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UNICEF Exec. Dir. Carol Bellamy
discusses the world's children with Jamie Rubin.
 Watch the video Dial-up | DSL or read the transcript.
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Will children of rich and poor countries alike face a grim future?
As the UN Earth Summit gets underway in Johannesburg, South Africa, how far has the world come in solving the global problems of overpopulation, environmental destruction and poverty? Get a sense of the challenge ahead in our briefing by environmental writer Bill McKibben. Compare the lives of children from around the world who were born during the 1992 Rio summit on sustainable development in our kid cards feature. Not sure what "sustainability" means? Check out our eco house feature. Finally, for a look at global threats to mankind's well-being, see this week's photo essay.
The Common Future of Rich and Poor
By Bill McKibben
August 29, 2002
We're used to thinking of the world as completely divided between rich
and poor -- and to a large extent that's true. But because of the ways
humans have damaged the environment, we face not only an increasingly
grim future, but also an increasingly shared one, where Latvia and Kenya
will be dealing with the same kinds of problems as Louisiana and
Kentucky. It's an opportunity, perhaps the final one, to really make
common cause with the rest of the globe, or to go our own
ever-more-vulnerable ways.
I sat watching "Growing Up Global" with my nine-year-old daughter
Sophie, who was born the spring after Rio. It was, of course, easy to
see her good heart reflected in the sweet favela girl Rosamaria, and in
Panjy, the bangle-clad daughter of the fireworks maker, and in all the
other kids as well. At the age of 10, kids are far more alike than not.
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| 1962 |
"Silent Spring" launches eco-activism against toxic chemicals.
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| 1973 |
The CITES agreement restricts trade in endangered plant and animal species.
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| 1985 |
"Hole" detected in Earth's ozone layer.
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| 1991 |
Worst oil spill in history occurs in Kuwait.
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| 1992 |
UN holds first Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro.
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But it was even easier to see the enormous gulf between my daughter's
circumstances and theirs, to see how the accident of birth had left
Sophie on one side of a great divide, and most of the world's children
on the other. That's why the world has made little progress since Rio.
It's so divided that it's hard for the rich nations to truly understand
the struggles elsewhere. We've accomplished little but talk in the
decade since Rio, and too often that talk has been shouting back and
forth across the chasm of wealth and poverty.
This evening, though, the air outside our home in the Adirondack
mountains of upstate New York has turned hazy with smoke. After the
driest summer on record, a forest fire has broken out on the piney
cliffs of the mountain down the road. It's a small fire compared with
the one raging in Oregon this month, which has burned half a million
acres, or the one that burned a similar swath across Quebec in July.
Meanwhile, mosquitoes carrying the tropical West Nile virus are steadily
making their way across the continent, and floods are causing billions
of dollars in damage in Germany and central Europe.
Read More 
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Ten years after drafting Agenda 21 at Rio, world leaders reconvene for a progress report.
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