Joe Stephenson of the Californian pressure group Clean Air Revival says
that the alliance is a ‘greenwash’ for General Motors’ other activities.
The car maker, he says, is currently suing state authorities in Connecticut,
Massachusetts and New York to stop them introducing stricter laws on air
quality management.

Joe Goffman, a senior attorney with the EDF, says that the agreement
with General Motors is simply another way to cut pollution. The fund makes
no money out of the agreement and is allowed to criticise the car maker
if it wants to.

Under the 1990 Clean Air Act, companies in many American cities and
states are being obliged to cut emissions of carbon dioxide and other pollutants.
General Motors and its partner want state authorities to allow polluting
companies to buy – and scrap – old cars, instead of having to clean up their
own factories.

In July, the federal Environmetal Protection Agency reported that such
a scheme could save $100 million per year when compared to traditional
means of cleaning the air. The EPA is expected to issue guidelines recommending
the system within the next few weeks.

But Stephenson is sceptical of General Motors’ plan: ‘It’s clear that
these people don’t want to do anything that will cost them anything. They
are in the business for profit and not for the environment.’

Jack Dynam of General Motors’ research division denies that the company
is acting hypocritically by encouraging others to buy polluting cars which
it put on the road. ‘No manufacturer will guarantee the life of a product
from the cradle to the grave. Individuals own the vehicles. It is beyond
any expectations that the cars should be bought back by General Motors,’
he said.

Local conservationists are growing increasingly alarmed by the booming
trade in wild fungi. Some varieties can fetch hundreds of dollars a kilogram
in Europe and Japan, and a good fungus forager can earn $1000 a day. As
amateurs join the professional mushroom hunters, supplies of fungi are dwindling.

Japanese customers pay as much as $100 for a single young matsutake
mushroom, while Oregon white truffles can fetch $1200 a kilogram in Europe.
Other exotic-sounding varieties, such as lawyer’s wig, man on horseback
and short-stemmed slippery Jack, can bring in $100 or more a kilogram.

These mushrooms are the fruit of fungi that have a symbiotic relationship
with the trees of northwestern forests. Their underground filaments deliver
nutrients and water to the roots of trees. Michael Amaranthus, a fungi expert
at the Forest Service, estimates that as many as 3000 types of fungus contribute
to the growth of trees in the forests of Oregon and Washington state. Some
of them are essential for young saplings as they establish themselves in
the forest. Douglas fir saplings, for instance, depend on matsutake and
chanterelle mushrooms.

Ken Everett, president of the San Francisco Mycological Society, says
that although some disturbance stimulates the growth of mushrooms, the constant
churning up of moss by hunters in search of the most exotic fungi could
be damaging to them. Amaranthus points out that morels like fire, chanterelles
thrive in a cut forest, and matsutake likes occasional burning of the forest
canopy.

Loreli Norvell of the University of Washington in Seattle has found
that disturbance can accelerate the growth of fungi in the short term but
no one knows what the effects might be in the long term. Norvell will continue
her study for the next ten years while Amaranthus and his successors will
continue to track the fate of the fungi for another 200 years.

Two scientists in the US have taken a step towards making seven-league
boots a reality. The scientists have invented a kit that they claim will
enable users to bound along at more than 30 kilometres per hour.

John Dick of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratories in Pasadena and Erik
Edwards of the Stanford Research Institute have acquired a patent for their
Spring Walker, which increases foot force with a combination of springs
and levers, without any added power.

The key to moving faster, says Dick, is the length of a runner’s stride
which is determined by the length of their legs and the force that they
push the ground with. If either of these factors could be increased the
person would travel faster.

The Spring Walker straps onto a person’s shoulders, waist and feet and
consists of a high-powered spring behind the wearer’s back connected through
wires and levers to the wearer’s feet and to a pair of mechanical legs.
Motion with either foot results in the spring being compressed and then
decompressed and the motion is transferred to the mechanical legs. The wearer
is suspended slightly above the ground.

The spring increases the force with which the person pushes the ground
by recovering lost energy from vertical motion. For example, 400-metre runners
exert a force twice that of gravity on the ground and spend half their time
on the ground and half in the air. The Spring Walker takes some of the force
spent on upward motion and converts it into forward motion. Dick says that
his invention recovers over 80 per cent of the energy lost in vertical motion.

Although the machine weighs 25 kilograms, Dick says that tests show
that walkers have no perception of added weight. The present model increases
leverage by a factor of two, however Dick says that this is variable so
that it can be adapted for different uses, such as slower walking in cities.

Dick is now looking for finance to further develop and manufacture his
machine. The US Army has shown some interest.

