bout de papier, Vol. 5, No. 3 (1987) — Fall 1987 // Automne 1987, pp. 56–58
Our Common Heritage Report of the
World Commission on Environment and
Development, Oxford University Press,
1987, 382 pp., $13.50 (Canada).
Gro Harlem Brundtland, chairperson of the Commission, captures the matter well in her forward. She and her 21 fellow commissioners were mandated by the U.N. General Assembly in 1983 to propose environmental strategies to achieve sustainable world development by the year 2000. Peace-development-security, a warming planet, world industry and trade, widespread desertification of agriculture land, poverty and population growth, the debt crisis, stagnating aid to and investment in the Third World, low commodity prices — the report’s analyses and recommendations on these and other related topics are unanimous.
The report, Brundtland asserts, is directed mainly at people everywhere because “unless we are able to translate our words into a language that can reach the minds and hearts of people young and old, we shall not be able to understand the extensive social changes needed to correct the course of development.” What will surprise many is the hopeful overall tone of the book, its prospect of a new and different era of economic growth to relieve world poverty based on practices that will sustain our environmental and resource base.
Sustainable Development
The report looks at people in parts of the developing world who are obliged to overeat enough. Use resources merely to survive: forests are cut down, livestock overgraze grasslands, rural populations migrate to megacities. The remedy lies in the concept of sustainable development, which includes renewing world economic growth; meeting essential needs for food, jobs, energy, water and saniation; ensuring a sustainable level of population; conserving and enhancing the world’s resource base; re-orienting technology; and merging environmental and economic factors in decision-making everywhere.
A chapter on the nature of the present international economy focuses on how deteriorating terms of trade, growing debt service obligations, stagnating flows of aid, and growing protectionism in the industrial democracies have compounded problems in Africa, Latin America and elsewhere. Better ways of linking trade, the environment and development are explored from the Commission’s perspective that only if global economic growth is revitalized can large parts of the developing world avert economic, social and environmental collapse.
Among the major problems examined are soaring populations in parts of Asia, Africa and Latin America. Reduced fertility rates can make a difference of literally billions to the expected global population in the next century with resulting huge consequences upon available resources. Improving the position of women in society, somehow providing a more adequate livelihood for Door households. the establishment and enforcement of child labour laws, and publicly financed social security are all seen as effective ways to lower fertility rates. The twin scourges of AIDS and narcotic drugs are viewed by the Commission as requiring much greater international co-operation and resources.
Food and Security
An estimated 730 million persons around the planet today don’t eat enough to lead fully productive working lives. The U.S. and Western Europe have both created huge food surpluses through subsidies, which lead to soil quality decline, the destruction of countrysides, and the moves of recent years to export mountainous surpluses — often as food aid — rather than store them. In Canada, the report points out, “soil degradation has been costing farmers $1 billion a year”. The mammoth export subsidies also increase unemployment in food-importing countries and make it more difficult to increase world food production by the necessary 3 to 4 per cent yearly. Among the food policies called for are a new ecological orientation rather than short-term considerations; policies that differ from region to region in a country to reflect varying regional needs, including practices that are ecologically sustainable in individual areas; in industrial countries, fewer incentives which foster the degradation of land; and in developing nations, better incentives for farmers through more attractive pricing policies and different government spending policies.
Conservation and species issues fill an entire chapter because of the growing scientific consensus that animal, plant and other species are disappearing at rates never seen before overwhelmingly because of human activities. By anticipating species depletion better and by building in the hearts of children a love and affection for nature, much more can be done to protect the more vulnerable of the few million species alive on earth today. Forest habitats can be better preserved, more national parks can be created, and so on.
