World Summit in S. Africa Not What Sachs Expected

As the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa, came to a close, Columbia Earth Institute Director Jeffrey Sachs was a bit dismayed at what he had seen and heard at the Summit. Or, more accurately, what he had not seen and heard.

The Summit, a follow-up to the first Summit on Sustainable Development in Brazil 10 years ago, was meant to find answers on issues ranging from AIDS to new forms of renewable energy to preserving ancient forests. If the last Summit was designed to raise awareness of these issues, the Summit in South Africa was meant to establish some concrete mechanisms of addressing them.

As head of the Earth Institute and a special adviser to United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, Sachs attended the summit from Aug. 25 to Sept. 2 to advise world leaders and policy makers, including Annan, on the necessity of involving hard science in making decisions about the environment and the economy. Sachs said he sees his role as head of the Earth Institute as a way of providing practical solutions to problems in these areas.

Yet Sachs also said he fears that few world leaders are interested in the science behind environmental problems, let alone in taking steps to remedy them.

"When you go to policy subscriptions, it's generally lawyers and economists talking about things they don't have the scientific and technological knowledge to address," Sachs said, adding that "a lot of people in the White House simply don't understand these issues with anywhere near the seriousness that they require. They could understand them more if they decided it was really important."

Sachs said no strong agreement will ever be reached if policy-makers do not understand the science behind the world's environmental, health, and economic issues.

The plan that was agreed to at the summit has been widely criticized by international media as lacking substance. While it outlined general goals, it didn't offer any specific plans of action.

"The ironic and sad thing is that the plan has very little to do with implementation. One of the things that I'm very keen on doing, at least in my own little way, in advising the U.N. system, is to help us move from this pattern of ëwords, words, words' into a situation where words actually mean something," Sachs said.

The United States has also received criticism for not making a bigger deal of the Summit. While Secretary of State Colin Powell did attend the Summit, President George Bush did not--a move for which he has received a considerable amount of international flak.

"I think the U.S. has done a miserable job in recent years in facing up to the AIDS epidemic and the resurgence of malaria, as well as the U.S.'s own major contribution to long term climate change," Sachs said. "It's ironic to me. I don't think the American people are rallying against our playing a larger role."

Sachs suggested that part of the reason the United States has neglected the issues that primarily affect developing nations, like AIDS and malaria, is that they have no impact on our trade markets.

"Markets serve the needs of people who have money. They don't serve the needs of people who don't have money," Sachs said.

Scott Paul, CC '04 and political coordinator of the Columbia/Barnard Earth Coalition, said, "Any time there was something [at the Summit that the United States] wasn't comfortable with, they would throw in some words about trade, anything about trade, and that makes developing countries really uncomfortable."

Paul, who acted as a liaison between Sustain US, a grassroots American environmental association, and Johannesburg, also characterized the Summit as being light on content. A key problem with the plan drafted at the Summit was that its language was steadily toned down to the point where it had no effect, Paul said.

"There are all these great ideas we have to move forward, but none of it makes any difference if you take out the strong language," Paul said, adding that words like "ëevaluate' over ëestablish'" contribute to the "step by step weakening of the language of the document."

Some critics of the Summit are concerned about potential problems that could occur if the international community ratified a strict and binding policy on sustainable development. Megan Romigh, BC '03 and president of the Columbia College Republicans, said she sees some pitfalls in U.S. commitment to a tightly-defined treaty.

"We have to deal with the war on terrorism before these other fringe issues can be dealt with. Although certainly the environment is important," Romigh said.

Romigh also criticized the large protest movements at the convention, saying their tactics were counter-productive to their own cause. Many non-governmental organizations, including Greenpeace, Amnesty International, and various anarchist movements, were present at the Summit.

"I think the best way is to actually get into the system," Romigh said. "Why don't these people get an internship in some big policy group? [They] really need to step back and try to change the system rather than disrupt it."

Sachs, however, suggested that many of the criticisms of the Summit were quite valid. Though confident that "there will be a turnaround," Sachs added that "all this delay just creates tremendously huge costs, pain, and death."