Jun 3, 1992

EARTH SUMMIT: OFFICIALS AGREE ON ORGANISATIONAL DETAILS.

RIO DE JANEIRO, JUNE 1 (CHAKRAVARTHI RAGHAVAN) -- Senior officials at their pre-Conference meetings Monday agreed upon a number of organisational details for the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) due to open Wednesday.

The officials elected Amb. Tommy Koh of Singapore, who chaired the Preparatory Committee meetings to be the Chairman of the Main Committee of UNCED which will be considering the Rio Declaration and the Agenda 21 documents.

Nearly 30,000 delegates and government officials, representatives of non-governmental organisations and media persons are in Rio for the largest ever gathering of this type to culminate on the last two days, June 13-14, in a summit meeting expected to be attended by over 120 heads of states or governments.

The UNCED meetings are being held in the huge Rio Centre complex where in some areas workers were still giving finishing touches.

While Government delegates and NGOs are foregathering here, the major topic of conversation in the lobbies was the announcement by President Bush not to sign the biodiversity convention, which had been negotiated at the last session of the intergovernmental committee at Nairobi in May.

The major reason for Bush's refusal is really the fact that the convention is weak though it is has some commitments for access to and transfer of technology, including biotechnology relevant to conservation and sustainable use of genetic resources or technology to make use of genetic resources.

The access to and transfer of such technology to developing countries, the convention stipulates "shall be provided and/or facilitated under fair and most favourable terms including on concessional and preferential terms".

These are term that the U.S. and some other ICs have been stoutly resisting in the UNCED process, in the climate change convention and now in the biodiversity convention.

Even more, this may provide a point of departure on the technology issue which is being sought to be tackled in the Uruguay Round where the Trade-related Intellectual Property Rights draft agreement provides for global monopolies for the rights holders.

To soften the public criticism and to show how "green" the U.S. was, President Bush has also announced a $ 150 million fund for forest conservation.

The offer and the amount caused some derisive comments from many of the developing countries, particularly those with forests.

One Asian delegate who did not want to be identified said the $ 150 million should be kept in the United States to help the underprivileged communities in Los Angeles.

This derisive comment reflected the general mood among Third World delegations and NGOs here that the Bush statement and $ 150 million offer was a cheap tactic to deflect public criticism of the fact that the U.S. had sabotaged an effective climate change convention and was now not going to sign the biodiversity one either.

The reasons given by Bush for not signing the biodiversity convention shows that it is for purely selfish mercantilist commercial interests of the U.S. corporations who hope to corner the world market for biotechnology.

(In other comments on Bush's forestry plan, Kazuo Helgenberger, delegate from the Marshall Islands said: "It (the money) is not enough to save the small Pacific Islands from sinking. Mr. Bush should just keep the money and reduce the U.S.’ carbon dioxide emissions".

A Malaysian official said: "We welcome the U.S. announcement, but the kind of resources we're talking of come to billions of dollars. They would need to add more zeros at the end".

Another Malaysian official said he suspected the U.S. was again trying to push the adoption of a forestry convention at the summit.

Malaysia and other developing countries regard developed countries’ insistence on a binding forestry convention as an attempt to dictate to them how they should use their resources.)