State of the World 2002

January 2002
ISBN: 0-393-32279-3
265 pages

Print Version$15.95Add to Cart

Featuring a Foreword by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, State of the World 2002 includes chapters on climate change, farming, toxic chemicals, sustainable tourism, population, resource conflicts and global governance, with a special focus on the United Nations World Summit on Sustainable Development, which will be held in Johannesburg, South Africa in August/September 2002.

“Ten years after the Rio Earth Summit, we are still far from ending the economic and environmental marginalization that afflicts billions of people,” says Worldwatch President Christopher Flavin. “Despite the prosperity of the 1990s, the divide between rich and poor is widening in many countries, undermining social and economic stability.”

Chapter 1: The Challenge for Johannesburg: Creating a More Secure World

Gary Gardner

Ten years after the 1992 Earth Summit, an assessment of the state of the world indicates that neither environment nor development has fared well. While awareness of environmental issues has increased and remarkable progress can be cited in niches such as wind power and organic farming, nearly all global environmental indicators continue to be headed in the wrong direction.

Many social issues advanced slowly, with some of the gains offset by other setbacks. But the decade saw decreases in deaths for infectious diseases such as pneumonia and diarrhea, a sixfold increase in deaths from HIV/AIDS more than cancelled all of these advances. People in wealthy countries were living longer than ever, but some 14,000-30,000 people continued to die each day from water-borne diseases.

World Summit priorities: Building on the small gains of the 1990s and accelerating the movement toward a sustainable world. Goals may range from ending the progressive shrinking of natural forest area, to achieving universal completion of primary school.

Chapter 2: Moving the Climate Change Agenda Forward

Seth Dunn, Christopher Flavin

Going into Johannesburg, scientists have stronger evidence that most of the world's warming of the past 50 years is attributable to human activities. But with the Bush Administration in the U.S. and European ministers once again readying to square off on global warming, one may wonder whether Johannesburg in 2002 will be simply a repeat of Rio in 1992, when the first Bush administration refused to embrace mandatory commitments to counter climate change.

Despite the slow start, the world has not stood still in the decade since the signature and ratification of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. The science, economics, business, and politics of the climate issue have all evolved in ways that may help to move the agenda forward. A growing number of multinationals, such as BP, DuPont, and Nike, have taken on commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and recent government studies in the U.S., Europe, and Japan suggest a significant potential for low- to no-cost emissions cuts via the use of cleaner and more energy-efficient technologies.

World Summit priorities: Bringing the Kyoto Protocol into force before the Summit is of critical symbolic importance; setting forth a blueprint for post-Johannesburg climate negotiations, emphasizing the need to reengage the United States; considering a second period of emissions cuts; and expanding the group of countries with emissions targets will also further negotiations.

Chapter 3: Farming in the Public Interest

Brian Halweil

Delegates at the 1992 Earth Summit envisioned farming systems that ensure an adequate and accessible food supply, provide stable livelihoods for rural communities, and help build ecological health. Today, however, even as our farms have become more technologically sophisticated, they have become ecologically dysfunctional and socially destructive. In addition to contributing to some of our most threatening environmental problems-from global warming to the spread of toxic chemicals-farm families are suffering. Roughly 100 million families-about 500 million people-lack ownership rights to the land they cultivate.

Fortunately, farmers and agricultural scientists in many parts of the world are beginning to learn how to restructure the way we produce food to better serve the multiple functions outlined at Rio, focusing less on purchased chemicals and technological fixes and more on taking advantage of the ecological processes occurring in the field.

World Summit priorities: Shifting agricultural subsidies to support ecological farming practices; taxing pesticides, synthetic fertilizers, and factory farms; and assuring women equal rights and support in agriculture.

Chapter 4: Reducing our Toxic Burden

Anne Platt McGinn

The 2001 signing of the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs), which holds countries accountable for the regulation of 10 of the most hazardous intentionally produced pollutants, was one of the key environmental achievements in the decade since the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio.

The impact of toxic chemicals is already widespread-the average person today carries levels of lead that are 500-1,000 times higher than our pre-industrial ancestors, and worldwide some 300-500 million tons of hazardous wastes are generated each year.
Post-Stockholm, the global community faces a dual challenge: reforming an enormous sector of the industrial economy while also taking action on the toxic materials that exist now either as waste or as commodities circulating in the economy.

