United States
Environmental Protection
Agency
Office of
Communications and
Public Affairs
Vol. 16, No. 4
July/August 1990
20K-9004
£EPA JOURNAL
The World Economy and the Environment:
A New Relationship
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Preface
By any measure, the
environment is gaining
prominence in international
affairs. At the same time,
environmental topics are
increasingly mingled with
seemingly unlikely issues
ranging from trade policies to
agricultural subsidies, from
international debt to
socio-economic differences
among countries. This issue
of EPA Journal explores these
developments under the
broad theme of world
economy and the
environment.
An introductory piece by a
key observer, Lester R.
Brown, presents an overview
of the major environmental
problems around the world.
Then Susan R. Fletcher, a
senior analyst at the Library
of Congress, examines how
and why these problems are
climbing to the top of
international agendas. Next,
EPA Administrator William
K. Reilly outlines a strategy
for protecting environmental
resources while building and
maintaining sound
economies in developing and
industrialized nations. A
report follows from Curtis
Bohlen, the new top
environmental official at the
State Department, on U.S.
environmental policies in
foreign affairs.
Seven features follow,
explaining how
environmental problems are
triggering sharp debate and
realigning perspectives in a
number of areas of economic
and social policy. The first
piece in this series, for
instance, argues that
environmental impacts
should become a major
consideration in international
trade agreements. The next
two articles explain how
global environmental
problems are giving rise to
new concepts in foreign aid
and international law. In the
next feature, two observers
present divergent views on
whether global efforts to
protect the environment
require fundamental changes
in traditional notions of
national sovereignty and
Low-maintenance photovoltaic cells produce electricity directly
from sunlight. This makes them ideal for Third World
applications such as this irrigation system in the African desert.
See story on page 2.
national security. Then a
Journal forum presents six
divergent commentaries on
the relationship of a major
social issue—population
control—to the environment.
A feature follows explaining
how a key resource—shared
water supplies—can become
a flashpoint among nations.
And the changing role of
multi-national industry on
the environmental scene is
discussed by a corporate
representative.
The next section focuses
on the Third World. What do
developing countries need to
deal with their present and
potential environmental
problems? Do they need to
curb their aspirations?
Shridath Ramplial, a West
indies educator and former
international official,
provides a candid discussion
of basic economic and social
questions that will factor
heavily in the fate of the
global environment. And in a
side story, a writer with the
World Resources Institute
profiles the environmental
situation in four developing
countries—Egypt, Kenya,
Mexico, and the Philippines.
The unintended
consequences of certain
economic policies of Western
nations including the United
States are explored in
another article. Then two
very different examples of
initiatives afoot in matters
that affect North-South
relations and the
environment are described in
successive articles.
A series of stories focus
on specific situations and
case studies that may hold
lessons for the rest of the
world. Eastern Europe's
environmental
situation—how failed
economies produced a
devastated environment and
what means can best remedy
the environmental problems
there—is assessed in a
feature by an expert on the
subject with World Wildlife
Fund and The Conservation
Foundation.
Another article reports on
efforts to reconcile economic
aims with environmental
concerns in the Arctic, a
region affected by complex
international jurisdictions.
Then an article profiles the
emergence of the European
Community, comprising 12
Western European nations, as
a key player on the
international environmental
scene.
In a concluding article,
Maurice Strong sounds a
hopeful note that a United
Nations conference to be held
in June 1992 will launch a
new era of international
cooperation for
environmental progress.
Strong is chair of the
upcoming conference. An
accompanying feature
highlights other forthcoming
international events that
relate to the environment—a
busy calendar.
This issue of the Journal
concludes with a regular
feature, Appointments. £
-------
United States
Environmental Protection
Agency
Office of
Communications and
Public Affairs
Volume 16, Number 4
July'August 1990
v»EPA JOURNAL
William K. Reitly, Administrator
Lew Crampton, Associate Administrator
for Communications and Public Affairs
Leighton Price, Editorial Director
John Heritage, Editor
Karen Flagstad, Associate Editor
Jack Lewis, Assistant Editor
Ruth Barker. Assistant Editor
Marilyn Rogers, Circulation Manager
EPA is charged by Congress to
protect the nation's land, air, and
water systems. Under a mandate of
national environmental laws, the
agency strives to formulate and
implement actions which lead to a
compatible balance between
human activities and the ability of
natural systems to support and
nurture life.
EPA Journal is published by the
U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency. The Administrator of EPA
has determined that the
publication of this periodical is
necessary in the transaction of the
public business required by law of
this agency. Use of funds for
printing this periodical has been
approved by the Director of the
Office of Management and Budget.
Views expressed by authors do not
necessarily reflect EPA policy. No
permission necessary to reproduce
contents except copyrighted photos
and other materials.
Contributions and inquiries
should be addressed to the Editor,
EPA Journal (A-107), Waterside
Mall, 401 M Street, SW.,
Washington, DC 20460.
The annual rate for subscribers in
the U.S. for EPA Journal is $8. The
charge to subscribers in foreign
countries is $10 a year. The price
of a single copy of EPA journal is
$2.25 in this country and $2.81 if
sent to a foreign county. Prices
include mail costs. Subscriptions
to EPA Journal as well as to other
federal government magazines are
handled only by the U.S.
Government Printing Office.
Anyone wishing to subscribe to
EPA Journal should fill in the form
at right and enclose a check or
money order payable to the
Superintendent of Documents. The
requests should be mailed to:
Superintendent of Documents.
GPO, Washington, DC 20402.
Overview:
—Assessing the Planet's
Condition
by Lester R. Brown 2
—The Environment: Moving
Up on the International
Agenda
by Susan R. Fletcher
—A Perspective from EPA
by William K. Reilly
—Report from the State
Department
by Curtis Bohlen !•"'
Bridging Other Issues:
—Internationa! Trade:
In Search of an
Environmental Conscience
by Steven Shrybman 17
—Economic Aid and the
Environment
by Robert Repetto 20
—The Challenge to
International Law and
Institutions
by Scott Hajost 23
—National Sovereignty and
Environmental Imperatives:
Two Views
—Fred Lee Smith, jr. 25
—Jessica Tuchman
Mathews 27
—A Forum: How Big is the
Population Factor? 29
—Water Resources: A
Foreign-Policy Flash Point
by Joyce R. Starr
—Business and the
Environment .,-
by Khristine L. Hall
North-South Relations:
—Third World Grievances^
by Shridath S. Ramphal
—Developing Nations: Four
Environmental Profiles 43
by Janet Welsh Brown
—Unintended Consequences
by Al Binger
—Hazardous Waste Exports:
Changes in Sight
by Wendy Grieder 46
—Making a Difference with
Solar Ovens
by William F. Lankford 4~
Close-ups:
—Eastern Europe: Restoring a
Damaged Environment
by Richard A. Liroff 50
—Saving the Arctic:
Challenge to Eight Nations
by Oran R. Young 5e
—The European Community:
An Environmental Force
by Nigel Haigh and
Konrad von Moltke 58
Conclusion:
—Strategies for Change;
Reasons for Hope
by Maurice Strong Kl
—Upcoming Events
by Jonathan Elkind 62
Appointments (i4
Front Cover: Cargo container ship
in Singapore harbor. Global
environmental concerns
increasingly are seen as
EPA Journal Subscriptions
interrelated ivith other issues. Design Credits:
including world trade. See story on Hon Farroh
page 17. Photo by Chud Ehlers for James R. Ingram
Allslock. Robert FIcinagun
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-------
Assessing the Planets Condition
by Lester R. Brown
Despite the worldwide growth in the
environmental movement since the
watershed of Earth Day 1970, the
degradation of the Earth has accelerated.
No comparable two-decade period in
human history has witnessed such a
wholesale destruction of the natural
systems and resources on which
civilization depends.
Since 1970, the Earth's human
inhabitants have increased by 1.6
billion. While gaining new residents,
the planet has lost trees and topsoil.
Over the last 20 years, it has lost well
over 500 million acres of tree cover, an
area roughly the size of the United
States east of the Mississippi, and an
estimated 480 billion tons of topsoii,
more than the amount on all U.S.
cropland.
Atmospheric carbon-dioxide levels
have risen 9 percent in the last two
decades, and levels of other greenhouse
gases, including methane, nitrous
oxides, and CFCs, have risen even more.
With six of this century's warmest years
occurring during the 1980s, the
greenhouse effect appears to be more
than a scientific hypothesis.
Scientists studying the stratospheric
ozone layer tell us the Earth has lost 2
percent or more of this protective shield
over the last 20 years. We're warned
that a small hole now appears above the
North Pole, joining the huge hole that
opens up over Antarctica during the
Southern Hemisphere spring.
Twenty years ago, it was understood
that the acid rain caused by fossil fuel
burning in automobiles and power
plants was capable of leaving lakes
acidic and lifeless, but it was not until
the early 1980s that scientists pegged
acid rain with destroying forests. Now
the connection is painfully obvious.
More than half of West Germany's
forests are showing signs of damage
(Brown is President of the WorJdwatch
institute, an independent non-pro/it
environmental research organization in
Washington, DC.)
from a combination of air pollution and
acid rain. In East Germany, 22 percent
of all trees are reportedly dead.
Air pollution, too, is far worse today
than it was 20 years ago. Despite
improvements in selected cities in the
industrial North, the overwhelming
trend has been toward deteriorating air
quality. In literally hundreds of cities,
air pollution has reached
health-threatening levels, with
concentrations of pollutants well above
the tolerance limits established by the
World Health Organization.
The biological impoverishment of the
Earth is continuing and quickening.
Australia has lost 18 of its 200 mammal
species since European settlement.
Another 40 species are threatened.
According to the Polish Academy of
Sciences, the pollution of that country's
air, water, and soil with toxic materials
and the associated die-off of forests and
other natural vegetation are expected to
eliminate 20 percent of the country's
flora and 15 percent of its fauna before
the end of the century. Disturbing as
these losses are, they are dwarfed by
those from the burning of Brazil's rain
forest. Worldwide, countless thousands
of plant and animal species have
disappeared since 1970.
The accumulation of toxic chemicals
in soil and water has continued
unabated over the last 20 years. In the
United States, there are 1,163 toxic
waste sites in urgent need of cleanup.
