Consensus watered down as US rules out targets
Delegates were at odds over how to achieve a UN goal to reduce by at least half the 2.4 billion people without access to water and proper sanitation by 2015.
On Tuesday, delegates hailed their first breakthrough: a deal to protect the world's oceans and marine life.
Despite US resistance to any new, binding targets, a deal was reached on preserving marine life and restoring depleted fish stocks, "where possible," by 2015. But no progress was reported yesterday.
European Union officials said they couldn't understand the US opposition. "It's important not only that people should be able to get drinking water but to be able to get rid of waste water," said Danish Environment Minister Hans Christian Schmidt.
US officials say they support the goal but don't think new deadlines are needed.
The EU and the United States were working together, however, to highlight globalisation's more "positive elements" in the final document, but were facing opposition not only from anti-globalisation activists, but developing countries as well.
"It's been a sticking point because there is a different perception (between wealthy and poor nations) ... on what globalisation has meant," said Paolo Estivallet from the Brazilian delegation, which is representing developing countries in the negotiations.
While past UN documents referred to globalisation offering "opportunities and challenges," the United States and EU have proposed adding specific references to the benefits of free trade and open markets, diplomats said.
Those include the promotion of democracy and tolerance for cultural diversity, a senior EU official said.
Yet developing countries were opposed to adding new language, Mr Estivallet said.
"We are in favour of cultural diversity, for instance, but to presume that globalisation has promoted it would be simplistic," he said. "On the contrary, it would be quite the opposite," he added, referring to the deluge of Western products around the world.
He said his group wanted to stick to past texts, which talk about how developing countries "face special difficulties" in responding to globalisation and how policies should be directed at making sure it was "fully inclusive and equitable."
John Ashe, chairman of the group working on the text, said he included the US-EU proposals in his latest draft, but it would be up to the negotiators.
The United Nations hopes to have agreement on the entire plan before world leaders arrive on Monday.
The 10-day summit, billed as the largest UN gathering ever, is also to focus on health, energy, agriculture and biodiversity issues.
Mr Schmidt, whose country represents the EU, hailed the agreement on marine life as "the first major breakthrough" at the summit.
EU officials said the words "where possible" were added because in some cases it was too late to save severely depleted species and in others, not enough was known about specific problems and how to solve them.
The United Nations estimates 75% of the world's fisheries are either fished to their limits or beyond.
Tuitoma Neroni Slade, chair of the Alliance of Small Island Nations, called the agreement "very satisfactory."
Activists also were generally happy that the summit set a target date but expressed concern it was too far in the future to fully protect shark, tuna and swordfish.
"The restoration of those stocks is going to be really, really tough," said Sian Pullen, oceans specialist for the World Wildlife Fund. "2015 will be too late."
A new report from WWF, the global environment network, said lack of clean drinking water led to around 10,000 deaths a day in Africa from water-borne diseases.
Managing water is crucial not only to prevent these needless deaths but also to combat poverty in developing countries, said WWF. The findings were being released during a debate on freshwater management.
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