Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
environmental protection largely unresolved. The Rio Earth Summit—
the U.N. Conference on Environment and Development— sought to tackle
the development problem head-on. As the U.S. State Department's lead
man for the UNCED preparatory process, Curtis “Buf" Bohlen, put it, the
“goal of UNCED is to facilitate international cooperation in more effective
programs to protect our environment in a manner that is fully integrated
with economic and development strategies.”
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Not surprisingly, the integration of environmental and economic objec-
tives meant different things to different people. Old battles over equity
in international environmental regulations, over the nature and distri-
bution of environmentally oriented development aid, and over the devel-
oped world's culpability for global environmental problems haunted the
negotiations. In fact, as one U.S. delegate noted in 1991, the end of the
Cold War seemed to have exacerbated tensions between the developed
“global North” and the developing “global South.” “Without the pres-
sures of the old ideological divisions,” Andrew Rice testified before Con-
gress in October of that year, “the divisions between North and South
are becoming more apparent.” “This polarization,” he argued, “is likely
to continue.”
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Rhetorically, sustainable development promised to bridge
the North-South divide over environmental protection. But sustainable
development was a vague and flexible concept, and at UNCED the devil
lived in the details. Rather than providing a solution, sustainable develop-
ment became a new locus for debate.
The first and most important disagreement over sustainable develop-
ment at UNCED revolved around the transfer of financial resources. As
Buff Bohlen explained, when developing nations begrudgingly subscribed
to the Agenda 21 recommendations for environmental protection, they did so
under the assumption that the World Bank and various national and regional
development agencies would provide financial assistance “over and above cur-
rent levels” to meet those goals.
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The global North— and the United States
in particular— did not share this assumption, especially during a recession
that reached its nadir just as preparatory negotiations for Rio reached their
crux. “It is very clear,” Bohlen told Congress, “that in the current economic
condition within this country we cannot contemplate a big increase in foreign
assistance.”
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Instead, the State Department hoped to tailor existing aid to the
specific goals of environmental sustainability— a process that the Bush admin-
istration claimed would also increase the economic efficiency of development