Officially, it is a private meeting; unofficially, according to senior
members of Strong’s conference secretariat, everybody will be there with
the approval of their home governments. The purpose is to iron out the massive
disagreements that still divide nations after five weeks of pre-summit negotiations
in New York, which ended last week, failed to make headway.

Among those involved in the back room dealing will be former US president
Jimmy Carter, former World Bank presidents Barber Conable and Robert McNamara,
and finance ministers from Brazil and Pakistan. One early invitation list
contained Margaret Thatcher’s name, though she apparently turned down the
invitation. The latest list includes Lord Jenkin of Roding who, as Patrick
Jenkin, was a British environmental secretary in the mid-1980s.

Also out, according to UN sources, is former West German chancellor
Willy Brandt. Like the others, Brandt was proposed by the UN, but he was
vetoed by the present chancellor Helmut Kohl.

The New York discussions were the fourth series of talks in a sequence
that has lasted more than a year. Of the many matters still left unresolved,
the most important is money. All sides agree that vast sums will be needed
to tackle perils such global warming and forest destruction and to set the
world on a path to a sustainable future. But how much? And who should hold
the purse strings?

LOW EXPECTATIONS

In New York, rich countries such as the US, Germany and Britain (in
a speech from environment secretary Michael Heseltine), all agreed to dip
into their pockets. Curtis Bohlen, head of the American delegation, said:
‘The US accepts that if the world is to fully achieve sustainable development,
industrialised countries must generate new and additional financial resources.’
The US had not bothered even to guarantee that George Bush would attend
the summit in Rio de Janeiro, apparently as a negotiating ploy. In this
atmosphere of lowered expectations, Bohlen’s statement was greeted with
relief. But no price tags are yet attached. At the start of the meeting,
Strong suggested that cleaning up pollution and protecting natural resources
would cost $125 billion a year.

Briefings from the rich nations suggested that perhaps $6 billion might
be forthcoming. Japanese newspapers have suggested, however, that Japan,
now the world’s largest source of foreign aid, might contribute $10 billion.

The nations of the Third World, mostly assembled under a loose coalition
known as Group of 77, are not happy. The group, which actually has 128 member
nations, thinks that the pot should be much bigger. The member states want
the money not only to fund environmental projects, but also to help their
economic development.

The group’s chairman, Jamsheed Marker, head of Pakistan’s delegation
to the summit, said last month: ‘What we want is a credible commitment on
financial resources so that we do not leave Rio with a mere statement of
good intentions and wait to see how it is going to be implemented.’

The Group of 77, following a lead from China (which is not a member),
wants the creation of a fund to administer the greening of the planet. Each
nation, rich or poor, donor or recipient, would have one vote to decide
the fund’s activities.

The rich nations see things differently. Last month George Bush voiced
the opinion of most Western leaders when he said that the ‘primary vehicle’
for diverting new money must be the Global Environment Facility (GEF), a
fund that was set up three years ago by the World Bank, in conjunction with
two UN agencies, the Development Programme (UNDP) and the Environment Programme
(UNEP).

The GEF, which has so far allocated $450 million to projects, is dominated
by its 17 rich donor nations. But there were strong hints in New York that,
at the next meeting of its participants on 29 April in Washington DC, the
GEF could agree to open its doors to more Third World participants than
the current nine, which include China, India and Brazil. The main condition
would be that the Group of 77 ditches the idea of a fully democratic ‘green
´Ú³Ü²Ô»å’.

Environment and development pressure groups from the Third World oppose
the central role that this would give the World Bank after the summit. ‘The
World Bank, with its track record of environmental damage, cannot be entrusted
with the role of the major institution for the management of the world’s
environment,’ says Charles Abugre, a Ghanaian economist representing the
Third World Network, an influential radical grouping. But the bank, which
has increased its environmental staff from 2 to 140 in the past five years,
wants precisely that role for itself.

‘G¸é·¡·¡±·°Â´¡³§±á’

No members of the Group of 77 support a prominent role for the GEF,
although some, seeing little realistic alternative, have dropped their opposition.
Zimbabwe, for instance, now says that ‘all funding mechanisms should be
looked at’.

The GEF, in the mean time, is attempting to improve its image by inviting
seven more developing countries to join the twice-yearly participants’ meetings,
and pressure groups have been invited to meet GEF managers before these
meetings. The first such meeting, in Geneva last December, was judged a
failure in a memo by the GEF’s chairman, Mohammed El-Ashry.

Pressure groups accuse the GEF of applying a ‘greenwash’ to the World
Bank’s development projects round the globe – planting a few trees or protecting
a corner of marshes next to some giant dam, mine or power station. Abugre
claims that all the most recent batch of schemes in the GEF were designed
to reduce the environmental impact of World Bank development projects, costing
ten times as much.

