In an opening speech to the Earth Summit on Monday, South African President Thabo Mbeki described the Earth as a village divided by a river into districts of want and wealth, while its environment steadily sickened.

"Poverty, underdevelopment, inequality within and among countries, together with the worsening global ecological crisis, sum up the dark shadow under which most of the world lives," he said.

But he added: "For the first time in human history, human society possesses the capacity, the knowledge and the resources to eradicate poverty and underdevelopment."

The key, he said, was to have strong, practical commitments in a summit blueprint for cleaning some of the worst poverty blackspots and protecting the environment.

And he urged the 104 heads of state and government due to attend the summit's climax from September 2-4 to cast aside differences and produce a political declaration that is "an honest pledge" for change.

But green activists angrily warned that the summit could be turned into a spectacle of empty rhetoric.

They accused rich countries of cooking up cosy deals that would dilute pledges in the action plan to open their markets to goods from poorer countries.

"Key negotiations in Johannesburg are in danger of being stitched up by a controversial deal struck between US trade officials and trade mandarins in the EU Commission," Oxfam and the WWF said in a joint statement.

On the other side of Johannesburg, hundreds of angry African farmers and subsistence fishermen demonstrated at the activists' Global Forum in protest at dwindling access to the land and depleted catches, a result of overfishing by industrial trawlers.

And in Rome, the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation warned that 13 million people facing starvation in southern Africa were threatened by donor fatigue.

It said aid pledged by donor countries adds up to less than a quarter of the 507 million dollars (523 million euros) needed to feed people in the region until the next major harvest in April.

The food situation is of "grave concern," said the report, which stressed the need for aid to avoid a "large scale humanitarian crisis."

Security was tight for the summit, which has gathered 5,700 delegates and follows up the Rio de Janeiro Summit exactly 10 years ago which put forward 2,500 recommendations, most of them ignored.

Diplomats from more than 30 key countries met behind closed doors on Saturday and Sunday in a bid to bridge differences over fair trade, market access for developing nations and timetables for action.

The 71-page action plan the summit is working on is a raft of non-binding recommendations, but is important because it will shape the world's environment agenda for the next decade.

Because of that, it has become a battleground for squabbling.

It has pitched the United States against Europe over setting a timetable for reaching key development goals, while developing countries are demanding their rich counterparts do more to lower trade tariffs and agricultural subsidies.

Britain will press for targets and timetables to ease global poverty and seek to "persuade" the United States to drop its resistance on the issue, British delegation sources said.

Scientists have a long catalogue of evidence about the planet's environmental problems. They range from vanishing species, deforestation and overfished seas to soil erosion, water pollution and climate change caused by the reckless burning of fossil fuels.

At the same time, as many as two billion of the world's six billion people have no access to clean water or sanitation or even access to electricity.

The notable absentee at the summit is set to be US President George W. Bush.

His administration has opposed all attempts for anything other than voluntary, rather than binding, summit text on matters such as aid and incentives for alternative energy.

Thousands of activists are using the summit to promote their causes, with the most extreme vowing violent protests of the kind that wrecked the Seattle, Washington, World Trade Organisation talks in 2000 and the Group of Eight summit in Genoa, Italy, last year.

All rights reserved. � 2002 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.

Related Links
SpaceDaily
Search SpaceDaily
Subscribe To SpaceDaily Express

Thanks for being here; We need your help. The SpaceDaily news network continues to grow but revenues have never been harder to maintain. With the rise of Ad Blockers, and Facebook - our traditional revenue sources via quality network advertising continues to decline. And unlike so many other news sites, we don't have a paywall - with those annoying usernames and passwords. Our news coverage takes time and effort to publish 365 days a year. If you find our news sites informative and useful then please consider becoming a regular supporter or for now make a one off contribution.
SpaceDaily Contributor $5 Billed Once credit card or paypal		SpaceDaily Monthly Supporter $5 Billed Monthly paypal only