By Thalif Deen
United Nations, Apr. 24 (IPS) — The international community,
accused of reneging on its commitments to fight environmental degradation,
has come under heavy fire at a series of meetings of the UN Commission
on Sustainable Development (CSD) now in session.
“The world needs to more than double its spending — from the
current $16 billion to $33 billion — if it is to achieve its 2015
target of halving the proportion of people without access to sanitation
and drinking water,’’ says Jose Antonio Ocampo, UN Under-Secretary-General
for Economic and Social Affairs.
“Stronger political will and more effective institutions, however
crucial to progress, must be matched by additional financial resources,’’
Ocampo told delegates at the.
But most western donors, far from increasing financial assistance, have
been progressively chopping their development aid budgets over the last
few years.
The CSD is holding a two-week long session to assess how the world has
fared on issues relating to water, sanitation, and human settlements
since the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in South Africa
two years ago.
The promises made at the WSSD — including additional resources,
transfer of technology, and rebuilding environmental infrastructure
in the world’s poorer nations — have remained largely unfulfilled,
say environmental activists and third world diplomats.
“Despite water, sanitation, and human settlements being such a
crucial life and death issue in many parts of the world and affecting
security in many regions, they are not real priorities in the minds
of the big players,’’ said Saradha Iyer of the Third World
Network (TWN).
“A sort of misplaced emphasis you might say, but that is the reality,’’
she added.
Malaysia-based TWN is one of scores of international non-governmental
organizations (NGOs) participating in a series of CSD meetings scheduled
to conclude Apr. 30.
The CSD session is a non-negotiating round of talks, because, said Iyer,
“it only means that the rich do not want to talk about finance
issues or be asked to stick to their part of the global bargain.’’
The global bargain included a pledge by western donors to increase official
development assistance (ODA) — currently averaging about 56 billion
dollars annually — to developing nations.
During the 1990s ODA for water and sanitation continued to decline,
Borge Brende, CSD chair and Norwegian Environment Minister, told reporters.
Total investments in water and sanitation in the developing world today
amount to about $15 billion annually, with five billion dollars coming
from ODA. The remaining 10 billion dollars came from national sources,
he said.
“Poor people paid dearly for drinking water. Something was definitely
wrong when the poor in the slums wound up paying more for water bottles
than for gasoline,’’ Brende said.
Rich nations have grudgingly accepted the particular role they must
play in tackling the pressing environmental problems facing the planet,
said Tony Juniper of Friends of the Earth International.
“But considering the wealth and power of these countries, their
performance is truly lamentable,’’ he added in a statement
released here.
Brende said that three to four million people die each year from waterborne
diseases. The social costs are severe, representing an economic loss
of about $16 billion a year globally, he added.
“More than half the hospital beds in the world are filled with
people with water-related diseases. That clearly demonstrates the link
between the water target and the health target,’’ said the
CSD chairman.
The statistics cranked out at the meeting — summing up the post-WSSD
global environment — are staggering.
Some 2.4 billion people — nearly two-thirds of the developing world
— lack access to basic sanitation. In India alone, nearly 700 million
people defecate in the open, and about 700,00 Indian children die every
year from diarrhea and dehydration.
At the same time, nearly one billion people, 32 percent of the world’s
population, live in slums. This figure is expected to rise to two billion
by 2030.
Half of the population in Mumbai today lives in slums, said Arputham
Jocking, president of the Indian National Slum Dwellers Federation.
Much had been said about community participation but governments had
done little about it, he added.
“Why continue to listen to that kind of crap,’’ Jocking
asked, pointing out that slum dwellers in Mumbai were successfully implementing
a self-help project.
“It is very clear that developing nations still face immense challenges,’’
Said Ambassador Nasser Abdulaziz Al-Nasser of Qatar.
Speaking on behalf of the 133 developing nations that comprise the Group
of 77, Al-Nasser said: “For developing countries to move ahead,
the international community would need to fulfill its commitments to
increase its support in finance, technology transfers, and capacity
building.’’
That is a necessary and important complement to the efforts undertaken
by developing countries themselves, he added.
“Despite their best efforts, however, people in the world’s
poorest countries require more support from the international community
to overcome water scarcity, natural disasters, and other perennial problems
that threaten their existence,’’ the ambassador said.
Responding to the criticisms, Gilbert Parent of Canada said bilateral
and multilateral organizations were playing a key role in assisting
developing nations meet the internationally-agreed goals of the WSSD.
“To meet these goals, however, the international community needed
effective global monitoring systems,’’ he added.
The United States has consistently maintained that developing nations
should harness the power of public-private partnerships and join hands
with the private sector to achieve the goals.
At a press conference in Washington on Apr. 21, World Bank President
James Wolfensohn criticized what he called “a growing imbalance
in global spending’’ by the international community.
The world’s governments, he said, now spend about $900 billion
annually on the military, $300 billion on agricultural subsidies to
farmers — but only $56 billion on development assistance to the
poor.