Other parts of the world, such as
Eastern Europe, areas of China, and
Brazil's heavily industrialized south,
face even more serious hazardous-waste
issues.
The most profound and immediate
consequence of global environmental
degradation, one already affecting the
welfare of hundreds of millions, is the
emerging scarcity of food in developing
countries. All the principal changes in
the Earth's physical condition—eroding
soils, shrinking forests, deteriorating
rangelands, expanding deserts, acid
rain, ozone depletion, the buildup of
greenhouse gases, air pollution, and the
loss of biological diversity—are having a
negative effect on food production.
Spreading hunger in both Africa and
Latin America during the 1980s, a
worldwide fall of 6 percent in per-capita
grain production from the historic high
in 1984, and the one-third rise in world
wheat and rice prices over the last two
years may be early signs of the trouble
that lies ahead.
The Challenge Before Us
An environmentally sustainable global
economy is one where trees cut and
those planted are in balance, where soil
erosion does not exceed new soil
formation, where carbon emissions do
not exceed carbon fixation, where
human births and deaths are in balance,
where the ozone layer is stable, and
where the extinction of plant and
animal species does not exceed the rate
at which new species evolve.
We can achieve these goals by
stabilizing population size, increasing
energy efficiency, shifting to renewable
energy sources, reusing and recycling
materials, phasing out CFCs, and halting
agricultural practices that erode soils
and reduce the land's inherent
productivity. Although these steps can
be simply stated, achieving them will
require an unprecedented political
mobilization. They call not for
fine-tuning, but for a fundamental
restructuring of the global economic
system.
Stabilizing Population Size
In a world where the growth in human
numbers appears to be out of control, 14
countries, all in Europe, have stabilized
their population size. In these countries,
which contain just over 5 percent of the
EPA JOURNAL
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Michael Mcfiae photo
Wood for cooking is a scarce commodity in many countries. These Tibetans have driven miles to
secure this truckload.
world's people, births and deaths are
essentially in balance. Other countries,
including Japan, France, and Finland,
appear headed for zero population
growth in the not-too-distant future. In
contrast, the populations of India,
Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Mexico are
projected to double or triple before
stabilizing late in the next century.
The record addition of 88 million
people to world population in 1989
represents the difference between 143
million births and 55 million deaths.
Assuming no change in death rates,
stabilizing world population thus means
reducing the number of births by a
staggering 61 percent.
Avoiding a wholesale deterioration in
living conditions in much of the world
may depend on cutting world
population growth sharply, perhaps in
half by the year 2000. Difficult though
this may appear, it is not impossible.
Two countries have cut their population
growth rates in half within less than a
decade. Japan did so between 1948 and
1955. China matched this performance
between 1970 and 1976, during the
years immediately before the one-child
family was adopted as a social goal.
Thailand came close to cutting its
population growth in half between 1975
and 1983.
The difficulty of slowing world
population growth cannot be
overestimated. The only thing more
difficult than quickly stabilizing
population size will be living with the
consequences of failing to do so.
Raising Energy Efficiency
Just as achieving a satisfactory balance
between food and people depends on
reducing family si/.e, so stabilizing
climate depends on reducing energy
use. One of the legacies of abundant
fossil fuels in the industrial countries
and plentiful wood fuel supplies in
developing countries is an
extraordinarily inefficient set of energy
technologies.
Two basic uses of energy,
transportation and cooking, illustrate
the potential for raising the energy
efficiency of the world economy. The
average automobile in the U.S. fleet gets
17 miles per gallon, three times as much
fuel per mile traveled as the most
efficient cars now on the market.
Similar energy inefficiencies exist in
Third World villages, where stoves
commonly used for cooking use four
times as much wood as the most
efficient new designs.
Redesigning the system can
sometimes offer greater savings than
substituting more efficient technologies.
A combination of public transport and
bicycle-friendly transportation systems
can dramatically reduce dependence on
automobiles. In countries such as
Bolivia, Guatemala, and Sierra Leone,
exciting gains have been made by
replacing wood stoves with solar-box
cookers. Using sunlight to cook food
directly is far more efficient than first
converting it into wood and then cutting
and transporting the wood.
Harnessing the Sun's Energy
Energy reaching the Earth from the Sun
takes many different forms. Hydropower
taps the energy in the hydrological
cycle, which is driven by heat from the
Sun evaporating water. Wind power
taps the energy in the movement of air
JULY/AUGUST 1990
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driven by the differential heating rates
of the Earth's surface. Buildings
designed by solar architects exploit the
Sun's energy for heating during the
winter. Photovoltaic cells convert
sunlight into electricity. Solar thermal
plants concentrate sunlight on vessels
containing water or other liquids to
power steam turbines and generate
electricity. Through photosynthesis,
plants store energy from the Sun in
various forms, such as the wood of trees
or the sugar in cane, that can be used to
produce fuel alcohol.
Photovoltaic cells, by themselves,
show the potential for a solar-based
world economy. They were first used
commercially on Earth-orbiting
satellites. Indeed, a phone or facsimile
from the United States to Europe is
relayed by satellites running on
electricity generated from photovoltaic
cells.
As the cost of manufacturing
photovoltaic cells dropped, they became
competitive as the power source for
pocket calculators. Third World
governments are finding it cost-effective
to use photovoltaics to provide power
for villages not linked to electricity
grids. Some 5,000 villages in India now
get their electricity from free-standing
photovoltaic installations. Indonesia is
beginning to install photovoltaic arrays
in 2,000 villages. With costs continuing
to fall, this source of electricity is
poised for a period of rapid growth
during the 1990s.
Perhaps the most promising solar
technology is the solar thermal power
plant, which concentrates sunlight to
produce the steam that spins electrical
generators. Power plants using this
Z/GGV. COPYRIGHT 1990 Zrggy & Friends Distributed by Universal Press Syndicate Reprinted with
permission. All rights reserved
technology and incorporating recent
design advances convert a phenomenal
22 percent of sunlight into electricity.
An 80-megawatt plant built by the Luz
Corporation in the Mojave Desert is
generating electricity at a cost of 8 cents
per kilowatt hour, compared with
roughly 12 cents for nuclear power and
6 cents for coal-fired power plants. Luz
believes it can eventually supply 35
percent of U.S. electricity needs with
this technology. Because of its high
efficiency and low cost, electricity from
solar thermal plants could eventually be
used to break down water through
electrolysis to produce hydrogen for use
as an automotive fuel.
Solar thermal technology could
convert semi-arid regions into major
power-producing zones. One can easily
picture a day when solar thermal plants
along the North African coast will
produce cheap electricity that is
transmitted by cable under the
Mediterranean Sea to Europe. Or, that
region might supply the cheap
electricity needed to produce hydrogen
from water. The gas would be fed into
the existing system of pipelines that
now moves natural gas from Algeria to
Italy.
If the international community could
he persuaded to levy a carbon tax, one
that reflected such indirect costs of
fossil-fuel burning as air pollution, acid
rain, and global warming, the spread of
these technologies would be greatly
enhanced. In much of the world, energy
from solar thermal plants would be
cheaper than energy from fossil fuels.
Such a tax would move the world
quickly toward an energy economy that
could last forever.
Reusing and Recycling Materials
The enormous one-way flow of
materials through throwawray economies
accounts for a large share of the world's
fossil-fuel use, air pollution, water
pollution, and acid rain. The alternative
to a disposable society is one that reuses
and recycles. The first priority is to
avoid the unnecessary use of materials
in the first place. At the industrial level,
this may mean the elimination of
unnecessary layers of packaging; at the
personal level, it may mean replacing
throwaway paper or plastic grocery bags
with canvas bags that can be used again
and again. It means using hand towels
instead of paper towels, handkerchiefs
instead of tissues.
The next step in the hierarchy
involves reuse. Environmentally, the
ideal system would be one where
beverage containers made of a durable
material, such as glass, would be used
interchangeably for all beverages.
EPA JOURNAL
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Standardized containers of one cup, one
quart, and half gallon, for example,
could be used for fruit juice, milk,
carbonated beverages, and beer. Reusing
such a bottle would involve simply
cleaning it and replacing the old label
with a new one. A computerized
inventory of all containers in a system
would permit their efficient movement
from supermarket or other collection
points to wherever they were needed.
Canada has taken a step in this
direction with standardized beer
containers used by all breweries.
After the reuse option, the recycling
of glass containers, aluminum cans,
used automobiles, waste paper, and
other materials comes next. The
Netherlands and Japan, for example,
already recycle half or more of all their
waste paper. This contrasts with less
than a third in the United States and
United Kingdom. The story is the same
for glass. The Netherlands recycles 53
percent, compared with only 12 percent
in the United Kingdom and 10 percent
in the United States.
In some instances, a new technology,
such as the electric arc steel furnace,
which depends exclusively on scrap
metal, is boosting the recycling
prospect. In the United States, the
amount of steel produced by electric arc
furnaces has increased from 8 percent in
1960 to an estimated 36 percent in
1990. All this comes from recycled
scrap. With comprehensive recycling,
mature industrial societies with stable
populations can operate largely with
material already in the economic
system, using virgin ores only for
supplemental purposes. It may be only a
matter of time until national
governments are mandating source
separation and recycling as some local
governments are already doing.
Reforesting the Earth
Each year during our lifetimes, the
Earth's tree cover is smaller than the
year before. Reversing this trend
depends on dealing with the causes. In
the Brazilian Amazon, rain forest is
burned to make room for cattle or crops;
in India, deforestation proceeds in
ever-widening circles around cities as
residents forage for firewood; in
Southeast Asia, foreign timber firms are
overcutting the forests; and in Europe,
air pollution and acid rain are killing
trees.
Countries with
Zero Population Growth, 1989
Annual Rate
of Change Population
(percent) (million)
Austria +0.1
Belgium +0.1
Bulgaria +0.1
Czechoslovakia +0.2
Denmark 0.0
East Germany +0.1
Greece +0.1
Hungary -0.2
Italy 0.0
Luxembourg +0.1
Norway +0.2
Sweden +0.2
United Kingdom +0.2
West Germany -0. 1
Total Population
'Source is U.N. Monthly Bulletin of
Zero population growth is defined as
of less than + 0.2 percent per year.
