The Earth Summit of 1992

Although headlines in 1992 were largely devoted to other issues, including the stagnant world economy, the environment was far from forgotten. The year's preeminent environmental event, one which captured attention throughout the world, was, without doubt, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, better known as the Earth Summit.

Between June 3 and June 14 representatives from more than 170 nations converged on Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, for the Earth Summit. Some 35,000 participants discussed a host of environmental issues, including global warming, deforestation, species preservation, and environmentally benign industrial development. The final round of talks was attended by 117 heads of state and government, including U.S. President George Bush. It was reportedly the largest gathering ever of world leaders.

But assembling so many world leaders in one place was a small challenge compared with getting them to agree on the measures that needed to be taken to protect the global environment. Before the summit began, during a series of conferences intended to prepare treaties to be signed in Rio, a major split among nations had become clear. On one side were the rich, industrialized nations, mostly concentrated in the northern hemisphere, which were calling for increased protection of the environment and preservation of the world's remaining unspoiled regions. On the other side were poorer, developing nations, generally in the southern hemisphere. To them, calls for conservation and environmental protection seemed little more than an attempt by the developed nations to prevent them from industrializing and raising their standards of living.

In April negotiators from more than 160 countries arrived at a compromise that was intended to bridge the gap. A declaration by the conferees, who met at UN headquarters in New York City, asserted that all nations had 'the sovereign right to exploit their own resources' but that every country also had a duty to ensure that its actions did not 'cause damage to the environment of other states.'

Known as the Rio Declaration after it was approved at the Earth Summit, the agreement also spoke of a 'global partnership' to protect and restore the earth's environment. Industrialized nations, the declaration stated, bore extra responsibility in this partnership because of 'the pressures their societies place on the global environment.' Thus the principle was established that developed countries would provide aid to developing countries to help them pay for various environmental measures.

At the summit European and other industrialized nations agreed that, 'as soon as possible,' they would increase their total aid to developing countries by as much as 55 percent, to about 0.7 percent of gross national product (GNP). The United States, with an aid level representing about 0.2 percent of its GNP, refused to commit itself to those targets, but U.S. officials announced some environmental aid increases, particularly $270 million for forest preservation, up from $150 million.

Several other developed nations also announced increases in their aid outlays. Japan, for instance, pledged $1.45 billion a year in aid for the next five years, up from about $800 million a year. But Canadian businessman Maurice Strong, who chaired the Earth Summit, estimated that poorer nations needed a total of $125 billion a year to carry out the environmental initiatives in Agenda 21, the Earth Summit's 800-page blueprint for cleaning up the environment and creating sustainable, environmentally safe development. They had been receiving a total of about $55 billion a year.

At presummit conferences held in New York City in March and May, representatives from some 150 countries tried to agree on a pact to control emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, and other so-called greenhouse gases. Many scientists believe these gases are accumulating in the atmosphere and will eventually lead to a warming of the global climate, with possibly profound effects on sea levels and agricultural patterns. The United States refused to go along with a proposal by Japan and the nations of the European Community to freeze carbon dioxide emissions at 1990 levels by the year 2000. Robert R. Reinstein, the chief U.S. negotiator, said such a commitment would hurt American industry and might not be necessary because the evidence to support the theory of global warming is still inconclusive. He said existing U.S. laws would control or reduce greenhouse emissions without hurting the economy.

The compromise pact that was hammered out established nonbinding guidelines for nations to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels. It set no deadline for achieving that goal, but it called for the signatory nations to report to each other periodically on progress in reducing emissions. By the end of the Earth Summit, 153 nations, including the United States, had signed the agreement.

The final presummit conference took place in late May in Nairobi, Kenya. Representatives of 98 nations agreed on a treaty to preserve the biological diversity of life on earth through such conservation strategies as establishing protected areas for rare or endangered species. This so-called biodiversity pact became the center of controversy at Rio because the United States said it would not accept some of the language in it. Of most concern to U.S. officials was a provision that the profits from new products and technologies based on raw materials from developing nations be shared between the country that developed the product and the country from which the raw material came. U.S. negotiators charged that this provision, aimed especially at the kind of genetic and biological engineering that the United States has excelled in, failed to provide patent protection to American companies. Despite continued and sometimes strident criticism of the U.S. stance by other nations and American environmentalists, the Bush administration refused to back down, and the United States did not sign the treaty.

