The Australian government's policy positions appeared as those of a "self-interested hypocrite" at an important environmental meeting in New York, according to Friends of the Earth (FoE).
The meeting was the fifth session of the Commission for Sustainable Development, which met April 8-25. The commission was established at the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro, often referred to as the "Earth summit". Its recommendations will go to a special session of the UN General Assembly in June.
Cam Walker, who attended as a non-government delegate from Australia for FoE, said of the meeting, "Australia was noticeable for its self-interested position on energy issues — especially relating to subsidies for fossil fuels".
According to Walker, even good stances on some questions by the Australian government were seen as hypocritical because of it "actively undermining attempts to reduce the impacts of climate change attributable to greenhouse gas emissions".
The European Union and Japan called for agreement on legally binding commitments for reductions in emissions at the next meeting of the parties to the Convention on Climate Change; the EU suggested a 15% decrease by 2010. Australia maintained the position that brought condemnation at the last such meeting, where it claimed that it was "premature to establish a particular point at which greenhouse gases become dangerous".
Overseas assistance is pivotal for implementation of programs which will lead to sustainability. For many countries, overseas aid is the only source of external funding for environmental programs, and sustainable development is seen as impossible without it.
The Group of 77, which includes most countries outside the OECD, was very concerned about declining aid flows and called for renewed commitment to the overall target of each country allocating 0.7% of GNP to overseas assistance.
Australia called for the deletion of text in the document that called for a return to 1992 levels of aid within five years. There was widespread concern from the Group of 77 at the tendency of developed countries not to make commitments on increasing aid levels, to the extent that some representatives hinted that the heads of state of some countries might not even bothering to show up at the UN special session in June.
On trade, Australia called for continued work under the World Trade Organisation to liberalise international trade and remove "distortions to sustainable development in agriculture". FoE called this intervention both "puzzling and disturbing. As the Third World Network noted in one of the high level sessions, the WTO is the antithesis of sustainable development, as it works to incorporate all parts of the globe into a single market, with increased influence of market forces and reduced environmental and social protection.
"Global trade, as it is currently practised, is undermining food security and traditional sustainable agriculture in many parts of the world, so the suggestion that increased trade liberalisation will allow a move towards sustainability is flawed."
Overall, Walker said, at the meeting the Australian government showed "complete lack of will in moving towards sustainable development or implementation of the outcomes of the Earth summit. In particular, the constant hypocrisy of expressing concern for the environment while refusing to support specific targets aimed at reducing environmental impacts makes Australia's environmental credentials seem very shoddy and ever more tarnished."