground as the US failure to ratify the Kyoto protocol. 'We can even question the general strategy of defining sustainable development only in terms of fulfilment of needs, rather than using the broader perspective of enhancing human freedoms on a sustainable basis,' he writes. 'It is not at all obvious why the enhancing of democratic freedoms should not figure among the central demands of sustainable development.' From the Los Angeles Times; hosted at Global Policy Forum.
Global Policy Forum
Los Angeles Times
Look at the big picture - Earth Times
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Inequality in focus
The New Internationalist interviews a group of Bangladeshi children from poor families who, eight years ago, took part in a project to be trained as photojournalists - and who, while making a photographic calendar and a television programme, share their impressions of the world of the rich. 'When we go somewhere people usually comment: "Oh, you deprived children". Nonsense! If they grab all the opportunities of course we'll be deprived. First they take everything for themselves, then they coo "Oh, you poor deprived child".
New Internationalist
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