However, not all criticism was directed at the United States. Norwegian Premier Gro Harlem Brundtland chided summit delegates for not addressing the issue of overpopulation, which some scientists see as the most serious global environmental threat because of the added strain that larger populations will place on the world food supply and on fragile ecosystems. But opposition from the Vatican, conservative Muslim countries, and some developing nations scuttled attempts to include population-control measures in Agenda 21 and other summit documents.

By the end of the Earth Summit participants from every camp had reasons to be pleased and disappointed. Most of the world had acknowledged the need to protect the environment, but, as Strong noted, the results were 'agreement without sufficient commitment.' In November it was reported that the UN would set up a Sustainable Development Commission to monitor compliance with Agenda 21.

Ozone Depletion.

The U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration released in 1992 disturbing reports regarding the thinning of the stratospheric ozone layer, which protects the earth from harmful levels of ultraviolet radiation. In January, NASA aircraft detected 1.5 parts per billion of chlorine monoxide, one of the most potent destroyers of ozone, in the skies over northern New England and eastern Canada. That was the highest level ever measured above either hemisphere and was seen as disturbing evidence that highly populated regions could be subjected to increased ultraviolet radiation, which scientists believe will lead to increased skin cancers and cataracts. NASA satellites also detected high levels of chlorine monoxide over London, Amsterdam, and Moscow. At the same time levels of nitrogen oxides, believed to neutralize ozone-depleting chemicals in the upper atmosphere, had fallen.

The report prompted 87 nations to announce that they would phase out use of chlorofluorocarbons, the chief source of ozone-destroying chemicals, by the end of 1995, four years sooner than called for under the Montreal Protocol of 1987, the international agreement aimed at stopping destruction of the ozone layer.

In September, NASA scientists reported that the extent of the ozone hole (or area of low ozone levels) that forms late in each year over Antarctica had reached the record size of 23 million square kilometers (9 million square miles), roughly the size of North America and 15 percent larger than in 1991. However, it was unclear whether actual ozone concentrations were as low as in recent years. Satellite measurements from early October showed that ozone levels had not fallen as far as expected, but balloon measurements from mid-October showed record lows. Scientists had feared that sulfuric acid from Mount Pinatubo's 1991 eruption would severely accelerate destruction of the ozone layer in 1992.

Deforestation.

The Brazilian government reported in March that the destruction of the Amazon rain forest, home to thousands of plant and animal species and an important factor in offsetting the greenhouse effect, had slowed somewhat. U.S. satellite photographs showed that the rate of forest clearing for cattle ranching and development had declined by 20 percent in 1991, compared to 1990. It was the third consecutive year of declines.

Still, 11,000 square kilometers (over 4,000 square miles), or 0.3 percent of the region, was cleared in 1991. By late 1992 a total of around 9 percent of the rain forest had been cut down. Brazilian officials said stricter government monitoring was responsible for the slowdown, but economists credited the country's severe recession for decreasing the impetus to clear forested land.

The long-running dispute in the United States over logging in the old-growth forests of the Pacific Northwest, habitat of the endangered northern spotted owl, resulted in a rare convening of the federal government's Endangered Species Committee, whose seven members can override the Endangered Species Act in specific cases when economic considerations are deemed to outweigh the law's species-protection provisions. The committee, nicknamed the God Squad and made up mainly of high-ranking federal officials, voted 5-2 in May to allow logging of about 1,700 acres (nearly 700 hectares) of federally owned, ancient forest in Oregon.

