JOHANNESBURG, 28 August — Apocalyptic floods and droughts may become common, the Earth Summit was warned yesterday, as food experts said rich nations’ farm subsidies were destroying the environment and impoverishing the Third World. Efforts to produce a blueprint for action after the 10-day forum in Johannesburg ends on Sept. 4 remained mired in bitter verbal battles over trade, finance, energy and the huge handouts for US and European farmers.
The world’s richest nations faced calls at the Earth Summit to scrap billions of dollars in farm subsidies blamed for exacerbating hunger and hampering trade from Africa and Asia. Domestic political considerations are stopping wealthy governments from impoverishing their own farmers and Western officials sought to focus attention on efforts to improve agricultural production in nations where many are hungry.
Yet with famine looming over 13 million people in southern Africa, delegates attending a session in Johannesburg on sustainable agriculture took aim at trade-distorting subsidies aiding farmers in Europe and North America. "We sit here talking about sustainable agriculture and families are dying," said Lebohang Ntsinya, Environment Minister for Lesotho, one of six countries in the region battling severe food shortages. "We appeal to you to put your policies right."
Robert Watson, the World Bank’s chief scientist, complained the summit was ignoring the climate change peril, partly to appease US President George W. Bush. He said global warming could turn the floods and droughts that have devastated parts of Asia and Europe from freak occurrences into commonplace. "No one single event can be directly attributed to human activities, but their incidence is projected to become more frequent," Watson said.
Climate change would also have a big impact on food production within a few decades by causing water stress for farmers, he said, citing a report that declared there was now inconvertible evidence that man had caused the Earth’s atmosphere to warm by uncontrolled burning of oil, gas and coal.
Seychelles Environment Minister Ronny Jumeau earlier warned that if global warming continued it would see sea levels rise, which would mean that "tropical island paradises will have been added to the list of extinct ecosystems".
A father of the Green Revolution, whose bounty has saved hundreds of millions of lives, M.S. Swaminathan, meanwhile, said the farming world was being dangerously polarized into two cultures. "One is production by the masses, the other is mass production," the Indian said. "Agricultural production is the best safety net against poverty and hunger in most developing countries," Swaminathan added.
The World Bank estimates that subsidies to farmers in Europe and the United States total nearly a billion dollars a day, a situation it blasts as "untenable" for rich and poor countries alike.
Negotiators admitted they had made scant headway toward resolving differences pitting the United States against the European Union, and both against the developing world. They include farm subsidies, levels of development aid, development and environment targets and energy. (The Independent)
