Rio Plus Ten: Politics, Poverty and the Environment

'A serious attempt to engage with the difficult issues that confront the left in understanding and responding to global capital and development.' Red Pepper on Redefining Sustainable Development 'The authors of this book . . . offer a lucid, stinging critique of Rio and of the broader attempts at global environmental protection. They succeed admirably in upholding an approach based on the considerations of the global poor, and in unveiling the fundamental flaws inherent in the proposed Northern solutions to the global environmental crisis. Their empirical work is eminently pertinent; few authors have managed to illustrate the radical attack with such precise examples.' Environmental Politics on Tears of the Crocodile The World Summit on Sustainable Development took place in Johannesburg, South Africa in September 2002. In this book, the authors look at the agenda established since the original Rio conference in 1992 and cover the events of the intervening years: global warming and the unfolding arguments over climate change, energy, water and sanitation, patents and many other issues. They examine what progress-- if any--has been made. Offering a critical analysis of the links between neo-liberal economics and transnational organisations, the authors expose the poverty of so-called international protocols and resolutions which claim to offer solutions. They show how, in virtually every case, these resolutions remain part of the problem of continuing poverty and environmental degradation in the non-Western world.