washington

A special session of the United Nations general assembly closed in New York last week with few signs of progress towards the goals agreed at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, and a growing sense that nations are reluctant to pay anything more than lip-service to them.

The session was marked by both its high level of attendance — the leaders of most of the world's leading economies delivered speeches — and low expectations, with little progress anticipated or achieved. But even these expectations were dashed when the parties failed to agree on a broad-ranging ‘political statement’ intended to point the way towards meeting the Rio goals.

The meeting ended instead with prolonged negotiations to produce a more lengthy and detailed programme for the further implementation of Agenda 21, the document agreed at Rio.

The president of the session, Ismail Razali of Malaysia, admitted that “the overall results” of the special session were “sobering”. Environmentalists went further. “The political statement, which was supposed to be a wake-up call to the world, has been abandoned,” says Bill Hare of Greenpeace, the environmental group. “This is verging on a disaster. It isn't clear what credibility this entire process has left.”

Officials at the UN pointed out that some progress was made, with agreement for the first time to phase out lead in petrol worldwide, for example, and plans to establish mechanisms for global action on freshwater and forestry conservation.

But this headway was overshadowed by public deadlock on the issue of global warming. Pressure from Europe and the small island states failed to extract specific promises from Japan or the United States on cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.

Last Thursday (26 June), US President Bill Clinton told the meeting that he would take action “to convince the American people and the Congress that the climate change problem is real and imminent”. He added that he would bring to December's meeting at Kyoto, Japan, where countries hope to negotiate a treaty on greenhouse gas emissions, “a strong American commitment to realistic and binding limits that will significantly reduce our emissions of greenhouse gases”.

The US administration has yet to decide what kind of limit it will pursue at Kyoto. It may seek anything from 10 per cent below to 10 per cent above 1990 emission levels by 2010, according to one environmentalist.