The Mother Of All Divisions

After North Vs South, Developing Vs Developed and Have Vs Have-not, there’s NGO Vs NGO. And it’s by far the deadliest of all the divides witnessed at the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD). Take, for instance, the disclaimer printed in a popular summit journal, Eco Equity. It said: ‘‘Eco agreed to publish the story ‘Trade Might Not Right’ in a spirit of openness and a free exchange of ideas. Readers will not be surprised to know that members of the Eco-Equity Coalition do not agree with several of the assertions in the story or with its conclusions’’. And who or what is this ‘‘coalition’’? Rich Northern NGOs like Danish 92 group, Earthjustice, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, Northern Alliance for Sustainability, Oxfam and WWF. The article, written by Anju Sharma from Delhi’s Centre for Science and Environment, talks about the hazards of unilateral trade sanctions for a country like India, and asks whether it was correct for the US to have banned shrimp trade from India because it does not use turtle excluder devices (TEDs), whether Bangladesh might be flooded because of rising sea levels while Uncle Sam continues to pollute. Watch this space.

Bad PR For The Big Guy

America is an F-word at the summit because of its stubbornness over not ratifying the climate change treaty, the Kyoto protocol, and acknowledging its role as the largest polluter in the planet. It came in for some more tongue lashing when the National Environment Trust, a US non-profit organisation, released a report which showed that many individual states emit more carbon dioxide, the leading global warming pollutant, than all the developing countries put together.

The report also says that 42 of 50 states in the US individually emit more global warming pollution than 50 developing countries put together. Five states separately emit more than 100 developing countries. Texas, President George Bush’s backyard, is the dirtiest: it pollutes more than 119 developing countries put together and its emissions are 47 times higher than those of these countries.