7.6
9.9
9.0
15.5
5.1
16.6
10.0
10.6
57.6
0.4
4.2
8.5
57.3
61.5
273.9
Statistics.
a change
Brazil is taking its first steps to slow
the loss of its forests by removing tax
subsidies for forest clearing and by
enforcing the requirement of a permit
before burning. In India, more efficient
fuelwood stoves and solar cookers can
help stem deforestation. In Southeast
Asia, stabilizing forest cover depends on
a change in logging practices, one that
moves away from forest mining toward
sustained yields and ecological
protection. In Europe, maintaining
forests lies more in reducing air
pollution and acid rain.
The other basic remedy is planting
trees. Unfortunately, the history of
recent decades is strewn with Third
World reforestation failures. Only South
Korea has succeeded in dramatically
increasing its tree cover. A
well-organized program launched in the
early 1970s to reforest its once denuded
hills and mountainsides enabled this
thriving country to cover an area with
trees that is roughly two-thirds that
planted in rice.
China launched an ambitious
tree-planting effort in the 1970s, one
intended to increase the country's tree
cover from 13 percent of its land area to
20 percent by the year 2000. A
combination of low survival rates and
the enormous surge in demand for
housing during the decade-long boom
following economic reform in the late
1970s prevented any increase in tree
cover. In fact, demand for forest
products continues to outstrip the
sustainable yield of China's forests.
India, which together with fellow
population giant China holds half of the
developing world's people, launched a
plan to plant five million hectares of
trees per year beginning in 1984. Actual
plantings, though, have not averaged
more than 1.5 million hectares. On
balance, India, like China, is still losing
tree cover.
Some industrial countries are
launching massive tree-planting
JULY/AUGUST 1990
-------
programs, largely for environmental
reasons. Australia announced a national
environmental plan for the 1990s,
which included the planting of a billion
trees, roughly 70 trees for each
Australian. If successful, this effort
would restore two-thirds of the tree
cover lost since European settlement.
In early 1990, the United States
announced a plan to plant a billion
trees a year during the decade. If
successful, this effort would cover some
16 million acres with trees, an area
more than one-fifth that planted in corn.
This would dwarf any past tree-planting
efforts, including the 2.2 million acres
planted with trees under the
Department of Agriculture's
Conservation Reserve Program from
1986 through 1989.
Reversing the Earth's deforestation
will not be easy, but of all the principal
actions needed to create an
environmentally sustainable global
economy, it may be the easiest.
Soil Stabilization
As the 1990s begin, the world's farmers
are losing an estimated 24 billion tons
of topsoil from their cropland each year,
an amount roughly equivalent to the
topsoil covering Australia's wheatland.
A world that each year loses this much
topsoil and adds some 90 million
people is in obvious trouble.
Restoring the Earth's tree cover will
do double duty to preserve soils by
reducing rainfall run-off and lessening
wind erosion. As with reforestation,
however, soil stabilization success
stories are few. Among the major
food-producing countries, only the
United States, which was losing 1.6
billion tons of topsoil annually in
excess of new soil formation, has a
successful erosion-reduction program.
This program takes effect in two
five-year phases. From 1986 through
1990, the goal was to convert the most
highly credible cropland into either
grassland or woodland before it became
wasteland. The 34 million acres
converted through 1989, roughly
one-tenth of all U.S. cropland, has
reduced soil erosion by some 600
million tons, or roughly one-third of the
total erosion.
The second phase, from 1990 through
1995, requires that for the remaining
highly erodible land, farmers implement
a plan approved by the Soil
Conservation Service if they wish to
Due to unusually strong currents and tides,
which help retain polluted backwash from
the Rhine River, the Dutch Wadden Sea is
one of the world's most polluted water
bodies. In 1988, a mysterious plague,
probably related to the pollution, attacked
the already endangered Dutch harbor seal
population. Shouldered by John DeBoer,
this orphaned pup is going to the
Pieterburen Seal Sanctuary in northern
Holland.
maintain their eligibility for federal farm
programs. This program is expected to
eliminate another 300 to 500 million
tons of annual soil loss, reducing U.S.
soil losses by 0.9-1.1 billion tons, or
nearly 70 percent. This success on U.S.
cropland, which accounts for one-sixth
of the world grain harvest, is a
landmark achievement, a breakthrough
for the entire world.
Unfortunately, none of the other three
major food-producing countries, the
Soviet Union, China, and India, which
are losing as much or more soil than the
United States, has an effective program
to check their losses. For countries that
cannot easily retire their most erodible
cropland, terracing and contouring to
check water erosion, planting hedges
and tree belts to check wind erosion,
and other stringent conservation
measures are needed. Reducing soil
erosion in the remainder of the world
will not be easy, but with the U.S.
model to draw upon, it will be easier.
Bob Knst photo. Black Star
The Decade of Reckoning
The gap between what needs to be done
to reverse the environmental
degradation of the planet and what is
actually being done is growing wider
year by year. There is little precedent
for the scale of activity needed during
this decade. Modest increases in
energy-efficiency investments or
family-planning budgets will not suffice.
A wholesale reordering of priorities like
that occurring after World War II is in
order.
Time is of the essence. Species lost
cannot be recreated. Soil washed away
may take centuries, if not millennia, to
replace, even under careful
management. Once the Earth gets
warmer, there will be no practical way
of cooling it.
The issue is not whether we will
survive as a species but under what
conditions we will be living in the
future. By the end of this decade, we
either will have rallied and turned back
the threatening trends, or environmental
deterioration and economic decline will
be feeding on each other, n
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The Environment:
Moving Up on the International Agenda
by Susan R. Fletcher
Winds of change are sweeping the
world, creating dramatic new
political realities. Beyond political
change, another broad concern is
emerging as a major foreign policy
priority: protection of the global
environment. Over the past two years
the environment has emerged on the
foreign policy agendas of countries all
around the world.
As Cold War tensions have receded,
the environment is being characterized
by some world leaders as a major
national security issue. Citizens are
organizing in "green" parties to demand
protection from environmental
degradation. Leaders in sectors from
business to defense are announcing new
measures to address global
environmental problems.
As environmental problems enjoy
new prominence, a new sophistication
is emerging in the way they are
analyzed and treated. It is clear that
they are no longer amenable to being
compartmentalized, that their causes
and their solutions are deeply rooted in
the full spectrum of human activities.
Environmental leaders are beginning to
realize that the solutions will depend
upon integrating environmental
considerations into mainstream
activities, such as trade, industry,
transportation, and agriculture. More
and more, national and international
environmental problems are being seen
not as two separate arenas of activity,
but as a continuum.
However, all is not sweetness and
light. New tensions are also being
created. The need to protect the Earth's
(Fletcher is a Senior Analyst in
Internationa] Environmental Policy at
the Congressional Research Service.
This article reflects the views of the
author and not necessarily those of the
Congressional Research Service or the
Library of Congress.)
environment has become a
motherhood-and-apple-pie issue, but as
policymakers attempt to move beyond
rhetoric to action they are discovering
inherent difficulties in moderating old
policies and priorities.
Two root causes underlying today's
environmental problems are rapid
population growth and the waste and
consumption that accompany affluent
lifestyles. As the developing world's
population continues to grow at a rapid
rate, adding the equivalent of Mexico
each year, environmental degradation
increases along with it.
Correspondingly, the slower growing
and much smaller populations in the
developed world produce a
disproportionate amount of pollution.
Both issues are politically difficult and
rarely are tackled head-on in the
conferences and debates on
environmental issues.
Why is this concern for the global
environment emerging now?
International environmental issues
have been around for the past two
decades. They were first crystallized by
the Stockholm Conference on the
Human Environment in 1972. One
major outcome of that conference was
the establishment of the United Nations
Environment Programme (UNEP).
However, in the United States and
elsewhere, environmental issues have
continued'to be dealt with primarily in
a national context.
In the 20 years following the
Stockholm Conference, research efforts
have produced what many have called a
sea-change in the way we see the
environment and our relationship to it.
Scientific evidence has revealed that
human activities are profoundly
affecting the basic life support systems
of the planet. It is now clear that the
environment cannot be protected just by
the actions we take in our own back
yard; the health and well-being of
people in one country may depend
upon choices made by individuals and
policymakers far from their national
boundaries. Increasing numbers of
people now perceive their own vested
interest in international issues.
Topping the list of these issues are
stratospheric ozone depletion and the
global increase in greenhouse gases.
Despite continuing debate over their
impacts, these atmospheric changes
have been the linchpin in mobilizing
public concern over global
environmental conditions in general
and in stimulating interest in specific
issues, such as tropical deforestation
and biological diversity.
The disturbance of business-as-usual
by new priorities, however, is rarely
comfortable or welcome. Governments
of industrialized countries are reluctant
to commit their citizens to the lifestyle
changes that are implicit, for example,
in reduced fossil-fuel use. Developing
countries, for their part, resent being
asked to remedy problems not of their
own making. They want to achieve
economic growth and are pursuing the
development path set forth by their
affluent neighbors. They are loath to
give up this model until they see
acceptable alternatives—and until they
are assured they will receive assistance
to meet increased costs.
Integrating the Environment into Other
"Mainstream" Concerns
The first response to environmental
concerns by most institutions over the
past two decades has been to
compartmentalize them. This provided a
focus, but it left the other components
of the institution to proceed with
business-as-usual. The United Nations,
the World Bank, and departments of the
U.S. federal government are among
many examples.
It has been difficult for the
environmental arms of such
organizations to get the attention of the
top leadership or to incorporate the
environment into an agency's priorities.
The move currently underway to
JULY/AUGUST 1990
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upgrade the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency to cabinet level is
being undertaken primarily for two
reasons: to increase the effectiveness of
the Agency as it participates in the
formulation of national policy, and to
provide the United States with a
ministerial-level environmental
representative in international
negotiations.
National Security
There is no agreed-upon definition of
national security in U.S. law. However,
most individuals would probably
characterize it as the responsibility of
the government to protect the safety of
its citizens. What kinds of safety?
Usually safety from armed attack or
from threats to territorial integrity.
One of the "threats" to national
security posed by environmental
deterioration falls under this rubric, and
that is direct conflict over scarce
resources. As population continues to
grow, resources, notably water, can
come under competitive pressures
among users. The competition may
extend across national boundaries.
