JOHANNESBURG, Sept 4: World leaders at the Earth Summit in Johannesburg adopted on Wednesday a watered-down action plan to cut poverty and protect the planet after environmentalists staged a walkout in disgust on the last day of the marathon conference.

The environmentalists also briefly shouted down Colin Powell during a speech by the US secretary of state to show their disapproval of US policies.

They said a string of compromises had gutted the 65-page Plan of Implementation and left big business free to pollute the planet.

A coalition comprising the US and oil-producing countries shot down the European Union’s demands for a timetable to give renewable sources a bigger share of the global energy market.

“We are expressing our disgust at the failure of the summit to deliver to the world’s people and the environment,” said Senator Bob Brown of the Australian Greens party, his arms linked with 10 protesters as they walked out of the summit venue.

The implementation plan had been “successfully orchestrated by the multinational corporations and the governments to pull the rug from under the feet of a programme to close the poverty gap around the world to save the world’s environment”, he said.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan told journalists: “You must not expect a conference like this to produce miracles, but it must generate political commitment... Johannesburg is not the end of everything, it is a beginning.”

Security guards hauled a protester out of the plenary chamber as Powell spoke, and demonstrators unfurled a banner reading “Betrayed by governments”.

Powell told the demonstrators, “thank you very much, I’ve now heard you. I ask that you hear me,” and was then able to finish his speech.

The United States had been under intense fire at the summit, mainly for its rejection of the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, which looks set to become a treaty after Russia’s announcement here that it would ratify it “in the very near future”.

The protocol is designed to reduce the emission of “greenhouse gases”, which prevent heat from radiating out into space, causing temperatures to rise worldwide, with resultant droughts and the melting of ice caps, causing sea levels to rise.

The implementation plan — agreed by negotiators at the last minute: just after 1am on Wednesday — covers action for providing fresh water, sewerage and electricity for the very poor and slowing the planet’s loss of biodiversity and depletion of fisheries and forests.

But only a few of these goals have a deadline attached to them, and details about how they will be achieved — the funds, skills and transfer of technology — are sketchy.

INDIGENOUS PEOPLE: The Earth Summit has let down indigenous peoples by failing to curb the impact of big business on the world’s remote areas and Mother Nature will take her revenge, a lobby group said on Wednesday.