Facing rising temperatures, melting ice caps and swelling sea levels, world leaders at the first Earth Summit 10 years ago in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, joined in a united response to global warming. They signed the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, an agreement to limit emissions of greenhouse gases-- many of them contained in automobile exhaust and industrial pollutants -- that are widely blamed for climate change.

Yet in the last decade, global emissions of greenhouse gases have continued to increase, and many environmentalists said they regard the attempts at change as a failure.

In the last 10 years, greenhouse emissions increased at an average rate of 1.3% per year in the United States. But, with the recent robust economy driving an increase in demand for electricity and fuel, combined with cooler winters, the levels of use have risen at an even greater rate in the last few years.

"It has been a failure because the big industrial polluters, led by the United States, have failed to clean up our act," said Dan Becker, director of the Sierra Club's global warming and energy program. Critics also argue the agreement set unrealistic goals for industry without providing adequate guidance on how to achieve them.

"It set a goal to prevent dangerous human intervention with the climate system, but no one could define what that was," said William O'Keefe, former chairman of the industry-supported Global Climate Coalition. "So you have an objective to achieve something that no one could define."

The 1990 agreement called for voluntary efforts to reduce emissions. However, it wasn't legally binding, and there were no measures for enforcement. Critics described it as an ineffective method of control. These critics are mainly from US. It is believed that to hide the fact that the fractured ozone layer over Washington caused by the uncontrollable emission, to hide the fact that the US is the most polluted country in the world, the United States government incited its ever-strong NGOs to criticize the proclamation of earth summit in Rio.

But 1990 agreement did provide a framework for limits on emissions. Leading to a follow-up conference on global warming in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997. That conference resulted in the creation of a treaty called the Kyoto Protocol, requiring all industrial countries to cut their emissions to levels below those of 1990 in the next 10 years.

To date, nearly all-major industrial nations have ratified the protocol, including the European Union and Japan. The United States signed the treaty but recently withdrew.

The Bush administration rejected the Kyoto Protocol last year, describing it as "fatally flawed in fundamental ways" saying it would harm the U.S. economy without guaranteeing that it would have an effect on climate change.

The administration argues that the treaty would place undue restrictions on the US economy by restricting emissions of industrialized countries without placing similar restrictions on large developing countries like China.

The NGOs of US said the requirements placed on the US, "To meet our obligations, we would have to reduce energy use in this country by 30 percent. That's the equivalent of shutting down all manufacturing or taking all cars off the road." But supporters of the Kyoto agreement say that since the United States is the world's largest producer of greenhouse gases, its decision not to be part of the treaty will effectively ruin any chance of global enforcement. If the United States had taken a leading role in trying to make this a meaningful agreement then I think the whole world would have turned around. Unfortunately, it has been a big disappointment and creates a real threat for our children's future.

Scientists continue to disagree about the link between greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. But there is general agreement that the Earth's temperatures are rising and that human activity has pumped enough greenhouse gases into the atmosphere to exceed levels higher than any in the last half million years.

If a few more countries ratify, the Kyoto Protocol will go into effect by the end of 2002. But with world leaders met in a new Earth Summit in late August in South Africa, the absence of the United States in the climate talks may severely handicap the measure.

But what actually US did at Johannesburg?

The representatives to the Earth Summit agreed a "Plan of Action" at a late-night session in Johannesburg. In doing so, they failed 2 billion of the world's poorest while failing the planet's future at the same time.

As Heads of State made beautiful speeches about the need for action, the 300-strong US delegation in the backrooms of the summit held the future to ransom, forcing delegates to accept that the US would only agree to stump up money for clean water if the world gave up on renewable energy. Behind that insistence was US Energy policy, authored by the big oil interests that elected Bush and Cheney.

"After over a year of debate the energy section does not represent a single step forward," said Greenpeace Climate Policy Director Steve Sawyer. "The Plan of Action is not much of a plan, and it contains almost no action. We've spent the last year and half doing damage control. We now have to move forward with a 'coalition of the willing,' those countries, communities, organizations, and people who want to deliver a sustainable energy future." The energy section of the plan of implementation, as it was agreed, delivers nothing on energy supply for the 2 billion people world-wide who have no access to modern energy services, has no targets or timetables of any kind for the uptake of renewable energy delivers nothing on reducing the massive subsidies to the fossil fuel industry which continue to prop up its dominance of the global energy mix, merely reiterates agreements made over the past several years.

Both the European Union and Brazil came to the Summit with proposals for firm targets on renewable energy. While varying in the degree to which they would have spurred investment in renewable energies like solar, wind, small-scale hydro, and modern biomass, either would have sent a strong signal to governments that the Summit was serious about the battle against global warming.