According to Abugre, this shows that the GEF is being used to cover
up the environmental destruction caused by the World Bank’s style of economic
development, which emphasises large capital-intensive projects. But countries
that donate funds to the GEF, notably Germany, insist that it provides the
best method for integrating economic development with environmental protection.

One outstanding question for the future of the GEF is how far it should
fund research projects in Third World countries, and provide training and
equipment for national environmental agencies there. Such ‘capacity building’
is a central feature of the Amazon Pilot Project, a scheme recently adopted
by the GEF to find new ways to protect the Brazilian rainforests (‘First
Aid for the Amazon’, ¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵ, 28 March). Currently, a third of the
GEF’s money is earmarked for capacity building, but the UNDP wants this
increased to half.

The next meeting of GEF participants will also consider extending the
four categories of schemes that can currently qualify for money. At present,
schemes must tackle emissions of greenhouse gases or ozone-destroying chemicals,
protect biodiversity, or reduce pollution of international rivers. Two categories
being considered for inclusion are combating the spread of deserts and tackling
‘land-based forms of pollution’, both of which are likely to feature strongly
in initiatives proposed at the Earth Summit.

Most Western governments oppose the formation of any new institutions
after the Rio summit. They argue that such organisations only create delay
and that the GEF would suffice, especially if overseen by a body such as
the Economic and Social Council of the UN General Assembly. The future role
of the UNEP, a Nairobi-based agency set up after the last global environment
summit in 1972, is increasingly unclear. The US is widely thought to want
to strip the UNEP of all its operational functions.

But there is strong pressure for some new organisation, if only as a
symbol of the achievements of the summit. The Brundtland Commission, set
up by the UN under the present Norwegian premier, Gro Harlem Brundtland,
called for the establishment of a permanent Sustainable Development Commission.
It was the trenchant findings on the state of the planet in its 1987 report,
Our Common Future, which persuaded the UN to call the Earth Summit. Members
of Brundtland’s commission may renew their call when they meet in London
later this month.

Strong is backing the creation of a panel of independent experts to
monitor progress after Rio. He calls it the Earth Council, and describes
it as a kind of Amnesty International for the environment. Strong himself
could be a candidate to chair the council. Such has been the turmoil at
the New York meeting that these ideas have not even been formally discussed.

A vast industry of paper and proliferat-ing meetings has accompanied
preparations for the summit. The central document of the summit is Agenda
21, which will set targets for environmental improvement. ‘The biggest gap
in Agenda 21 is the absence of proposals for international regulation and
control of big business,’ says Martin Khor Kok Peng, head of the Third World
Network.

Each section of the 700-page document contains a statement of ‘the nature
of the problem’, but nowhere are large companies blamed. And all the proposed
solutions begin ‘Governments should. . . ‘

At a meeting held in New York last month, the International Chamber
of Commerce agreed with officials from the UNEP to set up a panel to review
progress of a voluntary code, a 16-point Business Charter for Sustainable
Development. But there is no sign that after Rio business activities will
be brought under the same scrutiny as those of governments.

The only involvement of big business in the Earth Summit proceedings
is in paying for the summit itself. Chemicals companies such as ICI and
3M have made large donations to Ecofund, a private fund that has so far
raised $2.3 million to pay for the negotiations. Other contributors include
the oil company Atlantic Richfield and the large American foundations such
as Rockefeller, Ford and MacArthur.

The president of the Ecofund, Benjamin Read, is aiming to collect a
total of $3 million, which will match the contribution of the largest government
donor, Sweden, and will represent a substantial proportion of the total
cost of the summit itself, which is put at $20 million.

HIJACKING THE SUMMIT

Some events have been paid for directly by corporations. Swatch of Switzerland
sponsored a cultural gala and reception for negotiators in Geneva, the first
time that a UN reception has been paid for by private money. Information
about the conference is being disseminated through a privately funded newspaper
called the Earth Summit Times. Maurice Strong bypassed the UN’s own Department
of Public Information to help set up the newspaper with money from businesses
including a Japanese retail chain, the Felissimo Corporation. Behind the
scenes, Ecofund is known to have offered to pay the start-up costs for Strong’s
proposed Earth Council.

Business is keen to present itself as part of the solution to the global
environmental crisis, rather than part of the problem. Peter Bright of Shell,
speaking on behalf of the International Chamber of Commerce, told a public
meeting in New York that Agenda 21 should take advantage of the ‘enormous
resources of businesses and go beyond the traditional role of regulation’.
Not everybody agrees. Greenpeace’s Kenny Bruno says that big business is
hijacking the Earth Summit.

