Leviathan in Rio: the UN is gearing up for its massive 'Earth Summit' in June.

The UN is gearing up for its massive |Earth Summit' in June. Batten down the hacthes

IT IS IRONIC that, while the world hails the abandonment of totalitarian government in Eastern Europe, an ambitious but overlooked effort is under way to expand governmental power on a global scale. In the guise of cleaning up the environment, the first UN-sponsored "Earth Summit" is scheduled for Rio de Janeiro in June.

At Earth Summit, the various national governments will be asked to endorse both an unprecedented "Earth Charter" and a more operational "Agenda 21." The Earth Charter, we are told, will embody the basic principles which "must govern the economic and environmental behavior of peoples and nations to ensure our common future." Agenda 21--presumably covering the twenty-first century--is "a blueprint for action in all major areas affecting the relationship between the environment and the economy." That covers a lot of terrain, as we will see.

Officially known as the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), the ten-day Earth Summit is expected to be the largest conference ever held. Planners expect anywhere from ten thousand to one hundred thousand participants--official government representatives, supporting technical experts, officials of non-governmental organizations (including ecologist, architects, scientists, business executives, feminists, student leaders, indigenous Indians, social workers, and spiritualists), and, inevitably, large aggregations of media people. It is easy to envision the grandstanding that will take place at such a jamboree. For example, activist organizations hope to get women from the Rio slums to surround the conference hall and bang cooking pots. The cacophony will represent the "reality" that governmental delegates should respond to in their deliberations.

Security is likely to be one of the key problems facing Earth Summit; reportedly, this area will receive 60 per cent of the budget. Logistical arrangements will be a related challenge. Only 12,000 suitable hotel rooms are estimated to be available, and embassies are already battling over who stays at the Sheraton and who gets the Crazy Love Motel. The greens have vetoed the installation of air-conditioning for the conference because the equipment emits CFCs. An "authentic" Indian village is being built for the Indigenous Peoples' Conference. However, the Indians do not desire to stay in the grass huts being built for them, but want the same modern hotel rooms accorded the other participants.

Three of the four preparatory sessions have been held already. The fourth, and presumably crucial, advance meeting is taking place in New York City. (It is heartening to learn that the official United States delegation is considered to be among the best prepared and also the most difficult to negotiate with.) The tone for the deliberations is being set by Maurice Strong, the secretary general of the conference, who warns of "the environmental crisis which threatens the collapse of the planet." His Big Brother attitude is hardly veiled. As he states the matter, "We need to hold governments accountable and they need to be told what we want."

The conference secretariat is proposing an impressive array of global goals: eradicating poverty, reversing the destruction of renewable resources, and changing the system of incentives and penalties that motivate economic behavior. The careful reader will note that environmental concerns are sandwiched in between two proposals for fundamentally changing the distribution of economic resources.

The idea is to make available to developing countries the financial resources and environmentally sound technologies they require to participate fully in global environmental cooperation. Where are those financial resources and environmentally sound technologies going to come from? The answer provided in the conference materials is clear: from the nations that are already industrialized.

Representatives of developing nations say they will not agree to take the necessary environmental actions unless the developed nations pledge in advance to pay for them. According to Mr. Strong, this will entail "a fundamental change in our economic systems." Thus, he expects the Summit to move environmental issues "into the center of economic policy and decision-making."

Not surprisingly, the representatives of the industrialized nations have objected to the "blank check" approach. However, as we have seen in the rapid expansion of costly domestic regulation, if a proposal bears the environmental label, it is very difficult to oppose it. Moreover, if and when Earth Summit votes on these measures, the issues will not be settled, as they often were in the successful alliance during the Gulf War, by the Security Council, which is dominated by the major powers. Rather, all nations will participate; St. Kitts' 40,000 people will have the same vote as France's 56 million; Antigua's 64,000, the same as the United States' 250 million.

It is likely that Earth Summit will agree to tap a variety of funding sources to transfer income from the developed to the developing nations. Proposals already identified include the radical notion of charging for the use of the "global commons." Specific examples provided are staggering to anyone concerned with freedom of international commerce: requiring operators of airplanes and ships to pay for the use of the atmosphere and the oceans, for instance.