Some observers believe, for example,
that water shortages rival oil as a
potential trigger for military conflict in
the Middle East.
Environmental problems also present
a new kind of threat that is perceived by
increasing numbers of citi/ens,
especially those in the developed world.
The physical safety of all people may be
threatened by the degradation of the
atmosphere and the oceans brought on
by activities in countries far from their
borders. These activities are not hostile
in intent; they are the everyday actions
of ordinary people trying to secure their
own personal comfort.
What is different about this new
threat is that the natural systems of the
Earth act as an intermediary factor.
Nations cannot protect their citizens by
throwing up barriers at their borders.
They must instead cooperate with other
nations in protecting the basic life
support systems of the planet. As
Secretary of State James Baker stated
this year: "Environmental threats
Wide Work! photo
respect no border. They threaten human
lives and territorial integrity from
within and without."
Awareness of the new kind of threat
to national security has been reflected
in the prominence given to
environmental problems at recent
international meetings. These include
both the 1989 and 1990 G-7 Economic
Summits. Eor the first time, the
environment has been elevated to a
highly visible position in the
international economic spotlight.
Within the United States, a new
perspective on national security was
provided by Senator Sam Nunn and
other members of the Senate Armed
Services Committee when they
announced they will pursue a major
transfer of military science and
technology to a strategic environmental
research program. According to the
Washington Post, this reflected "a
growing theme in Congress to broaden
definition of 'national security' to
include threats to the environment,
health and education." The
announcement gave a substantial boost
to the environmental interest that was
EPA JOURNAL
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West Berliners rejoined East Berliners when
the Berlin Wall came down in November
1989. Are we entering a post-Cold War era
in which attention can be redirected toward
other priorities including preservation of the
global environment?
stimulated by Secretary of Defense
Richard Cheney earlier this year when
he initiated a comprehensive assessment
of how the Defense Department could
help meet the global environmental
crisis.
Skeptics worry that these moves are
no more than an effort to forestall cuts
in the defense budget; however,
whatever else they mean, they are
plainly a major step toward
incorporating environmental issues into
mainstream national security
considerations.
Sustainable Development
The term "sustainable development" has
become a byword because it provides a
context for integrating concern for the
environment into the central economic
activities that drive human societies.
The term derives from a 1987 report by
the World Commission on Environment
and Development, known as the
Brundtland Commission for its
Chairwoman, Gro Harlem Brundtland of
Norway.
Although the term "development" hud
usually been applied to developing
countries, Our Common Future
discussed economic activity more
broadly, focusing on the ways it could
be redirected in both industrialized and
Third World countries into patterns that
were environmentally benign. The
report found a need for a new type of
development path and defined
sustainable development as that which
"meets the needs of the present without
compromising the ability of future
generations to meet their own needs."
Hailed as the "Bible" of
environmentally sound development,
the report was a comprehensive
treatment of the interaction of
environment and economic activity. It
strongly endorsed the need for
economic progress in poverty-stricken
nations. Indeed, the application of
sustainable development was
particularly important for these
countries, the report argued, if they
were not to seriously degrade their
natural resources. For many existing
development efforts, designed with a
short-term focus, such degradation
resulted from unforeseen side effects.
There were many examples of such
projects: dams that silted up rapidly and
lost their productive capacity when
surrounding forests were not protected;
agricultural improvements that resulted
in erosion; irrigation installations that
resulted in salinization of soils; and
roads that contributed to deforestation
and destructive settlement patterns.
Over the past decade, the U.S.
Congress has legislated a number of
requirements for environmentally sound
planning that must be incorporated into
foreign-assistance efforts. The
requirements apply both to bilateral aid
and to multilateral development banks,
like the World Bank. However, this
effort cannot succeed unless the
recipient countries establish policies
that will accommodate the
requirements. Some developing
countries still look askance at
environmental priorities, arguing that
they have more urgent issues on their
agendas. It is only in those countries
where the adverse economic impacts of
environmental degradation have become
obvious that a higher priority for the
environment has emerged.
In the context of problems like global
warming and ozone depletion, it is the
Brundtland Commission's position that
the development path of the
industrialized countries is also proving
to be unsustainable and that changes
will be required in production
techniques. In the United States, many
proposals that address global warming
focus on energy policy, seeking
incentives for greater use of renewable
resources and for increasing energy
efficiency.
Trade
As major negotiations have neared final
stages in the Uruguay Round of the
General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs
(GATT), environmental groups have
awakened to the pervasive impacts that
trade activities can have on
natural-resources management and
environmental regulation.
The proposed "harmonization" of
standards for food safety has raised fears
that harmonized standards—not only for
food safety but also for environmental
regulation—could operate to seek the
"lowest common denominator" and
that more stringent levels of protection
would be labeled as barriers to trade,
thereby invoking sanctions. Other
measures, such as limits on a nation's
ability to control exports, could remove
needed protection for such resources as
forests.
Current proposals in the U.S.
Congress, and being advanced in other
GATT countries, urge a thorough review
of the potential environmental impacts
of the agreement before it is finalized.
Economic Incentives and Funding
Measures
The role that economic policies such as
tax incentives or commodity subsidies
may play in resource degradation has
been a relatively recent focus of
attention. Fertilizer subsidies, for
example, may result in degraded ground
water due to overuse of chemicals; tax
incentives for businesses to extend their
operations into the Amazon may
encourage burning of the forest, thereby
contributing to greenhouse warming.
Another major economic factor that
can affect the environment is foreign
debt. Many countries make the most of
commodity exports in an effort to repay
international banks or other lending
agencies. In some cases this has
translated into the deforestation of land
to convert it to export agriculture, and
the displacement of subsistence farmers
by plantations. Debt relief is now stn>n
as an environmental as well as an
economic goal. A small start was made
with debt-for-nature swaps in which
debt has been canceled in return for
domestic-currency payments toward
land-preservation and conservation
goals. Currently, increasingly larger
debt-relief options are being proposed in
return for environmental policy
changes. These swaps may accomplish
significant gains in conservation but
have been too small to make a major
dent in any country's foreign debt.
Foreign aid has played a varied role
with respect to environment. A small
but growing portion of U.S. assistance
goes directly toward projects to protect
JULY/AUGUST 1990
-------
the environment; strategies for managing
natural resources have been formulated
for Africa and are being formulated for
Asia. The major concern over the
environmental impacts of foreign aid
has focused on large-scale projects like
dams, roads, or agricultural
development. Environmental
assessments like those performed for the
past 12 years by the U.S. Agency for
International Development are now
increasingly required by the World Bank
and other assistance organizations.
Business and Industry
The past two decades have seen bitter
battles between environmental groups
and business interests. However,
industry rhetoric recently has become
noticeably "greener." Sustainable
development has been adopted as an
objective by many business leaders; a
Global Environmental Management
Initiative has been announced by the
Business Roundtable; the chemical
industry has begun a program called
"responsible care."
Some industries have found that
environmental conservation can be
profitable. 3M was an early leader with
its "Pollution Prevention Pays" program.
U.S. waste management companies are
finding that the current public interest
in recycling has provided expanded
business opportunities. The control
technology industry has flourished in
the United States in response to
regulatory requirements. U.S. chemical
companies are in the forefront of
developing the alternatives to
chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) that will be
in demand as the signatory countries to
the Montreal Protocol phase out use of
CFCs in refrigeration, insulation, and
the like. One major reason for this
environmental awareness lies in the
demands of both customers and
shareholders.
Domestic Environmental Policies and
International Priorities
As the United States has taken an
ever-greater interest in the global
environment, its domestic
policies—those that affect forest
resources, energy utilization,
transportation, and the like—have in
turn taken on new significance in the
international arena. The example set by
the United States with its own
environmental performance will
influence its ability to play a leadership
role internationally.
The enlarged agenda of international
issues places new stress on domestic
policies; conversely, domestic concerns
introduce new frictions in foreign
policy. The tension between Europe and
the United States over how fast to move
in reducing greenhouse-gas emissions is
a prime example. Reductions agreed to
in an international convention would
require changes in domestic policies
that affect many elements of lifestyle.
These changes would be difficult to
make from a political standpoint; our
reluctance to enter into international
agreements reflects that difficulty.
Another example is forest
management. Many non-tropical
countries want protection for tropical
forests both to preserve biological
diversity and to reduce the burning that
contributes to greenhouse gases.
Tropical countries, on the other hand,
observe the forest management
controversies in the United States and
elsewhere and note that efforts to
protect forests have often failed in
developed countries.
As the United States formulates
international environmental objectives,
it will have to re-examine its domestic
policies if it is to have credibility with
other nations. Since domestic and
foreign-policy agencies do not as a rule
interact, coordination between them
will require a new set of considerations
for both.
Mechanisms: Environmental Interest
Groups
One major force behind the increase in
public awareness of environmental
issues has been grassroots organizations.
These non-governmental organizations,
or NGOs, range from the National
Wildlife Federation and Sierra Club to
smaller, local groups. They have been
critical players at the domestic level,
informing the public about problems,
assessing solutions, pressing and
lobbying for legislation, and, in some
cases, filing suits to require compliance
with environmental laws.
In recent years, several of the larger,
national organizations in the United
States have played important roles in
identifying international environmental
issues and in pressing for change in
U.S. policies on foreign assistance.
'Pressure from such groups has also led
to passage of a number of laws that
require the United States to seek
environmental reforms in the practices
of the World Bank and other
multilateral development banks. Many
of the reforms have been put into place,
and the pressure for improvement
continues.
In countries around the world, NGOs
are mushrooming in numbers and size.
Even in countries where the political
system is not as open as in the United
States, such groups are managing to
keep citizens informed and to change
institutional priorities.
A more formal approach to the
political system has been taken by the
"green" parties that have formed, for
example, in many European countries.
As these organizations have gained
elective office, many of their
environmental concerns have been
adopted by mainstream parties.
Internationally, cooperation among
NGOs is increasing their sophistication
and their effectiveness. However, as the
groups proliferate, their views and goals
may diverge. This can be especially
troublesome for groups from different
cultural and economic backgrounds who
mirror the tensions of their governments
as they try to reach agreement on what
the priorities should be.
