LITTLE CHANGE SEEN 5 YEARS AFTER EARTH SUMMIT : REPORT PAINTS A BLEAK PICTURE, THOUGH SOME CITE IMPROVEMENTS.

Byline: David Briscoe Associated Press 

Five years after the Earth Summit, with all its promise for attacking global ills, forests still disappear, the air is murkier than ever, population is up almost half a billion people.

Worldwatch Institute paints another bleak global landscape in its annual ``State of the World'' report being released today.

The secretary-general of the 1992 summit endorses much of the assessment. But U.S. and World Bank officials claim credit for major efforts to reverse the decline. And at least one resources expert insists the planet is better off than ever.

Governments lag badly in meeting goals set at the Rio de Janeiro summit, the environmental research group Worldwatch says in its global review distributed in 30 languages.

``Unfortunately, few governments have even begun the policy changes that will be needed to put the world on an environmentally sustainable path,'' the independent institute declares.

In what has become an annual litany of Earth's ills, Worldwatch documents problems with food supply, crop-land depletion, chronic disease, loss of species, climate change and political instability.

Christopher Flavin, a lead author of the report, calls the Earth Summit a ``last hurrah'' for the idea that sweeping government programs can cure a sick planet.

Among Worldwatch's gloomiest conclusions: Millions of acres of tropical and deciduous forest still disappear each year, carbon dioxide emissions are at record highs, and population growth is outpacing food production.

The report found hope in increasing numbers of grass-roots groups, particularly in Bangladesh and India. Also, more than 1,500 cities in 51 countries have adopted local plans and rules, often more stringent than their national governments proposed at Rio, the report said.

Presaging Worldwatch's tally of slippage, Earth Summit Secretary-General Maurice Strong issued a report last week citing pockets of progress but concluding ``far too few countries, companies, institutions, communities and citizens have made the choices and changes needed to advance the goals of sustainable development.''

Strong, now head of the Earth Council, a nongovernment group set up in Costa Rica after the summit, said more than 100 nations are worse off today than 15 years ago, with 1.3 billion people earning less than $1 a day.

A more formal, multinational assessment of progress since the summit is expected from a March 13-19 ``Rio+5'' forum in Brazil.

The Worldwatch report is toughest on the United States and the World Bank.

It says American leadership has faded since the summit, in contrast to strides by Europe in fighting pollution and Japan in maintaining foreign aid.

Eileen B. Claussen, assistant secretary of state overseeing environmental affairs, said Worldwatch's assessment of progress is ``generally correct.'' She noted Congress failed to ratify a biodiversity treaty and slashed funding for the summit's major initiatives.

But she insisted Clinton administration leadership remains steadfast, listing campaigns for binding provisions in a world climate agreement, for the phaseout of dangerous chemicals and for a worldwide battle against marine pollution.

``I think we have a very positive record of leadership on the issues, but it's true the world has a ways to go,'' Claussen said.