Posted on 08/13/2002 7:59:54 PM PDT by SamBees
By Alex Kirby
BBC News Online environment correspondent
The world is now in earnest about working to end poverty, according to the United Nations official running the Earth Summit, Nitin Desai.
He believes the meeting will succeed, despite criticism of its huge and unwieldy agenda.
A decision by President Bush to attend would be "a very important indication of support".
Mr Desai said the way the world was developing lent the summit an unmistakeable urgency.
He was speaking to BBC News Online about a report, Global Challenge, Global Opportunity: Trends in sustainable development, published by the UN department of economic and social affairs. Mr Desai heads the department.
He is also secretary-general of the World Summit on Sustainable Development, starting in Johannesburg on 26 August.
Mr Desai said the report's inescapable message was the urgency of reversing the present trend towards an unsustainable future.
He said: "The second message for Johannesburg is that we have to look at all these problems as a package and act on all of them simultaneously.
Only connect
He insisted there was a new seriousness about ending the abject poverty of hundreds of millions of people, though he acknowledged that the rich world still tolerated preventable mass child mortality.
"We don't bother to prevent those deaths because we don't make the connections", he said.
"We think of health in terms of therapeutics, not public health.
"But I think the political will is there. Development is now as sexy as the environment, absolutely."
Mr Desai rejected any suggestion that the summit agenda was overcrowded.
"I ask people: 'What do you want to drop?'", he said. "I don't get an answer - because the issues are all so closely linked."
"I see a lot of commitment, and the countries involved have invested so much, they'll find a way. I'm pretty hopeful.
"If Mr Bush decided to come, that would be a very important indication of support. But the US is very heavily involved anyway.
The report lists some encouraging advances. The average number of children born by women in developing countries has fallen in 30 years from more than six to under three.
A continent left behind
Poverty is falling in Asia and Latin America, and hunger is slowly declining: about 800m people are chronically malnourished, 40m fewer than in 1990.
The number of under-five-year-olds dying from diarrhoeal diseases is estimated to have fallen from 4.6m annually in 1980 to 1.7m in 1999.
But it lists some ominous trends too. Indoor air pollution kills more than 3m people a year, mainly children in poor countries.
Africa contends with increasing rates of malaria, as well as "by far the leading cause of death" south of the Sahara, HIV-Aids.
Its forests are vanishing at 7% each decade, Latin America's at 5%. An estimated total of 90m hectares of global forests was destroyed in the 1990s, an area larger than Venezuela.
Pressure for food
Most deaths in the poorest countries are from communicable, environment-related diseases, and could easily be prevented.
More than 1bn people lack access to safe water, and 2.5bn do not have adequate sanitation.
Food production and consumption are rising. And it is producing food that drives the depletion of natural resources.
Hungry countries will rely increasingly on food imported from Europe and North America.
Water shortages are growing: by 2025 they will affect about half the world's people.
There are "many signs of climate change". World population is growing, and demands for higher living standards: together they "will pose enormous strains on natural resources".
What a lovely thought.
I bet you've got lots of alphabet people evaluating things about you too.
I believe that what they define as sustainability is to take the total world assets of food, goods and services and decree a standard of living to each inhabitant of Earth equally. The developed world produces for those less fortunate while we must exist at their level or at some level that the UN decides.
A worldwide planned economy is their goal, I'm glad Bush is not going. I imagine that Gore would have been there sucking up to Gorbechev and the Global Greenie NGOs and giving away our Grandchildren's legacy.
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Most of the deaths in such countries are the result of the superstition and corruption that produce the conditions complained about. The corrupt Marxist criminals in the U. N. work to support that corruption and superstition as pluralistic entitlement..
Regards,
That's the best historical explanation and justification for oligarchy and/or aristocracy.
It's not just a matter of wealth. It's a matter of mindset.
Now we are supposed to feel guilty simply for not enjoying third world standards.
And the third world is content to continue their slide into "pet" status, to be housed and fed, and told that they are nobler because they live closer to nature.
There is nothing noble or even useful in fighting corruption and exploitation by their fellow losers.
And the same goes for building infrastructure; knowing what the concept of "maintenance" is; actually nurturing innovation.
I'm not buying that, and increasingly the industrial world is being worn down to actually believing there is something wrong with them.
Well, let the Euroweenies seek that "lower level" of comfort, and that higher level of brutality and "protection payments" under the illusion that if they can buy off 50% of the population, they can continue indefinitely.
I am firmly in the school that says "you want what I have with no effort or contribution on your part?"
Come and get it.
Oh, and let's not forget the eternal professional parasites.
Along with the cockroaches and the rats, the compassion crowd, which produces nothing. Contributes little; consumes at the same level as the producers. And whose sole self-promoted "usefulness" s giving away what others produce.
And whose existence is dedicated to the promotion of compulsory compassion and sense of duty towards the ever increasing horde of dead weight.
When the stuff hits the fan, I am certain that they will be among the first to go.
Some small, but real comfort.
NO SMOKING AT HOME, HAND OVER YOUR GUNS, NO SUV's, NO VOUCHERS, HOMOSEXUALS MUST BE ALLOWED IN THE BOY SCOUTS..."Its for the children!" (Unless they are in utero-then anything goes)
Many Freepers have reported being observed by those alphabet people. Seems that we are a curious bunch for them. Our files probably contain every word we've ever posted.
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