The partnership approach.

Byline: The Register-Guard

President Bush was the most dominant personality at last week's U.N. summit on sustainable development - even though he decided not to join the more than 100 other heads of state who attended the event in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Instead, the president dispatched Secretary of State Colin Powell, who was booed for the Bush administration's opposition to firm targets in dealing with difficult environmental and social issues. The United States, which has undermined international efforts to meet goals set in the Rio de Janeiro summit in 1992 for dealing with climate change, deserves rebuke for standing in the way of progress. But critics should adopt a wait-and-see attitude on the administration's emphasis on partnerships among governments, businesses and nongovernment organizations to address developmental problems.

The refusal by the United States to agree to detailed plans and targets for ending poverty and protecting the global environment was disappointing. For example, the United States, which emits a full one-fourth of the world's greenhouse gases, joined the OPEC cartel in opposing binding targets to increase the use of wind and solar energy. Instead, delegates ended up approving a vaguely worded call for an "urgent and substantial increase in the use of renewable sources of power such as solar and wind." That's a clear and simple abrogation of leadership by the United States.

At the urging of U.S. officials, the summit ended up putting strong emphasis on public-private partnerships - voluntary initiatives that have the potential, if actually carried to completion, of helping translate the diplomatic mumbo jumbo that often emerges from such events and turning it into concrete action.

To set an example, U.S. officials announced a plan for a $40 million collaboration between the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Conrad Hilton Foundation to develop clean-water projects in three West African nations. As the summit progressed, a number of other partnerships were announced, both large and small, involving unprecedented partnerships of governments, private groups, foundations and businesses. Their goals include protecting forests, preserving fisheries, improving health and sanitation, and providing energy to the world's poorest regions.

Some critics immediately attacked the partnerships as a slick "thousand points of light" maneuver that enables developed nations such as the United States to evade responsibility. But partnerships offer the potential for tackling specific local problems using new ideas and experimentation. For example, U.N. officials at the summit announced that they were ready to bypass often corrupt and ineffective governments in developing nations and instead directly finance firms that offer their employees treatment for AIDS.

The partnership approach also has the potential for uniting traditional adversaries in the pursuit of a common goal. At the summit, for example, environmental activists from Greenpeace and representatives of British Petroleum, who once battled over an oil platform in the North Atlantic, agreed to push for binding government commitments to stem global warming. (They should start by knocking on the front door of the White House.)

While partnerships are inadequate replacement for targets on critical issues such as global warming, they offer a promising new model for development. And new models and new hope are desperately needed in a world in which more than 1 billion people still lack access to safe drinking water, 2.4 billion lack proper sanitation and 2.2 million die each year from diseases associated with the two problems.

The fundamental problem with the partnership approach is that it's typically voluntary and lacks firm financial commitments. Governments are also tempted to simply reshuffle existing dollars and programs to make them look like something new.

The Bush administration now has an opportunity to provide the commitment and funding necessary to prove that the partnership approach can work - that it can bring water, energy and medicine to the poor and can help rebuild fisheries, forests and protect the diversity of species.

President Bush got his way at the summit. Now he must prove that his way is the right one.