Delegates at the Development Summit in Johannesburg are reported to have reached agreement on ways to tackle the world's fisheries crisis.
The deal - the first substantial one at the summit - envisages restoring most of the world's major global fisheries to commercial health by 2015.
The agreement will entail reducing catches to a level where the maximum sustainable yield can be taken indefinitely.
The second day of talks at the summit focused on agriculture. One delegate, M.S. Swaminathan, a proponent of world-wide farming reform, said that the world was being dangerously polarised into two farming cultures.
He said the first, in North America and Western Europe, was "largely one of agribusiness", with farmers allowed access to subsidies, technology and markets.
The second, in Asia, Africa and Latin America, contains small-scale personal farmers with little access to international markets or finance for development.
Meanwhile, intense negotiations have been taking place behind closed doors on several contentious issues, including the use of cleaner energy and access to clean water for the developing world.
Delegates from the European Union have complained that their American counterparts are not prepared to sign up to specific targets on issues such as energy and water, arguing that instead of new targets, countries should try to keep to existing commitments.
The Earth Summit opened yesterday with an appeal for an end to a global society based on poverty for many and prosperity for a few. In his opening speech, South African President, Thabo Mbeki, said the world needed to show that human society would not be constructed on the basis of a savage principle of the survival of the fittest.
Representatives of over 100 nations hope to come up with a plan to help the world's poorest without further polluting the planet.
The aims of this UN Summit are staggering - to enable billions of the world's poorest to get access to clean water and sanitation; to help deal with the AIDS pandemic and to ensure developing countries can build an industrial base without endangering the environment.