Legal Measures; Conventions, Treaties,
and Laws
The world has extensive experience in
reaching agreement on conventions and
treaties to govern international activities
affecting the environment. The problems
now on the agenda, global warming,
forest protection, and biological
10
EPA JOURNAL
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J
The bozone layer: shielding the rest of the solar system from the Earth's
harmful effects.
diversity, pose particularly challenging
difficulties. In these cases, global
attention is being paid to behavior
within national borders, and this has
raised hackles about interference in
national sovereignty.
In 1989, as public: concern grew over
the contribution to greenhouse gases
made by vast areas burned in the
Amazon forest, Brazil's president
expressed outrage at statements made by
visitors from the United States. When
they declared the Amazon to be a global
resource, he defended Brazil's right to
do as it wished with the resources
within its borders. However, over the
past year Brazil has responded to
concerns of its own citizens with a
number of environmental measures,
including laws designed to protect its
forests. The United States, itself, has
been unwilling to agree to specific
fossil-fuel curtailments, which many
European nations are advocating,
because of possible economic hardships
to Americans and the potential for
adverse political repercussions.
International action came swiftly in
the case of ozone depletion, and the
ozone treaty and its protocols are hailed
as a model of international cooperation.
However, close examination reveals
acrimonious debate on providing
financial aid to developing countries to
help them phase in CFG substitutes.
CFCs, used in a limited number of
human activities, and for which there
are substitutes, are more easily dealt
with than the greenhouse gases
produced by the burning of fossil fuels
and many agricultural processes.
Reductions in emissions of these gases
could involve profound changes, such
as taxes on carbon-based fuels and the
setting of fuel-efficiency and building
standards.
International Institutions: UNEP
In 1972, UNEP was established to
encourage component agencies of the
United Nations, such as the Food and
Agriculture Organization and the United
Nations Development Programme, to
incorporate environmental priorities
into their activities. In the creation of
UNEP, the United Nations recognized
the pervasive nature of environmental
issues, and the need to integrate them
into each agency's mission.
In recent years, UNEP has been
acknowledged as the major force behind
such agreements as the ozone-protection
protocol and the hazardous waste treaty.
UNEP's Executive Director. Mostafa
Tolba, has received high marks as a key
negotiator in these and other issues.
Currently, UNEP and the World
Meteorological Organization share
responsibility for the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change, which is
preparing a report on the causes and
responses to global warming. The report
is expected to be followed by
negotiations on a climate-change
prevention treaty.
However, UNEP remains a small
agency with a limited budget. As
environmental concerns grow, and
interconnections with other arenas
expand, the United Nations is likely to
need an expanded capacity to deal with
a wide array of issues.
In 1989 the United Nations called for
a World Conference on Environment
and Development to be held in Brazil in
1991. The conference will mark the 20th
anniversary of the Stockholm
Conference and is expected to be a
watershed of expanded institutional
capability at the international level.
Since the beginning of conference;
preparations last fall, world leaders and
NGOs have called for a growing number
of actions to be concluded "by 1992."
One goal, for example, is to have a
greenhouse convention ready for signing
at the conference.
In the two years until 1992, citi/.ons
can demonstrate their concerns through
their purchasing patterns, their votes,
and through their organizations, if the
1990s are indeed to become the decade
of the environment, it will be a
challenge at home and abroad, to
governments and individuals alike, to
deal with a broad menu of issues. Q
JULY/AUGUST 1990
11
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A Perspective from EPA
by William K. Reilly
^/"Conservation means development
\j>as much as it does protection,"
President Theodore Roosevelt said
nearly a century ago. "The nation
behaves well if it treats the natural
resources as assets which it must turn
over to the next generation, increased
and not impaired in value."
Teddy Roosevelt's observation was a
prescient and succinct expression of the
importance of practicing careful
stewardship of our natural heritage.
Today, we all benefit from his vision
whenever we visit a national forest,
park, or wildlife refuge. Moreover,
Roosevelt's ethic of stewardship is now
receiving renewed and urgent attention
around the world. It is taking on new
resonance as developed and developing
nations alike struggle for healthy
economic growth that does not deplete
the planet's irreplaceable resources or
irrevocably damage the environment.
The term now being used
internationally to describe Roosevelt's
vision of conservation is "sustainable
development," originally defined by the
Brundtland Commission as
"development that meets the needs of
the present without compromising the
ability of future generations to meet
their own needs."
As the quote from Teddy Roosevelt
indicates, the ideas behind sustainable
development are not new; they arise
from several disciplines including
economics, ecology, and ethics. What is
new is the Brundtland Commission's
synthesis of these ideas into a
framework for international cooperation
to preserve the global environment. The
commission's message to the world: If
we begin to move in the direction of
sustainable development now, our
planet can have both a healthy economy
and a healthy environment.
The Brundtland Commission's report,
which has generally been well received,
has two broad themes. One is that the
economy and the environment, rather
than being in conflict, are intertwined,
and that economic and environmental
policies should reflect that profound
(Reilly is Administrator of EPA.)
reality of modern life. The second
theme is that societies should reconcile
their present-day economic and
environmental priorities with ethical
considerations about the well-being of
future generations.
But while these ideas are
well-received, we are still a long way
from consensus on a practical
understanding of what they mean. We
are also a long way from incorporating
the concept into our laws and
institutions and applying it
systematically.
EPA is considering an array of
economic incentives to
encourage businesses,
industries, and individuals to
reduce waste and pollution.
In several articles in this issue of the
Journal, sustainable development is
discussed as part of the solution to
environmental problems that have
international security
implications—problems that seriously
threaten the very health of the planet.
We are losing trees and topsoi! at an
alarming rate. The protective shield of
ozone is thinning out. The Antarctic,
considered by most of us to be one of
the last great pristine regions on the
globe, is under growing stress from
pollution. The buildup of greenhouse
gases threatens a change in climate,
with uncertain regional variations.
We should continue to seek an
operational definition of sustainable
development that can be applied
systematically to these and other global
problems. In the meantime, we can and
should encourage steps to move
economic development in sustainable
directions.
• First, we should continue to improve
EPA's traditional regulatory and
enforcement performance. We are
making substantial progress in this area:
Last year was a record-setting year for
enforcement of EPA regulations that
curtail air and water pollution and toxic
releases. In particular, EPA has
dramatically increased the number of
criminal and administrative
enforcement actions. EPA's aggressive
enforcement posture should help
convince many potential violators that il
just does not pay to pollute.
• Second, we must do all we can to
foster pollution prevention. Although
we will continue to emphasize
enforcement, our traditional air, water,
and various toxic pollution-control
programs are nearing the point of
diminishing returns. Unless we come up
with new approaches, it will cost us
increasingly more to get fewer
environmental protection benefits. In
addition, we are facing a set of problems
that are more vexing than the ones we
tackled in the past.
The decentralized, diffuse nature of
today's problems—pollution from urban
and agricultural run-off, long-range air
deposition of toxic substances,
automobile emissions, and municipal
waste disposal—cries out for a new
framework of solutions. Fortunately,
there is a growing consensus that
pollution prevention—preventing the
generation of waste in the first
instance—offers this framework.
Therefore, EPA has embarked on a
far-reaching program to integrate
pollution prevention into everything the
Agency does—and into the very fabric
of the nation's environmental ethic. We
expect our pollution-prevention efforts
to increase the sustainability of
economic activity in this country
significantly.
• Third, we need to incorporate the
costs of fouling the environment into
economic activities. By explicitly
linking the environment with economic
development, we can maximize
pollution prevention and avoid
undermining the long-term integrity of
productive natural systems.
Economic development theory has
never had much to say about
conservation of natural resources.
Depletion of the natural resources upon
which the economies of developed and
developing countries depend has never
been factored into national income
accounts.
But, as former EPA Administrator Bill
Ruckelshaus said, "We are busily
12
EPA JOURNAt
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nMM •OMHiK^Hi • a ^^^^•MMHH
Once considered worthless, wetlands are now known to provide many benefits, including
filtering pollutants and recharging underground water supplies. Injury to a wetland ecosystem
is damage to environmental capital.
Ty Smeades photo, Iowa Department of Natural Resources.
writing checks against the environment
like there is no tomorrow, and our
checks are starting to bounce." EPA,
therefore, is working with the
Organization for Economic Cooperation
and Development, the United Nations
Environment Programme, and other
organizations to find ways to
incorporate the costs of natural-resource
degradation and deterioration of natural
systems directly into the calculation of
national economic growth and
productivity.
Ideally, these accounts would
recognize the environment as a key
economic asset, deducting depletion of
environmental capital and
environmental clean-up costs from
measures of national income. Just as
conventional assets, such as a piece of
machinery or a savings bond, can be
sources of income, so too can
environmental assets provide benefits.
Wetlands, for example, provide
habitat for species that are a source of
income for commercial fisheries and
tour-boat operators. Wetlands also
provide valuable recreational
opportunities, help protect against
flooding, recharge underground supplies
of fresh water, and filter pollutants from
the water. Injury to a wetland ecosystem
may undermine these benefits. This
would be damage to environmental
capital—a form of capital depreciation
that should be deducted from national
income, just as depreciation of physical
capital is now deducted in calculating a
nation's Net National Product.
Moreover, EPA is considering an array
of economic incentives to encourage
businesses, industries, and individuals
to reduce waste and pollution. EPA's
strategy is to encourage millions of
individuals voluntarily to prevent
pollution in response to economic
signals. And because economic
incentives influence rather than
prescribe behavior, consumers and
businesses can make their own choices
based on individual circumstances.
Market-based incentives make
environmentally sound choices more
attractive. For instance, the Clean Air
Act Amendments (which at this writing
are before a Congressional conference
committee) contain market-oriented
incentives in the provisions that allow
utilities to trade, buy, or sell credits for
sulfur-dioxide (SO2) emissions. The goal
is the same as under a regulatory
scheme: reduce S02 emissions. But the
choice of methods means greater
flexibility and thus greater
cost-effectiveness in achieving these
reductions. Market incentives can have
a powerful influence on economic
development, causing it to move
voluntarily and smoothly in the
direction of greater sustainability.
• Fourth, we must cultivate a national
environmental ethic through education.
The solution to many of our pollution
problems starts with the actions of
millions of individuals. Last fall, in
Spokane, Washington, President Bush
said, "Through millions of everyday,
individual decisions, we are
determining,the fate of the Earth. It's
surprisingly easy to move from being
part of the problem to being part of the
solution."
