Abu Dhabi, June 20th, 2012 (WAM) -- A UAE daily commenting on Rio+20, the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development commencing today at Rio de Janeiro, Brazil has said that environmental issues have taken a backseat, as it is being held in the wake of the euro zone crisis and the continuing global economic slowdown. Unfortunately, in a replay of the 1992 event, the UN Conference on Sustainable Development will also accentuate key differences between the world?s major powers.
"While the focus of the 1992 Earth Summit was the environment and the threat of global warming, the 2012 summit will focus on economic and social issues including eradicating hunger and extreme poverty, reducing child mortality and improving access to education. The 1992 summit had focused the world?s attention on climate change and deforestation and led ultimately to a global treaty on bio-diversity, besides bringing in the Kyoto agreement on greenhouse gas emissions," Khaleej Times said in its today's editorialThe Rio summit will see leaders from emerging nations especially the BRICS economies dominate the sessions. Besides Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, and South African President Jacob Zuma, the event will also see France?s new President Francois Hollande and Iran?s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad join in the discussions. But conspicuously missing from the world summit will be US President Barack Obama, British Premier David Cameron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, highlighting the great divide in global politics. The paper said that developed economies want emerging nations such as China and India to also share in the burden, by curbing their growing hunger for scarce resources including crude oil and coal. They also want the developing nations to show their commitment to curbing greenhouse emissions. But the latter argue that they still have a long way to go before they catch up with the industrialised economies and till then there should be "common, but differentiated responsibilities.""With economic slowdown hurting growth prospects around the globe, governments are also reluctant to fund any of the ?sustainable development goals? that have been hammered out by activists and UN officials. The suggestion for setting up a $30 billion fund for these goals was quickly shot down, with donors both the rich and soon-to-be-rich nations more worried about domestic problems including recession, inflation and unemployment", it concluded.Copyright Emirates News Agency (WAM) 2012.
