Real test of Earth Summit begins - Annan

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said on Wednesday the real test of the success of the UN World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) was what delegates did on their return to their communities.

Annan was speaking on the final day of the WSSD, which brought thousands of delegates to Johannesburg, South Africa, to seal commitments to global sustainable development.

"We came here to get commitment for sustainable development and to go back home to take action," Annan said. "If we maintain momentum, this conference will have made a major contribution."

In reply to criticism that the summit had failed to win real progress on key development issues, he said that although the package of proposals made at the summit "were not everything", it was not a failure.

"We must be careful not to expect conferences like this to produce miracles," he said. "We came here to get commitment for sustainable development and [we must] go back home to take action. It is on the ground that we will be able test how we did."

He said the major achievements of the conference included commitments to increase the number of people who have access to water and sanitation, and the provision of energy and power to the poor.

Alluding to the controversial issue of Western agricultural subsidies and product dumping, which have denied trade opportunities to developing countries, he said: "The poor will much rather trade themselves out of poverty than live from hand to mouth."

The summit was attended by 104 heads of state and government, about 9,000 delegates, and 8,000 NGOs.

Delegates worked towards the adoption of a Plan of Implementation, which would detail actions needed to fight poverty and protect the environment.

The highlights of the summit, listed by the UN, included the commitment to halve the proportion of people who lack clean water and sanitation by 2015, and the expansion of modern energy services to the two billion people without access.

Summit Secretary-General Nitin Desai said that while countries did not agree on a target for phasing in renewable energy, they did commit themselves to green energy, and the phasing out of subsidies for fossil fuels.

They also agreed to support the New Partnership for Africa's Development (Nepad) objective of ensuring access to energy for at least 35 percent of Africans within 20 years. Countries also agreed to phase out, by 2020, the use and production of chemicals harmful to health and the environment.

Other highlights were commitments to reduce biodiversity loss by 2010, the restoration of fisheries to their maximum sustainable yields by 2015, the establishment of a representative network of marine protected areas by 2012, and a commitment to improve developing countries' access to environmentally sound alternatives to ozone-depleting chemicals by 2010.

Multi-billion dollar financial commitments were also made, many by the US and Japan, who had disappointed some delegates by sidestepping important issues, such as renewable energy targets.

The US also refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol on reducing dangerous emissions into the atmosphere. But Russia stepped in and provided a "major country" signature, which was required to put it into effect.

However, many activists expressed concern that the important challenges of tackling poverty, and opening Western markets to the developing world, were not adequately addressed. There was no commitment to raise aid levels, and neither was the challenge of HIV/AIDS given prominence.

Oxfam described the summit as a wasted opportunity, and said the world's leaders had turned their backs on the poor.

The organisation said that apart from "some gains on a few environmental issues, and on sanitation for the poor", rich countries had shied away "from targets, timetables and money".

"Thirteen million people in Southern Africa currently facing famine must now know that the world's leaders have let them down – there's no action to change the bad policies that have turned the drought into a crisis. The two billion living in absolute poverty must know that the visionary promise of the Millennium Development Goals was an empty thing. With no commitment to significantly raise aid levels, does anyone now believe that halving poverty by 2015 is possible?" said an Oxfam spokesman, Andrew Hewett.

"We feel betrayed. We were expecting world leaders to deal with issues like poverty and the destruction of natural resources, but governments are more interested in promoting trade at the expense of social issues," commented Richard Navarro of Friends of the Earth International