The burgeoning solid-waste disposal
problem in this country is a good
illustration of the extent to which
individual actions accumulate to create
a massive environmental problem.
EPA's latest report on municipal solid
waste shows a jump of 13 million tons
in the amount of waste generated
annually in the United States between
1986 and 1988. Currently, about 180
million tons of solid waste are being
generated each year. This means that
the average U.S. citizen now throws
away about four pounds of garbage
every day—hardly a sustainable activity!
This is a record level of per-capita waste
generation for this country; it's twice
the per-capita level of West Germany,
and three times that of Italy. We can do
better; we must do better.
People cannot be expected to change
their lifestyles to protect the
environment until they understand the
JULY/AUGUST 1990
13
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part they are playing in its degradation
and the part they can play in its
improvement. Therefore EPA is working
to foster a new environmental
awareness—a stronger environmental
ethic—in people's daily lives by
launching an Agency-wide
environmental education program.
Last May, EPA and the National
Governors' Association co-chaired the
highly successful National
Environmental Youth Forum to promote
environmental education. In June, I
announced the creation of an EPA
Office of Environmental Education.
Among other priorities, this office will
encourage the development of a national
environmental ethic in our schools.
But we also must educate consumers.
Educated consumers can demand, and
get, environmentally safer products,
products with less packaging, and more
recycled and recyclable products. Both
government and industry can help make
consumers aware of the environmental
impacts of their choices. EPA's research
programs are beginning to look at the
kinds of products that are safer for the
environment.
• Fifth, we can learn from and
encourage sustainable development
projects. World Wildlife Fund, for
example, is sponsoring a project called
"Wildlands and Human Needs" with
major support from the U.S. Agency for
International Development. This
umbrella project weds small-scale
economic enterprises with conservation
of natural resources in the biologically
rich landscapes of the developing
world. Native people are able to earn a
living while protecting the natural
resources on which their long-term
economic well-being depends.
Specific projects include tree
nurseries in Costa Rica and a
kerosene-fuel business coupled with
fuel-wood plantations in Nepal that
enable the Nepalese people to leave the
forests intact. And in Rwanda, local
people are being helped to harness the
lucrative tourism potential of mountain
gorillas, while preserving their forested
habitat.
There are many other organizations
around the world with exciting projects
that give practical application to the
principles of sustainable development
in developing countries. The "Alliance
of Forest Peoples" in Feijo, Brazil,
advocates harvesting products from
rain-forest reserves as more
economically viable and sustainable
than forest clearing. The local
government has accepted the argument
that the future of the area lies in forest
management and has approved several
rain-forest reserves.
Without healthy economic
development, we will see even
more environmental
degradation throughout the
developing world.
Here in the United States, Oregon is
applying the tenets of sustainable
development to the Columbia River
Basin—an area roughly the size of
France. In response to legislation
mandating major changes in river
operations to restore fish and wildlife in
the area, the state is building new fish
hatcheries in the basin and reopening
fish passages that were blocked by
previous developments.
Last year, I took part in the release of
a report on the state of the Great Lakes.
It was prepared by the Institute for
Research on Public Policy of Ottawa,
and The Conservation Foundation of
Washington, DC. The report looked back
at the history of the 1972 "Great Lakes
Water Quality Agreement" between the
United States and Canada under which
so much has been accomplished.
Virtually all of the goals prescribed in
that agreement have been nearly, if not
fully, achieved. Fecal coliform has been
reduced, nutrients are down, algae is
down, biological oxygen demand is
down, and dissolved oxygen is way up.
The fish are back in lakes, like Lake
Erie, where it was not at all certain that
they would be.
And yet, even with $10 billion of
investments, with wastewater treatment
plants functioning as they are supposed
to function, the fish have accumulated
toxic substances in their tissue to the
degree that they cannot be eaten with
any frequency. By no means have we
brought the Great Lakes back to a state
of satisfactory ecological productivity.
By no means have we achieved
sustainability for this resource. So the
report called for a new orientation in
Great Lakes environmental policy. It
called for a policy of sustainable
development.
I mention this report and these
projects because they do something that
we desperately need at this point: They
are trying to give practical meaning to
an abstract concept by showing there
are real, lasting benefits to people and
their environment.
• Finally, regular reports on the
capacity of the environment to support
development should be published. The
actions taken to move toward
sustainable development will be more
effective if they are supported by
objective, accurate data. The
environmental health of countries,
regions, hemispheres, and the whole
planet must be assessed. Many
developed countries are capable of the
monitoring and data analysis necessary
to evaluate their own environmental
health. For the developing nations,
however, international finance
institutions like the World Bank should
take responsibility for publishing annual
reports on the ability of the
environment to support continued
economic development in individual
countries as well as in the larger, global
community.
Without healthy economic
development, we will see even more
environmental degradation throughout
the developing world. We need to foster
sustainable economic development to
improve the quality of life in developing
countries. And in developed countries
we need to foster sustainable
development to maintain the quality of
life we already have attained.
We must take this undefined term of
sustainable development and make it,
through our actions, more concrete,
more specific, more real for political
leaders, for business leaders, for
ordinary citizens, for the world's poor,
and, ultimately, for future
generations. Q
EPA JOURNAL
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Report from the State Department
by Curtis Bohlen
The world community is beginning to address environmental
concerns. One example is the International Whaling Commission's
decision, supported by the United States, to place a moratorium on
commercial whale harvesting.
Davies photo Copyright Greenpeace
This unprecedented interest in
environmental issues stems
from the growing realization
that these issues are truly
global in nature.
(Bohfen is Assistant Secretary of State
for Oceans and International
Environmental and Scientific A/fairs.
He was recently confirmed in that
position.]
In a relatively short time,
environmental issues have risen high
on the U.S. foreign-policy agenda.
While the main focus of international
relations has traditionally been on
political and military issues, the
environment is now a major aspect of
the international scene. The annual G-7
"economic" summit now includes a
significant environmental component,
while high-level environmental
conferences have become regular
international events.
This unprecedented interest in
environmental issues stems from the
growing realization that these issues are
truly global in nature. Threats to the
environment such as stratospheric
ozone depletion, potential climate
change, or loss of biodiversity affect all
nations, regardless of their level of
development or the nature of their
political or economic systems.
Fortunately, the world community has
been moving quickly to address a range
of environmental concerns. Twenty
years ago, the few environmental
agreements in effect dealt primarily
with fish and game management or
ocean pollution. Today we have in
place agreements covering such
concerns as depletion of the ozone
layer, hazardous-waste shipments,
transboundary air pollution, and trade
in endangered species. In addition.
negotiations on a number of other issues
such as climate change and forest
conservation are or will soon be under
way.
In the United States, where
conservation has a long tradition,
environmental protection is a
cornerstone of our approach to foreign
policy. U.S. international environmental
JULY/AUGUST 1990
I1,
-------
policies recognize that the quality of
life, a sound economy, and even
national security depend on a healthy
environment. This is why we 'are
working hard to develop the
international consensus necessary to
address the broad array of
environmental problems.
The negotiations concerning the
depletion of the stratospheric ozone
layer provide a particularly good
example of how an effective global
response to a pressing environmental
concern can be achieved. In the early
1980s, the United States led the call to
set up a framework through which the
international community could
objectively analyze the problem and
develop appropriate responses.
This framework, established in 1985,
provided the focus necessary to
reach an agreement two years later to
cut production of ozone-depleting
substances by half. Furthermore, when
continuing assessments indicated that
more action was required to protect the
ozone layer, further steps could be
agreed to expeditiously. With strong
U.S. support, the international
community recently agreed to phase out
the production and use of most
ozone-depleting substances by the end
of the century.
We are now seeking to establish a
similar process to address the much
more complex problem of global climate
change. With our strong support, the
International Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) was set up in 1988 to consider
all aspects of this issue. The IPCC's first
report on what is known about climate
change and how it might be addressed
is nearing completion. Using this
information, negotiations on a
framework convention on climate
change will begin soon, with the goal of
reaching an international consensus on
how best to deal with this issue.
Another cornerstone of U.S.
international environmental policy is a
strong emphasis on natural-resource
conservation. For example, we have
acted vigorously to protect endangered
species through the Convention on
International Trade in Endangered
Species of Wild Fauna and Flora
(CITES), which establishes mechanisms
for monitoring and controlling the effect
that international trade is having on
Some have stated that
international environmental
issues will dominate the
foreign-policy agenda of the
21st century.
wild species of plants and animals.
CITES was particularly crucial for our
efforts to protect the African elephant
through a ban on international trade in
elephant ivory. The demand for ivory
had been identified as the main cause of
the precipitous decline of elephant
populations.
With regard to marine resources, U.S.
efforts in the mid-1980s were
instrumental in the International
Whaling Commission's decision to
establish a moratorium on the
commercial harvest of whales. We are
now working with a number of Pacific
Basin countries to address the large take
of marine mammals, seabirds, and other
living marine resources in high-seas
driftnet fisheries. Agreements are
currently in place to obtain the
information necessary to determine
what steps may be required to protect
these resources.
Environmental concerns also present
new opportunities for U.S.
foreign-policy initiatives—for example,
in the context of assisting the economic
and political development of the
countries of Eastern Europe. To help the
East Europeans help themselves in the
crucial areas of environmental
protection and restoration, we are
offering our considerable domestic
experience in dealing with these issues.
We are now providing clean-coal
technology to industries in Krakow,
Poland, which has very serious
pollution problems. We are also
working through bilateral science
agreements with various countries to
expand our cooperation on
environmental matters. For the region as
a whole, the United States has
established a regional environmental
center in Budapest due to open this fall
(see box on p. 52).
Also, through an emphasis on
environmental protection, we have
strengthened the effectiveness of U.S.
foreign-assistance programs by
promoting the sustainable management
of tropical forests and other resources.
For example, in Indonesia an ongoing
project focuses on the management and
conservation of products from tropical
forests which might otherwise be
destroyed for short-term benefits. We
are likewise encouraging the
multilateral development banks to
promote environmentally sound
economic growth in their lending
programs.