After Bright spoke, a dozen youths stood up in the audience, wearing
T-shirts that read ‘Shell: for pesticides and apartheid’, and silently handed
out pamphlets that condemned the summit’s refusal to regulate large corporations.
It was almost like old times, before the environment became big business.

At the first public hearing on how the money should be spent, Glenn
Juday of the University of Alaska’s department of forestry proposed that
the state should create an endowment fund to provide enough money to continue
research on the effects of the spill and to coordinate work among the 30
government agencies that have a share in looking after Alaska’s coastline.
He said that as much as $200 million should be set aside for the fund.

Juday argued that some studies are being wound up because funding has
run out, even though the problems are expected to continue for the foreseeable
future. Oilburied in the sediments of Prince William Sound is periodically
flushed out, creating miniature spills. ‘These funds will give us a unique
opportunity to study the effects of the spill as well as other issues such
as the effect of the fisheries and increasing recreational use of Alaska’s
coastline,’ he says.

However, environmentalists say the money should be used to buy forests
near the sound, such as those owned by local logging corporations in the
Kenai Peninsula and the Kodiak Island area.

David Janka, director of the Prince William Sound Conservation Alliance,
said he wants only a small amount of the money spent on research. He is
highly critical of the way the money available now is being spent. One-quarter
of it goes on administrative charges.

Janka says he does not expect much of Exxon’s $90 million initial payout
to be spent on forest land. Most of the money is already earmarked for reimbursing
the government for its studies. He also claims that some of the money will
go back to Exxon for the work it did in cleaning up the spill.

Alaska’s attorney general, Charles Cole, one of the people who will
finally decide what happens to the money, is against many of the research
proposals, whichhe says simply support bureaucrats in government agencies.
Officials from the National Parks Service are backing the plan to buy land,
but the logging lobby argues against it.

At the hearing, Robert Spies, chief scientist for the trustees of the
money, also promised that the results from studies on the effects of the
spill will be released later this year. These are being kept secret until
agreement is reached with individual litigants not to prosecute the state
on the basis of the findings.

Spies did, however, release an update on the effects of the spill. He
said the death rate of young sea otters in the oiled western part of Prince
William Sound is still twice as high as in the eastern part, which was not
affected by the spill. The population of murres, a type of guillemot, may
take a century to recover.

In Rio de Janeiro in June, heads of government are expected to sign
an Earth Charter laying out the rights and duties of peoples and governments
towards the planet, treaties on combating climate change and conserving
biodiversity, and Agenda 21, a 700-page document laying out a plan of action
on the environment and development for the next century.

In New York last week, pressure groups including Friends of the Earth,
Greenpeace and Third World Network, chorused that the summit was headed
for a ‘failure of historic proportions’ unless urgent action was taken.
They said the summit will fail to address key issues such as corporate pollution,
nuclear power and overconsumption of resources by the developed world.

Summit secretary general Maurice Strong put a brave face on it. ‘If
you take a look at what we’ve actually got done (it) is amazing,’ he said.
But even he admitted that Agenda 21 had been seriously watered down by governments.
‘Weasel words are creeping in,’ he said.

Many blamed the US for sabotaging the conference. Barbara Bramble, spokeswoman
for the American Citizens’ Network, a coalition of environmental and development
groups, said the White House had drawn up ‘ten commandments’ for its delegation
listing what they must avoid.

The list was aimed at stopping such things as mechanisms for settling
disputes, and codes for assessing the environmental impact of projects,
from being made binding. The American delegates were barred from accepting
the ‘precautionary principle’ – the notion that any action which might endanger
the environment should be avoided. They were told to ensure that no decisions
were made on military matters or American liability for the environmental
problems of poor countries. They were also instructed to avoid mention of
new institutions or requests for more aid.

Developing countries were also disappointed with the discussions. Kamal
Nath, India’s minister for the environment and forests, said: ‘There are
not only no promises, there are no promises of promises.’ He was particularly
angry that the crucial issue of money for environmental solutions was put
off (see ‘Who pays for the Earth Summit?’, this issue).

Discussions stalled on yet another convention. At the last set of negotiations
in Geneva a proposed convention on forests had to be abandoned. At the New
York talks, an African-led initiative for a convention to combat desertification
was suspended when developed countries refused to accept that this is a
global problem. The remaining treaties for Rio are to bediscussed in special
meetings at the end of this month.

The proposed Earth Charter is also in dire straits. Two days before
the conference ended governments had agreed only two of the 27 principles
to be signed. Seven other principles had been abandoned. Clif Curtis, a
Greenpeace spokesman, cited the deletion of issues such as the banning of
nuclear tests, as proof that the charter was’regressive, fragmented and
seriously devoid of vision’.

