on sand. In 1988 Austria and other industrialised countries promised in Toronto to reduce their emissions of carbon dioxide by 20 percent by 2005. Instead such emissions are up 14 percent on their 1988 levels Austrian chancellor Franz Vranitsky, chosen as West European spokesman for his supposed 'sympathetic attitude actually hauled Third World countries over the coals and made it clear they had to pay more attention to the profit-driven logic of the captaust marker.
Only the politicians, inhabitins ter own rarenta zone, de peared to detect a beneficial changem une damosphere ds a result of the Rio Summit.
German Chancellor Helmut Kohl saw it as efinition to the notion o solidarity! The German news weekly Der Spiegel talked of 'a step towards eco-change, and minister claimed that the conference led to a raising of awareness'.
Greenpeace climate exper Wolfgang Lohbeck was more dustrialised nations will carry on as before." IN THE SAME year as the Rio Summit, the mass movement in Latin America and the Carbbean celebrate 500 years of resistance to imperialist plundering of their natural resources.
No doubt the irony of this got lost somewhere in the mass of paperwork. But even i the agreements reached at Rio were strictly applied, itte will change. What was most starkly lacking trom she apenda was a oroate on the root causes of environmental destruction on the continent.
In particular, the debate on finance about countries from the North. They mace much of their wilingness to mee the long standing UN objective of 0.7 per cent of gross domestic product our bon aven as a to the friro Stingy But as the Financial Times of June 15 pointed out, The stinginess of aid pledges by the rich countries feil below the most pessimiste forecasts. The Rio organisers have had to concede that the Third World will have to finance four filths of their environmental work themselves. debt repayments from South to North considered important enough to tackle.
But the debt crisis, more than any. thing else today, expresses the deep subordination of the continent to im increasing environmental problems.
The Latin American began to deteriorate fast at the beginning of the 1970s, and in an attempt to improve the situation the then governments began to buid up large external deote, Even wi e deals on debt reduc. tion have occasionally been reached, those countrieg have been paying nothing more than interest on these dobts ever since.
By the mid 1980s. with the dobt crisis spinning out of control, a new aracie of man nao boon generatoo: # moves - export it. The aims of this export fever wore terofold:
First to obtain foreign currency. primarly to service the debt repaydeeponed it was becoming more dif.
Surplus
Second to reach a surplus commercial balance of payments in order to show, at least on a superficial level. economic heath.
Unti this cycle is broken Itse headway will be made on the worsening Latin America is told to save its natural resources - but at the same time it is forced into a position where it has to seil those resources, at world prices over which a has no control, to continue servicing the debt.
Even where substantial ald has been promised in an attempt to overcome this probiem there is little prospect of t having much effect.
Brazil is acase in point. As a reward for being host to the Summit, Brazil is set to receive up to $4 billion in new aid - compared with a possible $2.5 bilion plodged for projects worldwide.
Inflation But it is highly unlikety that much of the promised aid will go towards any environmentil projects. intacon is fising as le com and antinge last month reaching pected tumaround in growth as not matorialised. Businesses are increasing prices rapidly, fearing another price freeze.
Perhaps President Color's most pressing concer though is a possible collapse of Brazi's accord with the international Monetary Fund (IMF). Mr Moreira, the economy minister, failed to meet first-quarter targets in April.
Now he admits thore of the sacond eriod may also be missed due to connuing high inflation and interest rates in domestic debt, alongside bilion external debt. In times like these $4 bilion will do very nicoly.
it is no surprise that both the MF and the World Bank are cited as two of the major financial insttutions who will be responsible for the administration of these new aid packages. An excelent example of giving with one hand and taking away with the other Also of interest following the Ric Summt is the state of financial heatt of some of the more subsidiary institu cons that have become involved of late.
In particular the Inter-American InHard-headed Bush leader of the world's most anti-ecological nation No. 24 vestment Corporation (IIC), affiliate of the Inter-American Development Bank (IAD8) set up as part of President Bush's "Latin America initiative', has been facing difficuties in expanding.
Ironically the IADB only lands to the corporation at the same rate of interest Given the sums of money that have been involved, the lIC is quickly head ing into the same dobt quagmire as many of the countries t is meant to be alding.
Written off
The larger parent organisations seem to be on the verge of recognising that the lIC dobt will have to be written off if any of the proposed environmeni projects are going to got off th round, lot alone succoer 500 years after Latin America's natural resources were first shipped oft for the beneft of the North it is time to dump the lIC and their ik, and simply write off the debt at source.
June 27, 1992
What really happened at the Earth Summit? And what did it mean for the fight in defence of the environment? EILEEN GERSH reports. The Rio summit involved two main confrontations over the future of the world's ecology. •Ecology feature - terest on these debts amounts to $50 billion a year! It is the debt which explains why poor countries fell their