Energy Hurdle Cleared, Earth Summit Deal in Sight
Mon Sep 2, 6:22 PM ET
By Ed Stoddard

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Only the divisive issue of women's health stood in the way of a global agreement on slashing poverty and mending the planet as the Earth Summit entered its penultimate day on Tuesday.

Delegates were confident that an unforeseen obstacle raised by Canada about a previously agreed text on health -- touching on abortion and female genital mutilation -- would be overcome, enabling them to seal a deal that had been months in the making.

"With the exception of the one issue that Canada is going to raise on human rights, the negotiations are over," said one senior Canadian government official.

"I'd say we're trying to prevent roll-back in terms of the standard of human rights (on these issues affecting women) in the world," he said.

The question of how binding the final agreement is depends on a political declaration that also needs to be hammered out.
The action plan that will crown the 10-day World Summit on Sustainable Development has fallen far short of the ambitious blueprint envisioned by many governments and green groups.

The biggest hurdle facing the accord was removed when the EU dropped its insistence on setting targets to boost the use of renewable energy sources, in what was widely viewed as a victory for the United States and OPEC ( news - web sites) oil-exporting states.

The energy deal agrees a "substantial increase" in the use of renewable energy like solar and wind power but stops short of setting any clear global targets.

"The Americans, Saudis and Japanese have got what they wanted...It's worse than we could have imagined," Steve Sawyer, climate policy director of Greenpeace, told Reuters.

Environmentalists have also complained that the trade section of the text failed to highlight the ecological and social costs of globalization.

They and some other critics have slammed the summit as a gigantic waste of time and money.

ACCORD COULD HELP -- IF...
While not legally binding, the agreement could make a difference to the lives of billions of people living in wretched poverty -- if governments live up to their commitments.

The governments agreed a global target to halve the proportion of people without access to adequate sanitation by 2015, matching the same commitment made on safe drinking water at the U.N.'s 2000 Millennium Conference.

According to the U.N. 2002 Human Development Report, 1.1 billion people lacked access to safe drinking water in 2000, and 2.4 billion did not have adequate sanitation.

Bringing proper sanitation to over a billion people will improve their lives immeasurably and significantly reduce diseases such as cholera which stalk teeming Third World slums.

The summit also agreed to restore depleted fish stocks by 2015 and to phase out subsidies that contribute to overfishing -- though accomplishing the former may prove difficult as some collapsed fisheries may be too far gone to recover.

The summit has not been able to escape the shadow of some of the conflicts raging in various parts of the world.

Police used water cannon, stun grenades and rubber bullets on Monday against pro-Palestinian activists demonstrating against a visit by Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres.

The first protest was in front of the venue where Peres was due to speak and the second was outside a police station where one of the demonstrators, most of them Muslims, was detained.

Peres has other engagements on Tuesday and police, who have been out in force at the summit, will be ready for further protests.