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JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (AP) - With world leaders pushing for action, negotiators at the Earth Summit agreed on a plan Monday to protect the environment and fight poverty. "Humanity has a rendezvous with destiny," French President Jacques Chirac declared. Alarms are sounding across all the continents. We cannot say that we did not know!" U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged the more than 100 world leaders in Johannesburg to commit to firm action to solve problems identified a decade ago at the first Earth Summit in Rio. "The focus from now on must be on implementing the many agreements that have...

You thought you had seen and heard it all - the delegates, the issues, the marches, and even the summit song, but now there’s an official summit toilet roll.And it’s two-ply, nogal.The roll itself is decorated with messages highlighting the plight of the millions of people around the world without access to proper sanitation and clean water.Commitment to clear sanitation targets has been one of the issues that have held up the UN World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg.South African water affairs and forestry director-general Mike Muller, whose department has been tasked with reducing the backlog of about 18...

"A GLOBAL HUMAN SOCIETY BASED ON POVERTY for many and prosperity for a few, characterized by islands of wealth surrounded by a sea of poverty, is unsustainable," said South African President Thabo Mbeki in his speech Monday welcoming more than 60,000 delegates from 182 countries to Johannesburg for the two-week World Conference on Sustainable Development. The delegates left for dinner inspired, and why not? At dinner, as the chef at the gathering's central hotel described to the London tabloid The Sun, these humanitarian statesmen and stateswomen began spending two weeks gorging themselves on literally tons of Beluga caviar, lobster, pate...

A Green leader here called the allure of free market capitalism "sinister" and referred to economic growth as "the engine of [environmental] degradation." Fred Edwards, a board member of Friends of the Earth Scotland, told CNSNews.com that the U.S. and Europe must "start talking less about immediate gratification and...not worship economic growth as we do." Edwards made his comments Thursday at the "People's Earth Summit," a parallel event to the U.N.'s Summit on Sustainable Development (Earth summit). When asked if the developing world should emulate the U.S. and western Europe's economic structure, Edwards was emphatic: "They certainly shouldn't," he said....

MAKKAH, 1 September — The Muslim World League (MWL) has urged the Earth Summit committee studying problems of women and family to draw benefit from the rules of ethics and morality as enshrined in Islam.Dr. Abdul-Rahman Al-Zeid, MWL assistant secretary-general for mosques affairs and head of the League’s delegation to the conference being held in Johannesburg, presented a paper on ways to tackle problems faced by women and family from an Islamic perspective. He pointed out the important role that could be played by women in national development and environmental protection.He also stressed the need to protect women from all...

Thousands of demonstrators have marched to the World Development Summit venue in Johannesburg, in the first mass protest to take place since it opened on Monday. Singing apartheid-era songs, an estimated 20,000 people protesting about issues ranging from Aids to globalisation, arrived at the convention centre in the rich white suburb of Sandton from the shanty township of Alexandra. At their head were some of the most radical groups - Muslims marching in support of the Palestinians, and members of the Landless People's Movement, demonstrating for jobs, land and everything they say they were promised before the change of government...

Aug. 29, 2002 Hanegbi: Anti-Israel protests threatening to 'explode conference' By GIL HOFFMANIsrael responded when it was attacked for the first time on the floor of the World Summit on Sustainable Development's plenary session in Johannesburg on Thursday. But due to Shabbat, the Israeli delegation will be prevented from reacting to an anti-Israel march set to take place tomorrow during the conference's officially sanctioned day of protests. The Palestine Solidarity Committee of South Africa, which has been coordinating anti-Israel activities at the conference, received a commitment Thursday from several South African ministers that they would attend their event, which is...

Earth Summit delegates feast while discussing starvation 27-08-2002, 11:45 The Michelangelo Hotel, South Africa Delegates to the United Nations World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, who are meeting to discuss starvation and poverty, are feasting on extravagant foods and fine wines flown in from around the world. British newspaper “The Sun”, which exposed the story on Tuesday, also claimed that hundreds of trees had been cut down around the conference center to make room for limousines bringing delegates in to discuss how to prevent damage to the environment. Known as the “Earth Summit”, the UN conference opened on 26...

Summit: U.S. Offers $2.56 Billion in Partnerships JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, August 29, 2002 (ENS) - The United States announced five programs worth $2.56 billion today at the World Summit on Sustainable Development. The initiatives are aimed at providing poor people with access to clean water, sanitation, clean energy, relief from HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, and protection for Congolese forests. Announcing the programs, Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs Paula Dobriansky said they will leverage government funding with financial support from the private sector to help developing countries move toward sustainable growth. She said the five major partnerships, coupled...