Greenpeace Executive Director Gerd Leipold, "Many Heads of States have made fine speeches saying that climate change was the number one challenge facing our planet. What has this summit done about it? Absolutely nothing. By its own standards, the WSSD (World Summit on Sustainable Development) has failed. Our challenge now is to shine a spotlight so that everyone can see the forces that are responsible for that failure. And that's the unholy alliances between big business and governments that allow our planet's future and the poverty of humanity to take a back seat to the corporate bottom line."

While another Earth Summit has been a disaster in its official conclusions, it's at least rewarding to see that the international community hasn't been fooled by rhetoric. There was a protest of inaction inside and outside the halls of Sandton, the convention hall that there has been a rousing challenge to US claims that it has behaved as a responsible planetary citizen here in Johannesburg.

According to Greenpeace, the US delegation's backroom strong-arm tactics were primarily responsible for the failures of the Summit. The US position consistently resisted new measures to ensure corporate accountability and opposed meaningful targets to spur the development of renewable energy. On the Summit's closing day, Secretary of State Colin Powell addressed the packed plenary session around noon on behalf of the United States.

Greenpeace and other groups have widely criticised the US for the lion's share of responsibility for this Summit's failure to adopt clear renewable energy targets. There were no organized plans to have a demonstration. But when Colin Powell chastised countries for saying "no" to US genetically modified food, the room simply erupted in boos and catcalls. And when he tried to claim that the US was defending biodiversity and promoting renewables, there was this incredible roar of disbelief -- nobody was silent. Powell was unable to continue for several minutes as the gallery of the conference room voiced its protest: "Shame on Bush" was among the chants, a banner saying "Betrayed by Governments" was unfurled, and several representatives were escorted out by security, still voicing their disbelief.

Chairwoman Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma called for order, saying "This is totally unacceptable," but the spontaneous outpouring of protest simply would not be silenced. Matt Gianni of Greenpeace said, “as an American, I was proud to see the US position here challenged. It's important for the world to know that the US delegation was not here speaking on behalf of all Americans -- they were speaking on behalf of multinational corporations. The US behaviour at this summit was appalling." Very few non-governmental organisations were allowed inside the official plenary session. Those who were had to queue for several hours on Sunday, and then draw a ticket in an impromptu lottery for the few plenary tickets that were made available.

Many groups protested the exclusion of community representatives and the voices of the environment and the poor from the conference. Oxfam has called the Summit a "triumph of greed and self-interest, a tragedy for the poor and the environment." There was also protest outside the official plenary session. In Sandton Square, dozens of protestors wore stickers that said "No More Shameful Summits" and refused to be moved until South African police, in what has come to a familiar scene, roughly herded them into a group and pushed and shoved people out of the Plaza, which is littered with exhibits by BMW. The German automaker bought exclusive rights to convey their environmental message in the square. (BMW's latest car engine, now under development, will boast more than 460 horsepower of climate-killing petroleum consumption. On exhibit in the square were only their lesser-polluting models.)

Powell was sent as the United States' official representative to the Summit while George Bush vacationed in Texas. Greenpeace and the Danish 92 Group sent a postcard to the US President hoping that he was enjoying his holiday while the rest of the world met to try and save the planet.

Demanding that governments at the Earth Summit adopt a policy of new renewable energy, activists kicked off the Summit by dropping "Nuclear Power - out of Africa" banners from top of the nuclear reactor at Koeberg, protesting its use of such an unsafe and polluting medium.

Mass Extinction

"Biodiversity includes all living things that we depend on for our economies and our lives," explained Brooks Yeager, vice president of global programs at the World Wildlife Fund in Washington.

"It's the forests, the oceans, the coral reefs, the marine fish, the algae, the insects that make up the living world around us and which we couldn't do without," he said. Nearly 2 million species of plants and animals are known to science and experts say 50 times as many may not yet be discovered.

Yet most scientists agree that human activity is causing rapid deterioration in biodiversity. Expanding human settlements, logging, mining, agriculture and pollution are destroying ecosystems, upsetting nature's balance and driving many species to extinction. There is virtual unanimity among scientists that we have entered a period of mass extinction not seen since the age of the dinosaurs, an emerging global crisis that could have disastrous effects on our future food supplies, our search for new medicines, and on the water we drink and the air we breathe. Estimates vary, but extinction is figured by experts to be taking place from 100 to 1,000 times higher than natural "background" extinction.

At the first Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro 10 years ago, world leaders signed a treaty to confront this crisis. But its results have been disappointing. According to Yeager, "It hasn't been a direct kind of impact that some of us had hoped for."

