JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (AP) — World leaders and global activists here agree on this much: Blame it on Rio.

The Earth Summit 10 years ago in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, grandly resolved to save all of nature, from the humblest algae to the majestic elephant. And it agreed the planet’s delicate climate urgently needed protection before global warming rises to unbearable levels.

How to fulfil that sweeping vision — while lifting billions of people from crushing poverty — became the difficult job of delegates to the World Summit, which closed yesterday.

In the end, the world summit turned out much like sustainable development itself:

Slow. Unspectacular. A handful of small victories and some promising new initiatives.

But the most daunting issues — species extinctions, infectious disease, trade subsidies, cleaner energy — remain stubbornly unresolved.

Whereas Rio produced a pair of global treaties, this summit’s final action plan offers a few specific — and non-binding — promises for change.

Summit leaders said Johannesburg established sustainable development as a global issue on a par with peace and human rights. It was destined to be a nitty-gritty meeting marked by horse-trading deals, they said.

“There’s time for purity,” said UN Secretary-General Kofi Anann, “and there’s time for practical.”

The summit opened nearly two weeks ago with a flourish of lofty Rio-esque rhetoric. South African President Thabo Mbeki predicted the world summit would be “a fitting culmination to a decade of hope” after Rio.

By yesterday, leaders were careful not to overreach.

“They were naturally difficult talks,” said French President Jacques Chirac, the most visible Western leader after US President George W Bush declined to attend and British Prime Minister Tony Blair vanished early.

“It brings a new momentum to the process of sustainable development,” Chirac said. “On the whole, they advanced things.”

Activists left Johannesburg feeling betrayed by world leaders who, they said, offered “crumbs for the poor”.

“When the time came for targets, timetables and money, they let the world down,” said Andrew Hewitt of Oxfam International.

Environmentalists were equally chagrined. For them, this was no Rio. Biodiversity and climate issues were nearly ignored.

“The whole ecosystem was lost in the discussions,” said Carmen Ravenga of World Resources Institute, a Washington advocacy group.

Ravenga said negotiating groups dealt separately with major issues, and the results frequently were in conflict.

“For example, the renewable energy section includes building more dams for hydroelectricity,” she said. “And that does little to reduce the threat to freshwater species, which is contradictory to the biodiversity target.”

The summit’s big winner was Big Business. Viewed with suspicion at Rio for its bitter legacy of environmental damage, cleaner industry was embraced at Johannesburg as a vital partner.

Multinational companies announced hundreds of partnerships with Western powers to help poor countries and develop new markets — although few of the deals, they admitted, were brand-new.

Even high-tech companies sought partnerships with the poor.

Hewlett-Packard announced a three-year deal with South Africa to bring computer services to isolated communities. Among the possibilities: telemedicine services where hospitals, ambulances — even roads — are non-existent.

“The government has to help with infrastructure. We’re not going to lay electrical lines,” said HP executive vice-president Debra Dunn. “There’s not a lot of track record for this kind of thing. It’s fairly overwhelming.”

The summit was held at Africa’s glitziest complex of hotels and shopping malls, located within sight of a squalid township where 350,000 people live in the very conditions the summit examined.

Inside, negotiators were diluting — or eliminating — specific targets and timetables for sustainable development.

Some of the jettisoned goals — such as, halving the number of hungry people in the world — might have been too difficult to achieve in the next 30 years.

Others were politically unacceptable, like making 10 per cent of the world’s electrical generating capacity run on renewable sources such as wind and solar.

The final plan hinged on this deal: the United States agreed to a target of halving the number of people without clean water and toilets (now about two billion) by 2015. In exchange, the European Union dropped ambitious targets for renewable energy.

Outside, Johannesburg became a sustainability jamboree.

Chefs served up stews from solar-powered cookers. Weavers transformed banana peels into paper and textiles. Builders fashioned entire dwellings from tin cans.

The summit featured people who already were living sustainably. Benson Venegas, 39, and 1,500 neighbours organically cultivate cacao and bananas in the rugged Talamanca Mountains in south-eastern Costa Rica.

Venegas’ best customer is actor Paul Newman, or at least Newman’s gourmet food firm. Newman’s Own brand blends the organic cacao in its milk chocolate treats.

“I like the coffee seeds covered in chocolate,” Venegas said.

The group established rainforest biodiversity reserves and opened seven ecotourism lodges. With the profits, most residents now have electricity and clean water. Deforestation stopped.

His message to the delegates? “Sustainable development can fix poverty,” Venegas said. “We had no roads, no schools. The people need to make the first step and it can be very hard.”