Some have stated that international
environmental issues will dominate the
foreign-policy agenda of the 21st
century. Certainly it is evident that
international environmental concerns
will be increasingly important in our
diplomatic efforts. Continued
integration of environmental and foreign
policies will be vital as we prepare to
face the problems, challenges, and
opportunities of the decades to come, o
16
EPA JOURNAL
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International Trade:
In Search of an Environmental Conscience
by Steven Shrybman
Mar/land Port Administration photo
Trade agreements can substantially
undermine national and
international efforts to address
ecological problems by ignoring the
environmental implications of the
economic forces they put into play or
by deliberately subordinating
environmental concerns to economic
objectives. For much of the world, trade
practices determine the scale and
character of resource exploitation and
use. This is particularly true for many
developing countries where export of
basic commodities and resources often
represents more than 50 percent of
Gross Domestic Product.
(Shrybman is Counsel for the Canadian
Environmental Law Associafion.)
Shipping—a symbol of international trade.
The Maersk shipping line, headquartered in
Denmark, is a weekly visitor at Dundalk
Marine Terminal in Baltimore, Maryland.
Unfortunately, these and other
trade-environment linkages are poorly
understood and rarely recognized. The
outmoded notion persists that the
economy and the environment somehow
exist independently of each other.
The rules that govern most world
trade are set out in the General
Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
(GATT), which is currently being
renegotiated. Other important trade
negotiations have either just concluded,
like those between Canada and the
United States, or are
underway—between the United States
and Mexico, and among the member
nations of the European Community.
The results of these negotiations will
greatly influence global economic
activity for the 1990s, the decade that
will, from an ecological perspective, be
the most critical in human history.
Nowhere is the failure to integrate the
environment and the economy clearer
than in the GATT negotiations in
which, with only limited exceptions,
evaluating the environmental
implications of trade proposals is not
even on the table. To make matters
worse, the negotiations are veiled in
secrecy, and virtually no opportunity
exists for public comment or debate.
Since environmental organizations, in
particular, are excluded from the
process, trade proposals are routinely
put forward without any consideration
whatsoever of their potential
environmental effects. The most likely
outcome of such a process is trade
agreements which enshrine economic
principles that are often at odds with
environmental objectives.
There are some bright spots on the
horizon. Governments are beginning to
heed calls from the Brundtland
Commission and others to integrate
environmental and economic policy,
development, and planning.
The G-7 economic summit in July
1989, for example, placed an
unprecedented emphasis on
environmental issues. The final
communique from Paris addressed the
"urgent need to safeguard the
environment tor future generations" and
recognized that "environmental
protection is integral to issues such as
trade . . . ." More recently, at a meeting
on sustainable development in Bergen,
Norway, ministers from the Economic
Commission for Europe, representing
Eastern and Western European and
North American countries, agreed to
"accelerate . . . the dialogue on the
inter-linkages between environmental
and trade policies ... to ensure that
trade does not bring about harmful
JULY/AUGUST 1990
17
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environmental consequences."
However, while the need to integrate
environmental and economic planning
is gaining acceptance in theory, only
tentative efforts are being made to
actually put the principle into practice.
While governments proclaim the
principles of sustainable development,
many important national and
international "economic" institutions
remain largely unaware of or indifferent
to them.
Ignoring The Environment
Having considered the overall situation,
let's examine some specific examples. In
the language of multilateral trade, the
agenda of current negotiations is to
"liberalize" international trade by
reducing import and export controls and
by eliminating "non-tariff trade
barriers." Let's consider each aspect of
this trade agenda from an environmental
point of view.
Export Controls and Sustainable
Resource-Management Policies: For
countries seeking to conserve
non-renewable resources, the ability to
control exports is often critical. Just as
import controls, such as tariffs, can be
used to protect local manufacturers,
export limitations, such as quotas, can
be used to protect indigenous resources.
However, the GATT currently restricts
the right of governments to control
exports, and the objective of ongoing
GATT talks is to further limit that right.
Not surprisingly, eliminating natural
resource export controls is of
considerable interest to developed
countries that have co-opted the largest
share of those resources and would like
to ensure that such resources remain
freely and cheaply available. North
America, for example, which represents
6 percent of the world's population,
consumes 25 percent of its energy
resources. Developed nations as a
whole, representing approximately 20
percent of the world's population,
consume 80 percent of its natural
resources.
To fully appreciate why controlling
exports is critical to developing
countries, it is important to note that
international trade is carried out largely
by private corporations, not national
governments. For example, according to
a survey by the United Nations Center
on Transnational Corporations:
Eighty to 90 percent of the trade in
tea, coffee, cocoa, cotton, forest
products, tobacco, jute, copper,
iron ore, and bauxite is controlled
in the case of each commodity by
the three to six largest
transnationals.
Transnational corporations also
control "80 percent of the world's land
cultivated for export-oriented crops." In
exercising this control in the developing
world, they have encouraged the
Recent developments in
Eastern Europe and the plight
of many countries in the Third
World underscore the need to
reconsider current trade
policies and agreements ....
expansion of agricultural and resource
production to serve export markets,
rather than the needs of local people.
The impacts can be appalling. For
example, the Brundtland Commission
has noted that during the 1980s, when
drought and hunger were taking hold in
the Sahel region of Africa, five countries
in the region produced record amounts
of cotton.
Less apparent, but probably even
more destructive over the long term, are
the ecological consequences of such
policies. As the Worldwatch Institute
points out, the wholesale export of vital
resources from countries that are not
self-sufficient in food or other essential
resources has often lead local peoples to
over-exploit remaining resources, such
as rain forests, simply to eke out the
barest existence.
Import Controls and Environmental
Regulation: The most familiar type of
import control is the tariff, and another
objective of the GATT talks is to achieve
"a substantial reduction or, as
appropriate, elimination of tariffs by all
participants." Eliminating import
controls is likely to undermine
environmental initiatives in several
ways.
To begin with, there is growing
evidence that the developed world is
transferring its polluting industries and
wasteful "resource- management"
practices to the developing world.
While quantification is difficult, a study
undertaken for the Brundtland
Commission estimates that in 1980
developing nations would have incurred
over $14 billion in pollution-control
costs had they been required to meet the
prevailing U.S. environmental
standards. For an industry able to
export goods to the United States free
from tariff restrictions, the absence of
pollution-control costs can be an
attractive incentive to relocate or
establish new operations. This not only
discourages environmental regulation in
the developing world, it pressures
developed countries to weaken
standards, or avoid new ones, in order
to keep industry at home.
The same dynamics have encouraged
a flourishing trade in hazardous waste.
As documented by the Worldwatch
Institute, disposal costs in some
developing countries are as low as $40
for wastes that would cost as much as
$250 to $300 to dispose of in the United
States. Specific instances have been
documented of hazardous enterprises
associated with the asbestos, smelting,
and chemical industries being
transferred to developing countries.
Often desperate for economic growth,
these countries have simply been
willing to accept risks of environmental,
public, and occupational health
consequences. While efforts are under
way to negotiate treaties to control the
trade in hazardous waste, the thrust of
current policies to weaken controls runs
counter to them.
Subordinating Environmental
Objectives
Environmental Regulation as Non-tariff
Barrier: Another way in which trade
agreements can defeat environmental
regulations is to attack them as
non-tariff barriers. A recent decision by
18
EPA JOURNAL
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the Court of Justice of the European
Community illustrates how
environmental programs can be forced
to take a back seat to a country's trade
obligations.
The case before the European Court
concerned Danish laws that required all
beer and soft drinks to be sold in
refillable containers. As noted by the
Court, Danish regulations were "highly
effective" and made no distinction
between beverages bottled in Denmark
and those imported to the country.
Nevertheless, other member states of the
European Community objected, as did
retail trade associations. Both
complained about the costs of collecting
used bottles and argued for the right to
sell disposable containers.
In considering these complaints, the
Court took into account the European
Community treaty which imposes a
duty on all member states to preserve,
protect, and improve the quality of the
environment. (No similar obligation
exists under GATT.) It found the Danish
regulations to be just such measures and
accepted them as genuine and
successful. However, the Court went on
to find that Denmark had failed to prove
that its reuse laws were "not
disproportionate to achieve a legitimate
aim." While Denmark could require a
deposit on all beverage containers, the
Court reasoned that it could not require
them to be reusable.
Even though it acknowledged that no
actual restraint of trade had occurred,
the Court concluded that:
There has to be a balancing of
interests between the free
movement of goods and
environmental protection, even if
in achieving the balance the high
standard of the protection sought
has to be reduced.
This case illustrates that when
environmental laws are characterized as
non-tariff barriers to trade, legitimate
environmental programs can be
relegated to second-class status and
subordinated to trade objectives.
Opponents of environmental regulation
now have an important new tool to
challenge environmental initiatives.
The Lowest Common Denominator: The
U.S. government has proposed to
harmonize certain standards under
GATT so that food safety standards
governing pesticide residues and food
additives would have to conform to
international norms. Clearly, the
development of international
agreements around environmental
standards is desirable. However, there
are reasons to suspect that the intent of
the proposals is to lower environmental
standards to a common denominator.
First, harmonization proposals are
being promoted by those who are often
outspoken critics of efforts to strengthen
food safety standards in the United
States and Europe. For example, the
U.S. Department of Agriculture is a
principle advocate for harmonization.
If trade policies continue to be
advanced without regard for
their environmental
consequences, the result will
be agreements that inhibit or
defeat much-needed progress
on the environment
The department describes
harmonization as an answer to
regulatory initiatives that it considers
unjustified, including Europe's ban on
bovine-growth hormone and California's
rigorous pesticide initiatives.
Second, harmonization proposals
would give the responsibility for setting
food-safety and environmental standards
to international scientific panels. Ethical
and social considerations could be
ignored, and the role of elected and
democratic bodies, like the U.S.
Congress,.would be weakened.
Finally, and perhaps most telling, the
proposed harmonized standards would
operate as a ceiling but not as a floor for
environmental regulation. To illustrate:
Any country that established food-safety
standards tougher than international
norms, and applied those standards to
imports as well as domestic products,
would risk suffering retaliatory trade
sanctions; on the other hand, a country
that failed to live up to international
standards might lose access to certain
markets but would not be subject to
GATT sanctions.
New Imperatives
Recent developments in Eastern Europe
and the plight of many countries in the
Third World underscore the need to
reconsider current trade policies and
agreements and to hammer out new,
equitable policies that promote
sustainable patterns of development.