The decision was a compromise that pleased no one. After court orders in 1991 had restricted logging in much of the old-growth forests, the Bureau of Land Management had sought the committee's blessing to resume tree cutting and timber sales on 4,500 acres. By allowing much more limited logging, the committee angered the timber industry, and by allowing any logging at all, it provoked the wrath of environmentalists.
Air Pollution.
A new era in air-pollution controls began in the United States in 1992. In May the Tennessee Valley Authority, a major regional electric utility, announced that it had bought pollution 'credits' from Wisconsin Power and Light Company. The deal, estimated to be worth $2.5 million to $4 million, was one of the first publicly announced transactions under an emissions-allowance provision of the 1990 Clean Air Act and came even before the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced final regulations for the allowance program. (The regulations came in October.) The program awards pollution credits to a utility if it has lowered its sulfur dioxide emissions to levels below regulatory requirements. (Sulfur dioxide, produced by burning high-sulfur coal, causes acid rain.) The utility can then sell those credits to other utilities whose emissions exceed federal standards. Eventually, the purchasing utility has to come into compliance with the standards, but the pollution credits give it time to purchase pollution-control devices or make operating changes at its power plants to cut emissions. In this case the TVA, as part of a larger pollution-control plan, bought the right to emit 10,000 tons of sulfur dioxide in excess of the regulatory levels. The allowances need not be used all in the same year.

To fight smog, eight northeastern states announced in April that they would require power plants to cut emissions of nitrogen oxides by more than 50 percent over the next several years. Nitrogen oxides combine with volatile organic compounds from factories and automobiles to form smog on hot summer days. The move was an instance of state action in the absence of federal direction. Nitrogen oxides were not yet included in the EPA's guidelines on how states should implement the Clean Air Act. Utilities in the eight states — Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont — will have to either use cleaner-burning fuel or install air-scrubbing devices to remove the pollutants from the emissions they produce. A national organization of state air pollution regulators recommended later in April that all states adopt the tougher nitrogen oxides standards.

Moving from a relatively few big sources of pollutants to millions of tiny sources, the EPA announced in August that it would issue air quality regulations for gasoline-powered lawn mowers. Experts say a lawn mower, which has none of the pollution-control devices that have been required on automobiles for years, can spew as great a quantity of smog-producing hydrocarbons in an hour as a car. The EPA will issue its regulations after studying emissions from 100 gaspowered mowers. Eventually, similar regulations will be formulated for a wide variety of what the agency calls 'uncontrolled mobile sources,' such as chain saws and weed eaters, as well as bigger machinery, such as construction and farm equipment.

In the fall the EPA issued numerous final and proposed regulations for bringing about compliance with the Clean Air Act. Final regulations on sulfur dioxide emissions from power plants required that they be halved by the year 2010. (These regulations also finalized the pollution credits program.) Another final regulation would reward companies that voluntarily cut air pollution before the required time by giving them a six-year extension on complying with new technology standards. Other final regulations imposed stiffer inspection and maintenance standards for cars to cut smog-causing ozone emissions by 28 percent and carbon monoxide emissions by 31 percent in 181 metropolitan areas that were out of compliance with federal air quality standards. Proposed regulations for cutting nitrogen oxide emissions required coal-fired utilities to reduce emissions of the pollutant by the year 2000 and provided guidelines for the reduction of such emissions in urban areas with high smog levels. Also proposed were regulations to control release into the air of cancer-causing toxins from chemical plants and other pollutants from steel industry coke ovens.

Water Pollution.

Partially treated sewage began to gush into U.S. coastal waters off San Diego in February when a pipe on the floor of the Pacific Ocean ruptured only about 1,000 yards (900 meters) offshore. City water officials could not shut down the line because the broken pipe, which carries sewage away from a wastewater treatment plant for discharge into the ocean much farther away from the coast, was the city's only means of sewage disposal. San Diego was already under a court order to upgrade its water treatment system, thought to be among the least efficient in the United States. Citywide restrictions on water use were imposed to reduce sewage production, and 4 miles (6 kilometers) of beaches were closed initially. By the time repairs were completed in April, about 11 billion gallons (42 billion liters) of sewage had gushed into near-shore waters and almost 20 miles of beaches had been temporarily closed.