Unhidden Agenda

AT LEAST the planners of Earth Summit cannot be accused of having a hidden agenda. Their sweeping vision is clearly revealed in their literature. According to the U.S. Citizens Network for Earth Summit, the conference "must also attack poverty, indebtedness, trade and aid, and induce all nations to embrace the concept of |sustainable living.'" All that is part of an effort "to exercise responsibility for the planet as a whole."

One bias is evident throughout: the downplaying of the need for the poor nations to develop their own economies. Totally ignored are the lessons of the dramatic events in Eastern Europe: governments do not provide the ability to develop backward economies; modern high-tech enterprises do. Thus, it is sad to read the writings of the Poverty and Affluence Working Group, a non-governmental participant in Earth Summit:

People are poor because they have no

power. Any new effort to deal with

poverty and promote sustainability must

focus on empowerment. UNCED must

support the development of policies,

programs, and processes which enable the

poor to become powerful.

This demagogic approach is in striking contrast to the methods used so successfully by Singapore, Taiwan, and South Korea in expanding their economies and raising their living standards. Rather than trying to accumulate power in order to take wealth from others, their people have worked hard, saved and invested, and created new wealth.

Many of the assertions in the UN materials rest on a shaky scientific foundation. For example, oil is described as one of the fuels "which irreversibly damage the environment." That unsupported assertion runs counter to all the experience with oil spills around the world; nature typically reasserts itself, sooner or later. The UN materials state as fact that global warming "grew more serious" since 1987, whereas scientific experts disagree among themselves. In pushing for renewable forms of energy, the UN staff writes that "Equipment to harness such energy, once made available to the consumer, can last for years." That may sound impressive, but there is nothing special about it. Equipment for non-renewable energy sources lasts for decades. Key considerations, ignored by the conference planners, are the relative costs of the two alternatives as well as the hazards involved in operating the different equipment.

We are told that the charter may encompass the "precautionary principle." That is defined as a commitment to act, before all the scientific proof is available, to prevent worsening environmental conditions. Along these lines, a convention (in UN parlance, that is not a meeting, but a binding international agreement) on global warming is high on the agenda.

Agenda 21 will not be legally binding. Yet, the UN staff notes that "it is expected" that governments adopting it will be highly committed to its implementation. The experience with other "voluntary" UN position statements is enlightening. Although the World Health Organization's guidelines on the marketing of infant formula, for example, were technically not compulsory, a worldwide boycott forced Nestle and other manufacturers to comply.

Much of the Earth Summit material deals with the relationship between economic development and environmental impact, and especially the notion of "unsustainable" patterns of consumption. Yet, there is nothing to indicate why a given pattern of consumption is "unsustainable." Specifically, little if any attention is given to the role of economics, and especially of the price system, in allocating resources and in avoiding resource depletion. The conference planners seem oblivious to the adjustment process that has successfully worked over the centuries. As specific resources became relatively scarce, their prices rose sharply; enterprises were thereby encouraged to develop alternatives and consumers to shift the pattern of their purchases. The successful movement from whale oil to kerosene to modern means of illumination was accomplished without a panoply of governmental powers and interagency directives. The marketplace produced the economic incentives to avoid resource "depletion." That favorable experience runs counter to the many failed governmental efforts to "conserve" or "produce" energy.

There is one forecast that can be made on the basis of experience with earlier UN efforts to control the econimies of member nations (such as the Law of the Sea Treaty, the Moon Treaty, and Consumer Product Guidelines). The conference planners will gripe that they had to settle for half a loaf, and the critics will contend that they succeeded in knocking out the zaniest ideas. Nevertheless, when Earth Summit is all over, the UN agencies will have achieved a substantial accretion of power and will start planning the next round of such endeavors.

Between now and June, the Bush Administration will have to brace itself for an unprecedented outpouring of high decibel, self-righteous, unscientific exaggerations. It is vital that the United States continues to be odd man out. There is no benefit from joining those other industrialized nations that are trying to curry favor with the poorer countries by advocating extreme positions unsupported by science or economics.

Mr. Weidenbaum is Director of the Center for the Study of American Business at Washington University in St. Louis and author of Small Wars, Big Defense (Oxford University Press, 1992).