The UN World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg has a huge agenda. Because of its very nature it overlaps with many other pressing issues facing the earth and its peoples.
Poverty, health, energy, education and living standards all affect the state of the world environment. They figure prominently in the final stages of the negotiations, which are set to conclude tomorrow. In recent years they have become associated with the language of human rights, as non-governmental theorists, activists and political leaders have tried to pin down successive summit commitments to achieve targets that can benefit specific groups of the world's disadvantaged populations.
Mrs Mary Robinson, the outgoing UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, has made such issues a central part of her work over the last five years. Having become convinced it is essential to extend rights from the political and civil to the social and economic spheres in order to ensure their applicability in a highly unequal world, she has helped to influence the vocabulary and practice involved at this level of negotiations. Her angry reaction to the elimination or dilution of references to human rights in the final summit documents is fully understandable in this light. So is her suspicion of cynical trade-offs between vested interests among the richer countries at the expense of the developing world. So too is her welcome for the new dynamic which has given NGOs dealing with the environment, development and human rights a new momentum arising from their successful networking in recent years.
A final assessment of the summit outcome must await publication tomorrow of the political declaration and the associated action plan. It will be judged on the extent to which precise targets and deadlines survive as commitments to provide sanitation, nutrition, healthcare and sustainable development for those who need it most. It should be examined to see whether environmental issues are subordinated to the commercial realities of the World Trade Organisation in such areas as agricultural protection. It should also be scrutinised to see if references to human rights have been removed or diluted beyond recognition.
Mrs Robinson and other critics of the summit have sharply censured the United States for its minimalist approach to sustainable development by avoiding deadlines and legal commitments to human rights. Their argument covers basic political values concerning whether human rights are relevant to environmental protection as well as the validity of pessimistic evaluations of its sustainability. This summit may turn out to be more important for the growing momentum, determination and effective organisation of the new environmental networks than for the ability of governments to reach binding agreements. Mrs Robinson has made a signal contribution to that.