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He promised leadership. Now Blair snubs the Earth Summit

Geoffrey Lean
Sunday 11 August 2002 00:00 BST
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Tony Blair is planning to snub the vital Earth Summit in Johannesburg by paying it only a fleeting visit in three weeks' time.

The Prime Minister will stay at the conference barely long enough to make his own speech, despite having repeatedly promised to "provide leadership'' at it.

The disclosure – which Downing Street refused to confirm or deny last night – follows attempts to stop Michael Meacher, the Environment minister, from attending the summit. But Downing Street had to back down after Friends of the Earth offered to pay the fare of the minister, regarded as the member of the Government with the best grasp of the issues at Johannesburg.

The World Summit on Sustainable Development, as it is officially called, offers the best chance in 20 years of tackling increasing world poverty, which condemns one billion people to live on less than one dollar a day and is responsible for the deaths of three million children a year from the effects of drinking dirty water. Ministers warn that if the summit fails it will set back progress for decades, with incalculable repercussions for world stability.

Mr Blair was the first leader to commit himself to going to the Earth Summit two years ago, when he spoke of his determination to ensure its success. He has since encouraged his deputy John Prescott to visit more than 30 heads of government and nearly a hundred environment ministers to urge them to attend. He has insisted that the issues at the summit "demand leadership'', pledging Britain to provide it.

At a similar summit five years ago, Mr Blair said, in a speech credited with changing government policy: "If there is one summit my children would want me at, it is this one. They know our decisions here will have a profound effect on the world they inherit."

Yet he is planning to visit the conference in Johannesburg for just a few hours on Monday 2 September before leaving for a photo opportunity at an energy or water project in South Africa.

Mr Blair's plans will particularly disappoint other delegates because Britain has played a constructive role in the run-up to the summit. The Prime Minister and Mr Prescott have both pushed President Bush to take a more positive attitude, and Gordon Brown has campaigned for cuts in Third World debts and increases in aid.

But the Mr Blair's enthusiasm has cooled in recent months as the negotiations have run into difficulties. Officials say that he is wary of being associated with anything less than a resounding success and that he now has other preoccupations, notably the impending war with Iraq.

Last night Mike Childs of Friends of the Earth said: "Tony Blair has been saying how important the summit is and how it needs real leadership. But after trying to stop Michael Meacher from going, it now emerges that the Prime Minister will only be there for a few hours. It is time he brought his actions into line with his words.''

In disarray before it has even begun

By Severin Carrell

Many observers believe the Johannesburg summit marks the moment when the environment movement matures, when "green" politics embraces global poverty, world trade and fair access to resources.

Now, 10 years after the Rio summit put climate change and environmental decline on the world agenda, the Johannesburg summit will embrace water rights, fisheries, HIV/Aids, chemicals, corporate responsibility and energy.

The effects of globalisation are central to the summit. More than 1,000 scientists commissioned by the United Nations reported that unchecked global free trade would produce a series of environmental and political crises, including mass migration and further conflicts over resources such as water.

Yet faced with such challenging questions, the Earth Summit is already in disarray, even before it has begun.

Environmentalists and anti-poverty campaigners have clashed with the globalisation lobby, led by President George Bush and the World Trade Organisation, with Tony Blair in an increasingly uneasy position as their cheerleader in Europe.

The so-called G77 group of nations, which includes countries such as Norway and Sweden, supports calls for the summit to draft treaty obligations on corporate responsibility requiring companies to meet basic standards on green, labour and social issues.

The reformers also want industrialised states to accept that they owe an "ecological debt" to the South, based on the North's much higher use of resources. Under such proposals, the WTO's free trade rules will no longer be allowed to override environmental or social treaties.

Yet the resistance by the US bloc to these measures is likely to be fatal. The US is pressing for "partnerships" based on private sector-led voluntary deals – a proposal the UK appears to support. Although the Government insists it wants deals on poverty, water, energy use, education, tourism and forestry, a strong global treaty is very unlikely to emerge.

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