UN gathering on sustainable development muted by dispute over technology transfer and lack of financing during crisis.

Leaders from around the globe have gathered to start three days of talks at the United Nations conference on sustainable development.

An unambitious tone prevailed on Wednesday as negotiators produced what critics called a watered-down document that made few advances on protecting the environment.

Negotiators worked for months to hammer out a document that many hoped would lay out clear goals on how nations could promote sustainable development, making economic advances without eating up the globe’s resources.

But with time running out, contentious issues like technology transfers from rich to poor nations and new financing for developing countries were set aside.

Diplomats agreed on what all call a mere beginning, a step toward a roadmap on how to embrace sustainable development at the conference dubbed “Rio+20” – coming two decades after the landmark 1992 Earth Summit put sustainable development on the globe’s agenda.

“The future we want has gotten a little further away today,” said Kumi Naidoo, executive director of Greenpeace. “Rio+20 has turned into an epic failure. It has failed on equity, failed on ecology and failed on economy.”

“This is not a foundation on which to grow economies or pull people out of poverty. It’s the last will and testament of a destructive twentieth century development model.”

Scant progress

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon acknowledged the world has made little progress on environmental issues since the first Rio meeting in 1992, but said leaders are working to reverse that at the Rio+20 summit.

“Twenty years ago, the Earth Summit put sustainable development on the global agenda,” Ban told delegates. “Yet let me be frank – our efforts have not lived up to the measure of the challenge.” `

“For too long, we have behaved as though we could – indefinitely – burn and consume our way to prosperity. Today, we recognize that we can no longer do so.”

Critics blasted the draft document before leaders as requiring little and using language that turns what were once demands into goals for individual nations to aspire for – on increasing use of renewable energy, on protecting forests, on eradicating poverty and hunger.

Al Jazeera’s Benedict Moran wrote, “A number of organisations and individuals have signed a petition, called “The Future We Don’t Want”, that refuses the current text, and are planning on launching demonstrations across the convention centre here in Rio on Thursday.

“But barring some major breakthrough in the next two days, the text is set to be adopted on Friday at the close of the session.”

French President Francois Hollande told reporters that he wasn’t too excited about the summit’s likely results.

“Disappointment, yes, there’s always a bit of disappointment. But I’ve come here to show my hope, my confidence.”

He highlighted what he said were two shortcomings: the failure of the document to create an international agency for development and also the inability of negotiators to agree on additional ways of financing sustainable development, including through a tax on financial transactions.

Similar obstacles

The same roadblocks that have hindered all environmental summits in recent years have been seen in Rio.

Delegates from developing nations said the US and other developed nations would not agree to any language in the Rio+20 document that would mandate direct transfers of environmentally sound technologies.

The US and other rich nations have said that simply violates intellectual property laws, while poorer nations insist there is no way they can afford to pay for the advanced equipment that would, for instance, allow factories to operate in a way that pollutes less.

The economic crisis cast a clear shadow over Rio+20 – and was the reason many heads of state did not show up, like Italy’s Mario Monti.

With Europe in crisis and the US still in economic doldrums, delegates said there was no way those nations would agree on new financing for poorer nations to promote sustainable development.

Hollande, Russian leader Vladimir Putin and China’s Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao are among more than 100 leaders expected in Rio.

US President Barack Obama, Britain’s David Cameron and German leader Angela Merkel are all no-shows, adding to a subdued atmosphere that the action taken in Rio is not getting the global spotlight.