wfn.org | World summit leaves United Methodists hopeful, concerned

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.ORG>]

Sept. 11, 2002	    News media contact: Joretta Purdue7(202)
546-87227Washington	10-21-71B{404}

NOTE: For related coverage, see UMNS story #383. 

By United Methodist News Service

Setting goals for lifting people out of poverty and improving the basic
quality of life worldwide stands as a chief accomplishment of the recent
World Summit on Sustainable Development, according to United Methodists who
attended the event.

Thousands of people and nearly 200 nations were represented at the summit
and related meetings held in Johannesburg, South Africa, Aug. 26-Sept. 4.
The 11 United Methodist delegates on the Ecumenical Team gave the summit
mixed reviews, but they cited several areas of agreement that hold promise. 

Jaydee Hanson, an executive with the United Methodist Board of Church and
Society, praised the gathering for adopting goals to halve by 2015 the
worldwide number of people who live in poverty, lack clean water or do not
have sanitation. 

John Dowell, a board member from Tampa, Fla., also was pleased. "I rejoice
that this United Nations conference ... has set the year 2015 as the date by
which half the people currently lacking (clean drinking) water and
sanitation will have them."
 
Water and sanitation go together, he said. "Without sanitation, clean water
will not happen. In fact, the lack of proper sanitation denies some 3.3
billion people access to clean water. Furthermore, 2.5 billion people have
no sanitation service at all." He added that water-related diseases cause 5
million to 10 million deaths yearly.

Dowell, a business owner, does not favor privatization of water in
developing countries, a concept that was being pushed by the United States
and several developed countries. "Clear water is a basic right, not a
commodity for the highest bidder," he asserted. "Water is so essential that
the world community should work to make it available to all."

Water can be the cause of armed conflict, he added. "Water wars are not
uncommon in world history."

The Ecumenical Team included the following paragraph in material it prepared
for use at the summit: "The United Nations considers the increasing scarcity
of available freshwater as a factor critical to world peace and security.
The Ecumenical Team urges the member states to create strategies to satisfy
the water needs of all, in order to prevent further water-related conflicts,
both within countries and across borders. Water access and promotion of
peace are inseparable."

William D. Scott III, a voting member of the board and lay leader of the
denomination's Mississippi Annual (regional) Conference, paid particular
attention to discussions about science, technology, biological diversity and
agriculture.

"I am disappointed that my country, the United States of America, failed to
muster the political will to agree with the rest of the world to set some
quantifiable targets and deadline dates in the areas of agriculture and
biodiversity as means of measuring how far the world is moving along the
road to sustainable development," he said at the end of the summit.

He noted that the summit did set a general goal to reduce the loss of
biodiversity, that is, to try not to let a few plant forms wipe out older or
different forms. Failure to maintain plant diversity could leave a worldwide
crop vulnerable to disease or to monopolization of seed sources that poor
farmers could not afford. Both possibilities threaten the world food supply.

Scott said United Methodists were strong supporters of the Precautionary
Principle, stated 10 years ago in the Rio Declaration on Environment and
Development. It says that a need for "full scientific certainty shall not be
used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent
environmental degradation" when threats of damage exist. The United
Methodist delegation had hoped to see the Precautionary Principle applied to
the issue of genetically modified organisms - a topic of concern to several
of the nations attending the summit.
 
However, all references to the Precautionary Principle were deleted from the
summit's agreements, Scott noted. He would also have liked agreement at the
summit to eliminate or at least reduce agricultural subsidies. Such
subsidies in the developed countries undercut the agriculture in developing
countries, thereby increasing poverty, he believes.

Goals were not set in the area of environmental justice, said John S. Hill,
who works on such issues as a member of the Board of Church and Society
staff. "While I am deeply disappointed with the intransigence of the United
States at this summit, I am heartened by the consensus among other nations,
the persistence of the non-governmental community, and the strong witness of
the faith community on the issues of energy and climate justice," he said.

He said the United States showed it is increasingly out of step with the
global community on this issue by opposing targets and timetables for
action. "The result is a document that gives lip service to the concept of
cleaner energy but fails to follow through with commitments to achieve
targeted goals for reductions in emissions, phase-outs of harmful energy
subsidies, or development of renewable sources of energy."

Despite this setback, the final days of the summit saw some progress on
global energy issues.  
"The Kyoto Protocol will now go into force," Hill said. Canada, China, Japan
and Russia announced at the summit that they have ratified or are in the
process of ratifying the commitment to achieving reductions in greenhouse
gas emissions. He added that the United States and Australia have been
notable in their opposition to the protocol. The protocol is aimed at
reducing carbon dioxide levels, which are increasing in the United States,
he said.

Achieving the goals set by the nations at the summit will require a
concerted effort, Hanson noted. He cited joblessness and the debt burdens
borne by many countries as significant obstacles. "Most people are poor
because they lack work or they have work that doesn't provide enough income
to meet basic needs."

He urges fast action to forgive the debts of poor nations. "Throughout the
world, military dictators have stolen the credit of nations, run up huge
debts, and (when) they were deposed, their nations were left holding the
bill," Hanson observed. International banks made loans knowing the rulers
weren't legitimate, and the lenders should be liable for their own bad
decisions rather than forcing the poor to pay the debt, he said. The
interest on the loans often outstrips education, health, water and
sanitation spending in poor countries, he said. 

Hanson expressed disappointment with the role the United States played at
the summit. Funds designated by the U.S. government for fighting poverty are
"not nearly its share," he said.

The United States and some of the more developed countries were urging
privatization and trade as a primary avenue for development, Hanson added.
"But the basic essentials for trade are not in place," he said. Those
essentials include electricity, communication and adequate transportation,
plus safe drinking water and health care to ensure a productive work force,
he said. "These essentials don't exist, for the most part, in the poorer
parts of the world."

Linda Bales, a board staff member who works with women's and population
issues, reported that women's access to basic health care services was
threatened at one point during the summit. Language in a draft of the report
tied access to health care only to "national laws and cultural and religious
values," which, in some countries, work against women and their access to
services, she explained. Through the efforts of the European Union, South
Africa, Barbados and other countries, language was added that affirmed
access to health services as a human right, she said.
 
"We supported this change," Bales said of the board, "because it is
consistent with our (denomination's) Social Principles statements on women,
family and health care. If we're going to stop the scourge of HIV/AIDS and
reduce infant and maternal deaths, we must ensure the availability and
access to comprehensive health care and services and view that as a basic
right. It's absolutely imperative."
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United Methodist News Service
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