business had in the run up to the Conference weeded out anything that might in George Bush's telling phrase, "endanger the American way of life". Then US President Bush made this comment in response to demands for a redistribution of wealth and resource use away from rich countries.
In addition to the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, the Climate Change Convention and the Bio-Diversity Convention, a framework for environmental policy within countries known as Agenda 21 was hammered out.
All these documents contain important and serious contributions which were weakened by the absence of timetables for implementation, targets for achievement and sufficient funds.
Progressive rhetoric was undermined by capitulation to free market nostrums and the unrestricted reach of transnational capital which reduces nature to commodities and trades in plant and animal genes.
The Climate Change Convention and its fate is a case in point. What scientists have proved and millions of others know is that global warming is taking place.
But no-one really knows what the long term consequences could be if this is not halted. Already many storms, floods, drought, avalanches and heat waves are blamed on climate change.
We certainly know that the polar ice-caps will melt and that sea levels will rise. This could easily flood entire countries like the Maldives, low-lying parts of Bangladesh and other vast areas - mainly in the poorest parts of the world.
The increase in emission of gases like carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide largely through the burning of fossil fuels like oil and gas in industrial processes is the cause of the problem.
Twenty five per cent of the global population living in rich countries account for 75 per cent of all carbon emissions.
In a 1990 survey showed the United States as the largest single source of emissions followed by the European Union and then Eastern Amid great publicity Royal Dutch Shell recently incorporated a commitment to humanwights and sustainable development in its statement of business principles though at its recent shareholders meeting it rejected transparency through external audits.
However Shell has recently come under attack for its activities in Peru.
Here they are preparing to drill for natural gas but are accused of disrupting the lives and livelihoods of the inhabitants.
While Shell claims to have drawn up an eco and community friendly strategy for their drilling operations (which will include a 500 kms long pipeline built to the capital Lima) locals believe that they are less than sincere in its imEurope. In recent years carbon emissions have declined in Eastern Europe because of the deindustrialisation and ravaging of their economies.
The major "commitment" made by advanced capitalist countries at Rio was to restore carbon emissions to their 1990 level by the year 2000. They promised to stabilise but not significantly reduce their emissions.
This failure was to be the key point of contention at the follow-up conference in Berlin in 1995. There, small island states pressed for timetables and targets beyond 2000. In particular they asked rich countries to achieve a 20 per cent reduction on 1990 levels by 2005.
No action was taken on this and further negotiation postponed to the December 1997 conference in Tokyo.
There is a desperate need to rethink the way production and consumtion is organised and to switch from reliance on fossil fuels to renewable and cleaner sources of energy.
But this was precisely the sort of plementation.
For a start it doesn't appear to have fully informed and consulted with those affected about its plans. The compensation that has been offered for the occupation of hunting lands is pitifully small. Some agreements have been signed in their English language original without translation. When drilling starts in July the problems will really begin.
The burning of excess natural gas into the atmosphere (gas flaring) will become as common a sight as it is in Ogoniland, Nigeria.
Waste substances brought to the surface will apparently be re-injected into the earth tielow the water table. There is no guarantee that it won't leak into the water supply.
Shell's fine words have yet to be matched by its deeds in Peru. thing George Bush was so desperate to avoid. After all, he did make his fortune in the oil business. rich countries are doing is shifting the burden onto poor countries using "global cost-benefit analysis" and arguing that climate change should be managed and not reversed.
They say that the "right" for countries to emit carbon gases should be in proportion to the contribution to global wealth of national income as measured in Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
The larger the GDP, the larger the allowance made for carbon emissions. Poor countries with smaller GDPs obviously lose out Meanwhile under a scheme or perhaps scam known as "joint im-. plementation" a country which finances another's environmental project, leading to a reduction in the recipient's carbon emissions, credit that amount and maintain or increase its own carbon emissions accordingly!
One of the working groups of the Panel on Climate Change recently the extension of cost-benefit analysis. The harm of global warming including the loss of human life, they suggested, could also be calculated through valuing the contribution of humans as a proportion of their contribution to GDP.
An individual in western Europe - a resident of a rich country - earning a real income many times larger than a person in a poor country makes a greater contribution to global prosperity and through premature loss of life would have a more adverse impact on the global The economists on the working group (could it have been anyone else?) proceeded in an obscene exercise to value a human life in the west at one million pounds and a human life in say China at one hundred thousand pounds.
Ten to one That is where things are at the moment. All this and much more will be rehearsed again in Tokyo.