A comprehensive report on Canada's water quality in April found that the country's freshwater supplies faced contamination from industrial discharges, farm runoff, untreated sewage, and acid rain. Wells across the country contained measurable amounts of pesticides, while in New Brunswick more than 500 wells had been fouled by leaking petroleum tanks. The Great Lakes were polluted with more than 360 types of chemicals, and the life span of beluga whales in the St. Lawrence River had been cut in half, from 30 years to only 14 or 15 years. Scientists have detected some 25 types of toxic compounds in the whales. The International Joint Commission, the U.S.-Canadian body that oversees the Great Lakes, called in April for a phasing out of chlorine use, since about half of the chemicals in the Great Lakes are organochlorines, by-products of industrial processes and waste incineration. The commission said the contaminants were to blame for behavioral abnormalities observed in wildlife, including the blurring of sex roles.

Waste Disposal.

Rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court in June carried important implications for the disposal of ordinary, hazardous, and radioactive waste in the United States. In two related cases involving an Alabama hazardous-waste law and a Michigan ban on disposal of out-of-state garbage in Michigan landfills, the Court declared that states did not have the right to bar firms from bringing garbage and hazardous waste into a state for disposal. In the past states had sought to limit or to stop the shipment of garbage into their territory as a way of prolonging the life of existing waste-disposal facilities.

The Court also overturned a provision in a 1985 federal law that would have forced any state to assume ownership of and legal liability for low-level radioactive waste produced within its borders if it did not implement a plan for disposing of such material by 1996. Under the threat of that deadline, states have formed multistate compacts charged with the task of building disposal facilities for the low-level waste, which is produced mainly by nuclear reactors, research institutions, and medical centers. Many of those efforts have run into stiff opposition from residents who live near proposed dump sites; several states, including New York, which challenged the federal law, resent being made responsible for what they view as a national problem that requires a federal solution. The Court ruled, 6-3, that the 'take-title' provision of the law in question, the Low-Level Radioactive Waste Policy Amendments Act, violated states' sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution. Although states are still charged with responsibility for finding dump sites, they are likely to take far longer to do so without the 1996 deadline.

The controversial Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), an underground dump carved out of salt deposits near Carlsbad, N.M., that would be the first permanent repository in the United States for highly radioactive waste, came closer to being opened in 1992. Built at a cost of about $1 billion, WIPP is meant to hold some 880,000 barrels of plutonium waste from the federal government's nuclear weapons production plants. But New Mexico and environmental groups charged in a lawsuit that the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) had improperly taken control of the land above WIPP from the U.S. Interior Department. In January a federal judge prohibited the DOE from opening the plant, saying congressional approval and a hazardous-waste storage permit from New Mexico were needed before the site could open. A federal appeals court in July reversed the decision requiring a state permit, and in October, President Bush signed legislation authorizing the DOE to begin tests at WIPP within ten months.

What many suspected was true of the Superfund program — that the program was better at generating paperwork than cleaning up sites — was confirmed by a Rand Corporation report in April. (The Superfund is the U.S. plan to clean up abandoned hazardous-waste dumps.) Of the Superfund disbursements by four major insurance companies and five industrial companies to cover cleanup claims between 1986 and 1989, only 12 percent was spent on removing waste from the sites. Roughly 79 percent of the money was spent on legal fees that resulted from disputes over responsibility for the cleanup work, and 9 percent on administrative expenses. Applying those percentages to all Superfund expenses during that period, the study estimated that more than $1 billion out of a total of $1.3 billion in Superfund bills went to lawyers.

The U.S. Congress spent 1992 debating various proposals for amending the basic federal law regulating solid-waste disposal, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), first enacted in 1976. The original law dealt mainly with hazardous waste, leaving the regulation of ordinary garbage to local and state governments. But a new RCRA seemed likely to expand the federal government's role in this area, too — for example, by mandating that only recyclable materials be used in packaging or that charging a deposit on beverage containers be required nationwide as a way to stimulate recycling. Although congressional leaders had hoped to have a final bill ready in 1992, passage of such a complicated and controversial law proved impossible in a presidential election year.

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