Energy
Choosing an energy strategy means to choose an environmental strategy, but an acceptable route to a safe and sustainable energy future for the world has yet to be found. Individuals in industrial market economies, for example, use about 80 times more energy than ones in sub-Saharan Africa. If the planet can achieve what the Commission defines as a low energy scenario by 2020, we can all avoid the probability of climate change because of the “greenhouse effect” of gases emitted into the atmosphere, excessive urban-industrial air pollution and acidification, and the risk of nuclear reactor accidents and the problems of nuclear waste disposal. Renewable energy is of course seen as offering the best hope for lower energy use in the next century: hydropower, solar energy, wood, wind power, and geothermal energy.
World industry which can produce much more with less (“the ’dematerialization’ of the world economy”) is viewed as essential to most human needs. Japan is saluted among the industrial democracies for using only 60 per cent as much raw materials for every unit of production in 1984 as in 1973. In the Third World, this kind of industry is seen as essential to provide employment and necessary consumer products and services. New technologies fortunately offer enormous opportunities for raising productivity and living standards, for improving health, and for conserving the natural resource base. Biotechnology, for example, can yield cleaner and more efficient alternatives to many wasteful processes and polluting products (“The Gene Revolution”).
Urban Challenge
Because of urban drift, almost half the world will by the year 2000 live in urban centres ranging from small towns to huge megacities which increasingly provide the world’s network of information, energy, capital, import replacements and commerce. Many Third World cities face increasing pressures for shelter and services. In industrial nations, there are also common problems of deteriorating urban infrastructure, environmental degradation, inner-city decay and neighbourhood collapse with the unemployed, the elderly and some minorities often being trapped in a downward spiral as job opportunities leave declining neighbourhoods. On the bright side, the Commission notes that the physical environment in many cities in the industrial world has improved substantially, most notably in air and water standards because of factors such as stricter emission standards for new vehicles. An urban strategy for developing countries is suggested, which includes policies which don’t excessively increase the attractions of a few major cities through subsidies on food and energy. Secondary centres should be encouraged through building on the natural economic advantages of regions, especially in resource processing and marketing, and in the decentralized provision of government services. Greater co-operation and development assistance from the developed countries are also seen as important here.
Common World Endeavours
The final three chapters carry recommendations for better managing the world’s oceans, outer space, Antarctica, peace-development-security, the environment and some necessary institutional and legal changes. Advancing the Law of the Sea Convention is seen as a significant tool to better management of fisheries and other ocean resources. The silent Antarctica continent, protected environmentally since 1959 by a treaty, today requires a new international consensus to prevent a tragic plundering of its minerals and to maintain it as a symbol of peaceful international cooperation and environmental protection.
The peace-development-security chapter is one of the most important. Environmental refugees in Africa and elsewhere are a source of major regional and national instability. The grisly prospect of a ’nuclear winter’ resulting from a nuclear war, which would cause a widespread and prolonged cooling of land areas, shows the overwhelming need for common security through co-operation, arms agreements and mutual restraint. The $900 billion ($2.5 billion daily) spent globally on the military during 1985 was more than the total income of the poorer half of humanity. This poverty itself generates much tension, conflict and violence which could be significantly reduced by a redirection of military spending in favour of development. The current efforts of the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. to reduce or eliminate nuclear weapons of different kinds are warmly applauded by the Commission. The ’arms culture should be replaced by a focus on our common future by providing for more sustainable development and removing environmental sources of conflict.
Institutional Change
The report concludes that the doubling of the global population in a few decades and a five-to-tenfold increase in economic activity in less than half a century have created an absolute need for environmental protection and sustainable development to be an integrated part of the mandates of all agencies of all national governments, of international organizations and of major private-sector institutions. Important cabinet and legislative committees, central economic and sectoral agencies of governments should be made directly responsible and fully accountable for ensuring that their programs, policies and budgets support development that is ecologically as well as economically sustainable. The recent moves by the World Bank and I.M.F. in this new direction augur well for such initiatives to be followed by all governments. In short, a book which every thoughtful Canadian should read!
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 5, No. 3 (1987) — Fall 1987 // Automne 1987, pp. 56–58. Read the rest of this issue →