World Summit priorities: Phasing out leaded gasoline; ratifying the three major global toxics treaties (Stockholm, Basel, and Rotterdam); taxing emissions of metals and toxic byproducts from industrial sources; eliminating persistent compounds in dissipative uses, such as farming and cleaning; and funding research on safer materials and environmentally sound methods of waste disposal.

Chapter 5: Redirecting International Tourism

Lisa Mastny

Today's travelers are trading in over-commercialized mass tourism for new cultural and nature-based experiences, many of which are found in the developing world. One in every five international tourists now travels from an industrial country to a developing one, up from one in 13 in the mid 1970s. In the last decade alone, international tourism arrivals worldwide have increased by nearly 40 percent.

This tourism boom has generated much-needed revenue and employment at many destinations. But it has also brought a host of environmental, social, and cultural problems. On average, half of the tourism revenue that enters the developing world "leaks" back out, going to foreign owned companies or to pay for imported goods and labor. Many participants in the tourism industry-including businesses, governments, local communities, and tourists-are beginning to take important steps to redirect tourism, from implementing regulations to boosting tourist awareness.

World Summit Priorities: Formulating comprehensive, multi-stakeholder plans for tourism development; balancing large tourism investments with smaller-scale, locally-run tourism initiatives; and developing stronger regulations and policies to protect destinations against unsustainable tourism developments.

Chapter 6: Rethinking Population, Improving Lives

Bob Engelman, Brian Halweil, Danielle Nierenberg

Rapid growth of the world's human population is one of the trends underlying persistent poverty and the degradation of the natural environment. Although the global rate of population growth peaked at 2.1 percent a year in the 1960s and has declined to under 1.3 percent today, the planet still adds about 77 million people each year, the equivalent of 10 New York Cities.

Ultimately, reversing this trend depends on building and maintaining the political will to support family planning and related health services that allow couples and individuals to make their own decisions about both the timing of pregnancy and broader reproductive health matters. As the largest generation of young people in human history-1.7 billion people aged 10-24-reaches reproductive age, recasting population policy as a venture in social development and greater gender equality will be essential.

World Summit priorities: Funding universal access to reproductive health care; closing the gender gap in education; increasing female participation in all levels of politics; and enacting and enforcing strong laws to protect women from gender-based violence.

Chapter 7: Breaking the Link Between Resources and Repression

Michael Renner

In several countries around the developing world, abundant natural resources are at the root of the matter-either triggering violent conflict or financing its continuation. In fact, about a quarter of the 49 wars and armed conflicts waged during 2000 had a strong resource dimension. And many of them are taking place in areas of great environmental value.

In some cases, groups initiate violence to gain and maintain control over lucrative resources. In others, the pillaging of oil, minerals, metals, gemstones, or timber allows wars to continue that were initially caused by other factors, such as unresolved grievances or ideological struggles, as seen in Sierra Leone (diamonds) and Afghanistan (emeralds, lapis lazuli, heroin). Conflict has also erupted in countries such as Columbia (oil) and Indonesia (timber, natural gas), where the benefits accrue to a small elite while the social and environmental burdens are borne by local communities.

World Summit priorities: Developing stronger global certification systems for diamonds, timber, and other resources to make it easier to screen out those produced and traded illicitly in conflict areas. And securing better compliance with U.N. sanctions against illicit resource trafficking by improving the capacity of the United Nations, regional and international organizations, and governments to monitor and enforce embargoes.

Chapter 8: Reshaping Global Governance

Hilary French

The Rio Earth Summit resulted in several major developments in international governance, including new treaties on climate change and biological diversity, the creation of the U.N. Commission on Sustainable Development, and sections of Agenda 21 dedicated to broader questions of institutional reform, financing, and public participation. But a few years later, the World Trade Organization was created with a starkly different vision of the future global economy.

Ten years after Rio, there are more than 500 environmental treaties and agreements, but few of them contain specific targets and timetables and most are weak on provisions for monitoring and enforcement. At the same time, the U.N Environment Programme and other key ecological initiatives are strapped for cash, and overall aid spending has declined substantially. Despite this lackluster track record, at the World Summit in Johannesburg nations will have another chance to shift the course of the global economy and the institutions that underpin it away from destruction and toward ecological and social integrity.

World Summit priorities: Partnering with NGOs, businesses, governments, and international institutions are key to ensuring a successful outcome at Johannesburg; promoting greater cooperation and coherence between the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization; and respecting the goals and provisions of international environmental, human rights, and labor treaties and standards.