At a meeting organised by the New Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), representatives from five states -- Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Nagaland and Meghalaya, met in Guwahati on August 11, 2002, to discuss the region’s local environmental problems and their interests at the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) that will take place in Johannesburg, South Africa, from August 26 to September 4, 2002.

WSSD is being held to find global solutions to world poverty. But according to CSE’s Anju Sharma, the last 10 years of global negotiations on environment and development have failed to address poverty as rich country governments refuse to address hard issues, such as fair terms of trade for poor countries. If anything, Sharma said, global environmental problems caused by the lifestyles of people in rich countries are worsening the situation for the poor of the world. For instance, emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, mostly from rich countries, are causing the Earth to warm up and changing the world’s climate. This phenomenon could have disastrous impacts on the Northeast states of India.

According to Dr DC Goswami, head of the department of environmental sciences, Gauhati University, such climatic changes could worsen the flood situation in these states. In addition, climate change could reduce soil fertility by affecting its moisture content, and lower agricultural yields. It could worsen the shortage of fresh drinking water, due to increased evaporation from water reservoirs, and changing rainfall patterns. Climate change may also cause dramatic changes in biological diversity, as those species that cannot survive the rise in temperatures, could easily die. The combined affect of these changes on the ecology of the Northeast will most affect the poor people of the region, those who are heavily dependent on their environment for their food, fuel, fodder and housing needs.

WSSD is not expected to come up with any dramatic solutions to the problems of environmental degradation and equitable global development. The Indian government has made little effort to consult and inform the people and develop firm WSSD proposals. At the global level, governments are resisting firm targets and deadlines to stop or reverse impending environmental disasters, or in implementing changes to generate more income for poor countries. For instance, despite promises to reduce farm subsidies in the Doha, Qatar meetings of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the US announced massive agricultural subsidies for its farmers in April this year. This was done to please farmers, whose votes will be important for the November mid-term elections in the US. According to the World Bank, if the US were to stop subsidising its cotton farmers, this alone would generate as much as US $250 million a year for the cotton exporters of West and Central Africa.

Dr Goswami listed several problems that are common to the Northeastern states -- including the loss of biodiversity with the associated problems of habitat loss, human-animal conflicts, and alienation of communities from their traditional habitats; the impacts of climate change in the region; fresh water shortages; the use of pesticides in agriculture, particularly in tea production; and even insurgency. He emphasised that strong public opinion is needed in India to change the situation and make national and global policies more responsive to the needs of people, along with a commitment to speak up for the silent majority of the poor in India.

Background Note: What is WSSD?

• In 1992, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) took place in Rio de Janeiro. UNCED resulted in the adoption of Agenda 21 -– a legally non-binding blueprint for governments to promote ‘sustainable development’.
  
• In 1997, a five-year review of UNCED agreed that UNCED had by and large failed to deliver. In particular, poverty continued to be an enormous challenge.
  
• The World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) is a ten-year review of UNCED. It will be held in Johannesburg, South Africa, from August 26 to September 4, 2002. Several heads of state are expected to come to the meeting.
  
• Negotiations on preparing for WSSD have not been very successful so far. The last preparatory meeting, held in Bali from May 27 to June 7, 2002, ended in failure, as governments failed to come to agreement on any concrete deadlines for action.
  
• WSSD is likely to come up with an Action Plan, a Political Declaration, and several "partnerships" to promote sustainable development. NGOs around the world fear that governments will focus on short-term partnerships, and not commit to long-term solutions to implement sustainable development.
  
• Five issues are expected to be contentious at WSSD. These include:

1. Getting governments to commit to concrete time schedules;
2. Globalisation, which currently works against poor countries rather than for them. For instance,  Indonesia is rich in copper, aluminium and tin; but while the country exports these minerals in the raw form, it cannot add value to these export processed goods and earn more foreign exchange. This is because the import duties for processed goods are kept very high in industrialised countries.
3. World trade, which remains heavily biased in favour of industrialised countries;
4. Finance, which has always been a sticky issue between the rich and poor countries. At the meeting on Finance for Development in Monterrey, Mexico in March this year, rich countries refrained from making any concrete pledges to increase funding, but made some "announcements" that amount to much less than the 0.7 percent of GDP they had agreed to in the past. There was no discussion at Monterrey on the counter-productive conditionalities that come with the aid, and there is likely to be no discussion on these in Johannesburg as well; and,
5. The principle of common but differentiated responsibilities, the controversy over which has struck a particularly sour note with developing countries. The principle implies that while both rich and poor countries have a responsibility to protect the world’s environment, the contribution of the rich countries to the destruction of the environment has been greater so far, and that the rich countries should take the lead in taking remedial action. Several environmental treaties since then have been based on this edifice -- for instance, under the climate change convention, rich countries have to reduce their harmful greenhouse gases first, while poor countries can increase their emissions in the interests of meeting the developmental needs of their people.