The Earth Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa ended last week, as expected, with the usual comments of praise from officials and condemnation from activists. The World Summit on Sustainable Development marked ten years of research, planning and negotiation after the first “Earth Summit” in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. Commenting in Zimbabwe’s “The Financial Gazette”, Professor Masipula Sithole reminds us: “As we all know, the 10-day gathering or summit is a party the United Nations throws for its heads of state once every 10 years, symbolically in a Third World country. Ten years ago, this party or summit was in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It is not hard to predict the continental venue for the next party or summit. Somewhere in Asia, of course!”
Professor Masipula Sithole is a lecturer of Political Science at the University of Zimbabwe and director of the Harare-based Mass Public Opinion Institute.
Professor Masipula Sithole is a lecturer of Political Science at the University of Zimbabwe and director of the Harare-based Mass Public Opinion Institute.
Klaus Toepfer, Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), in his concluding remarks pointed out that today’s world situation is much different from that of ten years ago.
"We had the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War. Today we have a new realism as a result of globalization. So the action plan, agreed here in Johannesburg, is less visionary and more workman-like, reflecting perhaps the feeling among many nations that they no longer want to promise the Earth and fail. That they would rather step forward than run too fast".
"We had the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War. Today we have a new realism as a result of globalization. So the action plan, agreed here in Johannesburg, is less visionary and more workman-like, reflecting perhaps the feeling among many nations that they no longer want to promise the Earth and fail. That they would rather step forward than run too fast".