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The World Dies a Little for the Sake of a Comma

Niala Maharaj writes from New York
WATCHING the prepar ations for Junes Earth Summit was like watc-hlng an elephant die in slow motion.
Day and night, for five gruelling weeks in March and April, the United Nations' pre-summit negotiations tn New York ground on. Now they are over, many environmentalists expect the United Nations' Conference on the Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro to become a failure of historic proportions.
Diplomats from more than 100 countries chewed over the documents that their governments will be asked to sign In June, concerning such Issues as deforestation, ocean levels, the dumping of toxic waste and the change in the earth's climate.
While no one disagreed with the environmental objectives, discussions continually broke down, tempers were frayed, and some most undiplomatic language was heard.
This was because the crux of all International decisionmaking ts economics. Who will pay the bill for cleaning up the world's ecological mess, which will cost billions of dollars?
The bleeding-heart dolphin lovers who would put pandas before profit do not have national accounts to prepare, or
shareholders breathing down their necks, or unemployed masses screaming for their blood. But the government bureaucrats who have built their careers around concepts like "comparative advantage" and "free trade" found the proposals at New York to be little short of revolution.
At the three other preparatory committee meetings ("Prepcoms") help before the New York meeting to prepare for the Earth Summit, powerful industrialised governments had promised reform and aid for the Third World. This encouraged environmentalists to pressure for even more change, blaming the lifestyles of rich countries for poverty and natural destruction elsewhere.
By New York's Prepcom IV, it was obvious that governments that dipped into the dangerous stream of environmental favour risked being swept into the revisionist rush and away from the firm ground of free enterprise.
For powerful governments, these final negotiations became an exercise in damage control, trying to be environmentally considerate without rocking the foundations of their wealth.
Diplomats worked night and day. earning every cent of their per diems, but there were too many of them, all tied to far-flung capitals where elections and Inflation have priority over the environment. Inevitably, they became entangled 1n a hopeless knot of conflicting economic interests.
Yet at the opening of the meeting everything had seemed so simple. The countries’ Interests parted neatly down the middle, like the Red Sea at Moses' approach.
The poor nations on one side argued they are forced to exploit their environment to produce export goods to repay crippling International debt. The rich nations on the other side refused to budge from their position, concerned for their own wealth and knowing
that much of their aid money is squandered on luxuries and weapons.
It soon became every begging bpwl for itself. Rainforest countries were happy to sign an agreement on oceans so long as no one tired to chip away at their logging rights. Small island states, drowning In rising sea levels, wanted changes In the deforestation and carbon emissions that are changing the world s climate.
The rich countries were no different. The European Community accused the United States of sacrificing the environment to protect American Jobs, while Canada's Premier of Newfoundland accused the Europeans of overfishing Atlantic waters.
Filipino diplomats objected to UNCED's support of family planning to curb the earth's swelling population, and were backed by other Roman Catholic countries.
With each disagreement, the offending words in the
documents were placed in brackets, to be discussed later. In some documents, only "and" and "but" were left unbrack eted. Sometimes there were brackets within brackets, and squabbles over whether a square or round bracket was appropriate.
Diplomatic history was made, according to Dutch representative Leon Mazairac, when after two days of argument a comma was put inside its own bracket.
"We are now seeing the emergence of environmental diplomacy", said Vijay Venkataswami of Mauritius. "It is going to be more dirty than any we have had before."
Maurice Strong, Secretary General of UNCED. had warned last August that if the Earth Summit falls. It must not fail quietly: It must be a resounding failure. A partial attempt to solve the ecological crisis will be useless: a good solid failure will give focus to UNCED's thorough analysis of
the underlying causes of environmental decay.
If the governments do fail at the Earth Summit, it can still be a success in human terms. Environmental lobbyists have adopted a more comprehensive view of the planet as representatives from the North and South, and the newly-formed Eastern European groups, met and talked together.
UNCED will have given nongovernmental leaders from around the globe a coherent vision with which to nudge human progress forward. Five hundred years after Columbus kick-started Western expansionism. environmentalists are realising that the cultures his followers tired to annihilate are those which protect the planets biodiversity, and contribute the most to continued human progress.
They are beginning, also, to extend this recognition, to the Importance of cultural diversity for the continued development of human society. If this process bears fruit in the coming century, It might have been worth all those long, dreary nights in the United Nations building after all.
NIALA MAHARAJ ts a Trinidadian Journalist who now lives tn Amsterdam, where she freelances for De Volkskrant and Radio Nederland.