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The Biggest Environmental Meeting Since Rio Ends With A Full Room Of Politicians And No Binding TextSEPTEMBER 3, 2002 · 16:03
Ten years after the Earth Summit, 60,000 people came to Johannesburg, which is the largest number of human beings that has ever met to discuss water. They agreed to a plan, several times, and left with a piece of paper that one of the delegations described in the press room as 'the most expensive meeting in the history of the planet, and we agreed to less than we already had'.
THE HALL. IT TOOK EIGHT YEARS TO BUILD AND WILL BE TAKEN DOWN ON TUESDAY.
( FILE PHOTO )
THE HALL. IT TOOK EIGHT YEARS TO BUILD AND WILL BE TAKEN DOWN ON TUESDAY.
JOHANNESBURG, September 3 -- The World Summit on Sustainable Development ended this evening with a declaration signed by more than 100 governments, four of which recorded interpretations attached to their signatures, as is traditional and as was done in Rio in 1992.
The summit's own website, published in June, described water as 'the most important environmental issue of our time', a phrase which was used eleven times in three days by delegations that had no water policy.
Between June 2000 and June 2002, two billion people in Asia and Africa gained access to improved water sources. The summit's headline number is that this progress should double by 2015. The summit did not produce a mechanism for that, and said so, in a paragraph on page 114 that reporters did not find until the following morning.
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