One hundred eighty-two nations are now parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity. The United States is the only industrial country that has failed to ratify it. But there is wide agreement that the treaty has had virtually no impact on continuing mass extinction.

The treaty is more like a political statement than a plan of action, setting very broad goals instead of real targets, and leaving it to national governments to decide how to reach them. Many developing countries in tropical areas, where the most species of plant and animal can be found, wanted nothing in the treaty that could limit their freedom to exploit natural resources.

So the treaty was framed as a political compromise to balance three principles: conservation, sustainable development and fair sharing of the benefits of biodiversity.

In the process, critics say, the operation of the treaty has lost its focus. It's been distracted from science and conservation by other issues, such as "biopiracy" -- determining who profits from genetic resources -- and "biosafety" -- controlling trade in genetically modified organisms, such as seeds, with built-in pesticides.

Many pressure groups have forced governments to address the issues of "biopiracy" and "biosafety."

"You cannot really separate preservation and sustainability and conservation and biodiversity without addressing, for example, important new technologies like genetic engineering or genetic modification," says Debbie Barker, co-director of the California-based International Forum on Globalization.

That may be true, but many scientists and conservationists say almost all the work at the treaty's conferences has been focused on these hot-button issues, including "biopiracy" and "biosafety," during the past decade. The result, they say, has been a lost opportunity to address the real crisis.

The member nations still stand by the treaty, but at a conference earlier this year at The Hague they issued a statement admitting humans are still destroying biodiversity at an unprecedented rate.

Asian Brown Cloud, a menace to atmosphere A dense blanket of pollution, dubbed the "Asian Brown Cloud," is hovering over South Asia, with scientists warning it could kill millions of people in the region, and pose a global threat.

In the biggest-ever study of the phenomenon, 200 scientists warned that the cloud, estimated to be two miles (three kilometers) thick, is responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths a year from respiratory disease. By slashing the sunlight that reaches the ground by 10 to 15 percent, the choking smog has also altered the region's climate, cooling the ground while heating the atmosphere, scientists said on Monday.

The potent haze lying over the entire Indian subcontinent -- from Sri Lanka to Afghanistan -- has led to some erratic weather, sparking flooding in Tripura, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh of northeastern India, Bangladesh, Nepal and drought in Pakistan and northwestern India.

“There are also global implications, not least because a pollution parcel like this, which stretches three kilometers high, can travel half way round the globe in a week, " U.N. Environment Program chief Klaus Toepfer told a news conference in London recently.
The U.N.'s preliminary report comes three weeks before the Earth Summit in Johannesburg, which opened on August 26, where all eyes were on how not to overburden the planet.

While haze hovers over other parts of the world, including America and Europe, what surprised scientists was just how far the cloud extended, and how much black carbon was in it, according to Ashes Prasad Mitra from India's National Physical Laboratory, Ahmedabad.

A cocktail of aerosols, ash, soot and other particles, the haze's reach extends far beyond the study zone of the Indian subcontinent, and towards East and Southeast Asia. While many scientists once thought that only lighter greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, could travel across the Earth, they now say that aerosol clouds can too.

"Biomass burning" from forest fires, vegetation clearing and fossil fuel was just as much to blame for the shrouding haze as dirty industries from Asia's great cities, the study found. A large part of the aerosol cloud comes from inefficient cookers, where fuels such as cow dung and kerosene are used to cook food in many parts of Asia, says Mitra.

Using data from ships, planes and satellites to study Asia's haze during the northern winter months of 1995 to 2000, scientists were able to track its journey to pristine parts of the world, such as the Maldives, to see how it affected climate.

They discovered not only that the smog cut sunlight, heating the atmosphere, but also that it created acid rain, a serious threat to crops and trees, as well as contaminating oceans and hurting agriculture. "It was much larger than we thought," said Mitra. The report suggested the pollution could be cutting India's winter rice harvest by as much as 10 percent.

The report calculated that the cloud -- 80 percent of which was made by people -- could cut rainfall over northwest Pakistan, Afghanistan, western China and western central Asia by up to 40 percent. While scientists say they still need more scientific data, they suggest the regional and global impact of the haze will intensify over the next 30 years.

Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen -- one of the first scientists to identify the causes of the hole in the ozone layer and also involved in the U.N. report -- said up to two million people in India alone were dying each year from atmospheric pollution.

In the next phase of the project, scientists will collect data from the entire Asian region, over more seasons with more observation sites and refine their techniques. But because the lifetime of pollutants is short and they can be rained out, scientists are hopeful that if Asians use more efficient ways of burning fuel, such as better stoves, and cleaner sources of energy, time has not run out.