Temperature rises at Earth Summit The political temperature is rising at the Earth Summit in Johannesburg as the United States and Europe take opposite approaches on empowering the Third World and the health of Planet Earth. Pressure is mounting on Washington to ratify the Kyoto Protocol to combat global warming, with the United States -- the world's greatest greenhouse-gas polluter -- coming under friendly fire from allies. The world's most wretchedly poor countries -- in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean -- meanwhile believe that a fraction of the billion dollars a day shelled out to already rich...

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - A delegation of U.S. congressional Democrats accused the Bush administration on Thursday of blocking plans to alleviate poverty and promote clean economic growth at the U.N.'s Earth Summit. "The U.S. administration is becoming somewhat of an obstructionist in terms of meeting the goals of sustainable development," California Congressman George Miller told a news conference. Talks to cut poverty, increase access to fresh water and promote economic growth while repairing environmental damage run from August 26-September 4 in Johannesburg, a decade after the first Earth Summit in Rio. The Democrats' comments were the latest salvo in their battle...

If the leaders gathered at this week's World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg really want to save the environment, they should concentrate less on eco-rhetoric, and more on promoting the free-market conditions that permit poor nations to become rich: The simple truth is that countries grow cleaner as they grow wealthier -- no matter whether they've self-consciously dedicated themselves to "sustainable" policies (whatever those are) or not. Singapore, the wealthiest state in Asia, is also its cleanest, despite being one of the continent's largest per capita manufacturers. Canada and the United States -- which Friends of the Earth...

Six thousand journalists are in Johannesburg to cover the World Summit on Sustainable Development. The BBC team alone is rumored to number at least 100. Never have so many traveled so far to report so little: The meeting will likely produce nothing except the same tiresome effusion of anti-Western rhetoric we heard from last year's "World Conference Against Racism" in Durban. Already, both South African President Thabo Mbeki and the summit's secretary-general have accused Western leaders of presiding over a system of "global apartheid." Not to be outdone, Friends of the Earth International declared Canada, the United States and Australia...

JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA -- ASN -- On the opening day of the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), a.k.a. Earth Summit II in Johannesburg, South Africa, I attended a four-hour-long conference entitled, Educating for Sustainable Living with the Earth Charter.ý Steven Rockefeller, head of the Earth Charter Commission, U.S.A, showed up to address the crowd packed into a tent. There are at least three major reasons why every American should take careful notice of this Earth Summit II and the Earth Charter, a document some portray as a constitution for a New World Order. It is significant that Steven Rockefeller...

Poll and whacky Earth summit quotes below. Poll needs attention. The Whackos need to go live in an African town with no electricity. Poll: Does the U.S. economic model make the U.S. a world environmental bad guy? - Yes. The U.S. economic model is destroying ecosystems we can not afford to lose. 64% - No. Technology and a hearty economy provide the means to protect the environment. 36% Poll Link Here The BS is really starting to fly on this Earth Summit. A few of the great quotes coming out of the place so far. *** "There is a lot...

World Leaders Urged To Lift Billions Out Of Poverty And Save The Planet by Richard Ingham Johannesburg (AFP) Aug 27, 2002 A vast forum on the future of the planet has got underway here amid calls for decisive action to haul billions of people out of poverty and save the planet's fast-dwindling resources from further plundering. In an opening speech to the Earth Summit on Monday, South African President Thabo Mbeki described the Earth as a village divided by a river into districts of want and wealth, while its environment steadily sickened. "Poverty, underdevelopment, inequality within and among countries,...

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - The devastating floods which have killed scores of people across central Europe are the wake-up call that could push industrial nations to act faster to stop the planet heating up, a leading scientist says. Robert Watson, now the World Bank's chief scientist since he was ousted from the chair of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) in April due to U.S. opposition, insists dramatic floods and droughts will become more frequent. "You don't have to identify each event with climate change. All you have to say is this is the type of world that may...

INTERVIEW - Absent Bush committed to Earth Summit, US says SOUTH AFRICA: August 26, 2002 JOHANNESBURG - U.S. President George W. Bush is committed to the Earth Summit despite skipping the event to focus on the economy and post-September 11 security concerns, a senior U.S. official insisted in Johannesburg on the weekend. "President Bush has been fully engaged and committed now for months to the summit," John Turner, the U.S. assistant secretary for international environmental affairs, told Reuters in response to widespread criticism of Bush's absence. "But there is a need now for his leadership in the U.S. on...

<p>Johannesburg -- The smoke settles over the rickety shacks and shabby houses as soon as this city wakes. Thousands of poor people without electricity burn scraps of wood in rusty tin cans to keep warm. Others burn coal in old stoves that belch soot and fumes into the cold morning air.</p>

<p>WITH characteristic disregard for the environment, President Bush last week announced a controversial plan to allow the timber industry to log millions of acres of national forest land. The ostensible reason? To prevent catastrophic fires. Rather than pursue a policy of thinning undergrowth and small trees, Bush prefers to give the timber industry a windfall by logging larger, more commercially valuable trees.</p>