Word: summiteering
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...this one about?" he asked, as officials rearranged the stage between presentations. The Ford Foundation was about to launch a book describing what it calls "sustainable solutions," community projects that spark economic development and help protect the environment. "What time does it start?" the delegate continued. The World Summit on Sustainable Development was just four days old, but the man was already in a daze, giddy from all the meetings, speeches, exhibitions and protests. "I'm not even sure where I am," he confessed. "There are so many people talking I've forgotten what we're meant to be talking...
Officially the summit, which wrapped up last week in Johannesburg, was to discuss and agree upon a plan for sustainable development, that much-discussed but little-understood buzzword of the moment. But at times the main U.N. talkfest, held in the upmarket suburb of Sandton, Africa's richest square mile, was lost in the gaggle of voices and slogans surrounding the conference. At the Ubuntu Village (ubuntu is Zulu for humanity), booths touting the environmental credentials of multinational oil companies stood beside those of tiny green groups. One promoted the teachings of Mohandas Gandhi as environmentally friendly. "Gandhi was green...
...states did not. A brouhaha over trade also erupted. Politicians from developing countries see free trade?especially the scrapping of the estimated $1 billion a day in subsidies to Western farmers?as key to sustainable development. But Western green groups complained that the World Trade Organization had hijacked the summit. Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe used his five-minute speech to lash out at British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who opposes Mugabe's controversial land seizure program. Protesters heckled and slow-clapped throughout the address by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell...
...close of the summit delegates had agreed to halve by 2015 the number of people without water and sanitation and to move toward renewable energy sources. But concrete targets were dropped, much to the horror of green groups. Still, cynics who suggested that all that talk may have been just so much hot air miss the point, said Timothy Wirth, a former U.S. Senator and head of the United Nations Foundation and Better World Fund. "Where else does the world network?" he asked. "In a world of imperfect information it's good to get together and thrash these things through...
...Powell Silenced at Summit No wonder President Bush didn't want to go to the World Summit for Sustainable Development in Johannesburg. Secretary of State Colin Powell was continuously heckled during his speech to the closing session on Wednesday when he sought to defend the U.S. record on the environment and criticized Zimbabwe's seizure of white-owned farms...