In 1977 the UN launched a plan of action to combat desertification,
but the few projects that were funded failed miserably. Recent statistics
from the UN suggest that 35 per cent of the Earth’s land surface is threatened
by the expansion of the deserts.

Last week, African diplomats complained bitterly that talks in preparation
for the summit had focused on issues such as conservation of forests and
whales, which are high on the agenda of Western countries, instead of the
famine and migrations that accompany the encroachment of deserts.

The proposed convention will focus on education and public participation
in controlling the spread of deserts rather than on the large ‘greening’
projects favoured in the past. Other ideas include helping farmers to diversify
into other industries. One delegate said: ‘There is a misconception that
poor Africans can only be farmers and herders. We mustn’t forget that even
the developed countries had to abandon mass agriculture because there were
other ways to make a living.’

Bella Abzug, director of the Women’s Environment and Development Organisation,
denounced the governments of India, Kenya and Malaysia for human rights
violations against environmentalists last week. In a separate incident,
50 protestors hijacked a reception for the American delegation and demanded
that the voices of the poor should be heard.

Abzug attacked Kenya for last week’s beating of Wangari Maathai, the
founder of Kenya’s Green Belt Movement and head of a newly formed opposition
party which plans to contest the country’s first free elections for 25 years.
Maathai and three other women were taken to hospital after police broke
up their hunger strike in support of political prisoners.

Abzug took India to task for arresting 40 members of the Chipko (tree-huggers)
group who were on a hunger strike in protest against the building of the
Tehri Dam in Uttar Pradesh. The dam will flood valleys in the Himalayas
and displace tens of thousands of peasants. The Chipkos also say the dam
is dangerous because it lies on an earthquake fault.

Malaysia came in for criticism for the arrest of Andy Mutang, a member
of the Sarawak Indigenous People’s Alliance, which works with tribal
people who want to stop logging of the rainforest.

In the second incident 50 activists interrupted a reception thrown
by the Citizens’ Network, a coalition of US environmental and development
groups which has been working closely with the country’s delegation to the
summit. The activists startled the sedate gathering when they started singing
‘We’re not going to let no diplomats turn us around’ in the centre of the
room.

When the singing ended, a chorus of voices shouted: ‘We’re fed up,’
‘Our children are dying,’ and ‘Don’t let our ambassadors make fools of us.’

They then made speeches condemning the US government for hypocrisy in
trying to impose environmental standards on the Third World that Western
countries have only recently adopted themselves. They also accused mainstream
activists of selling out and joining the government, and not listening to
the poor.

After the speeches, one protestor called on Bob Ryan, a former US ambassador
to Mali, to respond to their criticisms. ‘I’ve listened and learnt a lot,’
he said. ‘I have to admit that working full time on this international conference
I don’t know as much as I would like to about minority communities and I
promise to learn more when I can.’

The operator of the submersible will wear a headset similar to those
used in virtual reality systems. The headset has a small television screen
in front of each eye. It responds to the movement of the wearer’s head which
moves the submersible’s cameras accordingly.

Simpler forms of telepresence have been in use for several years. Robert
Ballard of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts explored
the wreck of the Titanic with submersibles controlled by operators sitting
in front of television monitors using joysticks. Technology being developed
by the US military goes a step further and tracks the position of the operator’s
eyeballs to simulate real vision more exactly.

NASA’s submersible will supplement the operator’s vision with a spectroscopic
system developed by SETS Technology, a company based in Hawaii. The system
views the scene around the submersible and analyses the spectrum of visible
and infrared light reflected from objects the robot is looking at. According
to Tom McCord, chief scientist at SETS, the robot will eventually be able
to compare the spectra of objects it is looking at with templates stored
in its memory to identify the objects.

Future versions of NASA’s telepresence system will pick up objects and
convey their weight and texture back to the operator. Butler Hine, leader
of the intelligent mechanisms group at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California,
says that a student at Stanford University has designed a prototype glove
that gives the wearer the impression of feeling the mass of an object. The
glove contains an alloy which expands and contracts when different electric
currents pass through it.

NASA is also studying a device for conveying texture. It was designed
for Braille readers: an image recognition system reads ordinary print and
then uses an array of retractable points to convey Braille letters to a
blind person’s fingertips. NASA uses an optical sensor to analyse light
scattering on the object’s surface to determine its texture. It then conveys
the information to the fingertip device where the array of points simulate
the texture. Other possibilities include acoustic sensors that will convey
the feeling of tapping on a surface.