GATT initiatives must be developed
quickly to make environmental
protection and sustainable resource
management explicit and central themes
of any new or renegotiated trade
agreement.
It is not too late to inject these
imperatives into current trade
negotiations. While the details will need
considerable work, several general
principles can be identified:
• The right of all countries to
determine, in good faith, their own
environmental and resource policies
free from the threat of trade sanctions
• The right of all countries to protect
domestic producers from competition in
which advantage is gained at the
expense of the environment
• The need for international
environmental standards to operate as a
floor rather than as a ceiling: They
should set a minimum level of
environmental regulation that all must
meet
• The need for a new approach to trade
negotiations and dispute resolution that
is more open, democratic, and
accountable
• The imperative to thoroughly
consider the environmental
consequences of trade proposals before
commitments are made to them.
If trade policies continue to be
advanced without regard for their
environmental consequences, the result
will be agreements that inhibit or defeat
much-needed progress on the
environment. The task before us is to
define the relationships between trade
and the environment, and having done
so, to develop trade agreements that will
sustain our ecosystem, rather than
destroy it. o
JULY/AUGUST 1990
19
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Economic Aid and the Environment
by Robert Repetto
Protecting the world's atmosphere
against further damage is in all
nations' interest, but all nations simply
do not have equal resources to deploy
in this effort. Consider, for instance, that
roughly one-third of the 59 parties to
the Montreal Protocol on Substances
that Deplete the Ozone Layer are
developing countries—most of which
are desperately short of capital.
The Montreal Protocol's
budget incorporates a sliding scale so
that developing countries can take part
on an equal footing with industrialized
nations: For instance, Singapore pays
$1,500 a year, but has the same
membership rights as the United States,
which pays $300,000. Also, to help
developing-country signatories meet
their obligations under the regime,
Protocol members are establishing a
$100-million fund, which would double
to $200 million if significant holdouts
such as India and China should join.
So far, international efforts to control
climate change have concentrated on
clarifying scientific uncertainties.
However, a handful of nations have
made commitments to stabilizing or
reducing their greenhouse-gas
emissions. In mid-June 1990, West
Germany became the first major
industrialized nation to formally adopt a
carbon-dioxide (CO2) reduction goal
and a timetable: By 2005, West Germany
aims to cut emissions to 25 percent
below their 1987 level. The Netherlands
plans to gradually stabilize CO2
emissions so that its 1995 emissions do
not exceed today's level; the United
Kingdom has set an analogous goal for
2005. Japan announced in mid-June that
it will stabilize greenhouse-gas
emissions at the "lowest possible level"
by 2000.
The forthcoming final report by the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change may provide firmer
underpinnings for future international
negotiations. But the point is that
whatever the North finally does to
reduce its impact on the atmosphere
will be canceled out unless the South
takes complementary actions. Developing
(Dr. Repetto is Director of economic
research programs at the World
Resources Institute in Washington, DC.j
countries now account for 45 percent of
annual greenhouse-gas emissions; their
share will grow rapidly if economic and
population forecasts are borne
out—unless their technologies and use
of resources are transformed drastically.
Clearly, it is in the North's interest to
help the financially strapped countries
of the South protect the global
environment, just as it has been in the
North's interest to promote economic
development in the South. Moreover,
the guiding principle here is mutual
interest, not compensation. The reality
is that developing countries are highly
dependent on natural resources for
employment, income, and exports. Over
much of the developing world, the
deterioration of the natural-resource
base is already impeding development
programs and causing much human
suffering. The synthesis of
environmental and economic
imperatives popularly called
"sustainable development" must become
a reality, not just a slogan, if these
countries are to meet the growing
challenges they face.
The North can promote this necessary
transformation by providing the South
access to new financing. There is an
urgent need over the next decade for an
added $20 to $50 billion per year to
fund initiatives that will help
developing countries help
themselves—and help protect the global
commons as well.
Where will this new money come
from, and what mechanisms can
facilitate its North-to-South flow? My
colleagues and I at World Resources
Institute tackled these questions last
year in Natural Endowments: Financing
Resource Conservation for Development,
a report commissioned by the United
Nations Development Programme.
Happily, as discussed below, real-world
applications are already in the offing for
two of the basic mechanisms we
explored: a "green" or "Ecovest"
investment fund and a global
environmental fund or "facility." In
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EPA JOURNAL
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addition, we suggested bilateral debt
forgiveness by industrial-country
governments as a means for enlarging
the scale of debt-for-nature swaps, and
some movement on this front also seems
possible.
Ecovest
Developing countries have suffered
inordinately from destructive
investment schemes that yield quick
profits to a wealthy few, while
desolating the land and further
impoverishing the many who are poor.
But economic ventures that use natural
resources without degrading them can
protect the environment and yield
attractive long-term profits to investors;
local peoples and developing-country
economies benefit at the same time.
To identify such investment
opportunities and bring together local
entrepreneurs, foreign technological
inputs, and suitable financial packages,
World Resources Institute proposed a
Ivan Ussech photo Rainforest Alliance.
specialized investment banking
intermediary, Ecovest. By combining
venture-capitalist entrepreneurial skills
with ecological wisdom, such an
investment intermediary could prove
that conservation pays—and can
continue to pay for a long time to come.
In addition, by catalyzing more private
investment than it directly commands,
it could have an impact
disproportionate to its capital base.
The Ecovest idea is getting its first
trial in Eastern Europe, where enormous
pollution problems were revealed in the
wake of the historic political events of
the past year. Air- and water-borne
pollutants from this part of the world
drift into the Nordic countries. The
Nordic Investment Bank has responded
by creating an environmental
investment fund, the Nordic
Environmental Finance Corporation
(NEFCO), which will begin making
investments in Czechoslovakia, East
Germany, Hungary, Poland, and the
Soviet Union later this year.
NEFCO will back joint ventures
between Nordic and Eastern European
partners to create productive
capabilities that will help these Eastern
European countries solve their
environmental problems. Needed
equipment will be produced within
each country, taking advantage of lower
production costs in Eastern Europe.
Since NEFCO is financing high-risk
ventures, the Nordic governments are
putting up its initial share capital of $47
million. After a six-year probationary
period, they will decide whether to
make NEFCO permanent.
In addition, in July, the U.S. Overseas
Private Investment Corporation (OPIC)
launched another Ecovest variation: a
$100-million Environmental Investment
Fund, privately owned and managed,
Funding mechanisms such as
"debt-for-nature" swaps can provide
developing countries with means to protect
their resource base. Pictured is a rain forest
on the (vory Coast in Africa, an example of
the resource treasures in the Third World.
that will invest in environmentally
sustainable enterprises in the
developing world and Eastern Europe.
The fund's project menu—sustainable
agriculture, forest management,
ecotourism, renewable and alternative
energy, and pollution prevention—makes
it the first for-profit fund ever to
deal with the "green" end
of the environmental spectrum in
developing countries, as opposed to
"brown" issues such as pollution
control and waste management. Besides
being environmentally and
economically profitable, qualified
enterprises must have significant
business ties with U.S. enterprises.
OPIC expects to begin marketing limited
partnerships to corporate investors in
September 1990. The fund is slated to
be fully capitalized by early 1991 and
wholly invested in projects in the $3- to
SB-million range by 1994.
Proving that sustainable development
pays is critical if the Environmental
Investment Fund is to inspire additional
private-sector investment in the future.
Therefore, OPIC plans to spend
considerable sums on post-investment
studies that evaluate how "green" the
fund's projects are in terms of returns to
investors as well as the environment.
Debt-for-Nature Swaps
Typically, a debt-for-nature swap is an
agreement between nongovernmental
organizations (NGOs) and governments
to buy part of a developing country's
debt from commercial banks at deep
discounts. These donors then exchange
the debt they've bought for an agreed
amount of the debtor country's local
currency, often paid in bonds. The
bonds can then be used to finance
long-term conservation measures,
typically undertaken by the debtor
country's environmental NGOs. Since
the idea was first proposed in 1984,
debt-for-nature swaps have been carried
out in Bolivia, Ecuador, Costa Rica, the
Philippines, Zambia, and Madagascar.
However, all these swaps have dealt
with commercial bank debt (private
debt)—not with debts owed to other
countries (public debt) or to multilateral
development banks.
So far, the largest impact has been in
Costa Rica. In just two years, Costa Rica
converted $69 million (or nearly 5
percent of the debt it owes to foreign
JULY/AUGUST 1990
21
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commercial banks) into $33 million in
local currency bonds that are supporting
parks and protected areas, public and
private institution-building, and
reforestation. A series of debt-for-nature
swaps funded by $10 million in private
donations from American and European
NGOs, plus the Swedish and Dutch
governments, helped Costa Rica make
this possible. The benefits to Costa Rica
are threefold: First, its external debt has
been reduced; second, the leverage of
debt exchanges multiplying donated
funds into local currency payments has
attracted new money; finally, better
parks and more reforestation are likely
to bring benefits such as more tourist
trade, better watershed protection for
the hydroelectric system, and stronger
institutional capability to carry out new
environmental programs.
In some circumstances, swaps trading
public debt for conservation programs
could help developing countries meet
environmental challenges. Already
donor countries have realistically
written off a good deal of the debt owed
by African countries, mostly without
conditionalities. The United States and
other Northern governments should go
one step further and convert an
additional fraction of the poorest
countries' public debt into local
currency bonds along the lines of a
debt-for-nature swap.
On June 27, 1990, President Bush
announced the Enterprise for the
Americas Initiative, a major trade,
investment, and debt package that
entails some moves in this direction.
Under the debt-relief part of this plan,
the Administration is proposing to write
off substantial fractions of the $7 billion
that the most heavily indebted Latin
American countries have borrowed at
below-market rates from U.S.
government agencies. To facilitate
debt-for-nature swaps, the United States
will also sell at discount rates part of
the $5 billion in market-rate loans owed
by middle-income Latin American
countries. The Administration's plan to
let some countries pay interest on their
debts to the United States in local
currencies—and then use those
payments to finance conservation
programs—would be especially useful
in aiding environmental progress in
countries where the United States now
has no bilateral assistance programs.
Global Environment Fund
Early this year, the World Bank began
discussing a Global Environment Fund
along the lines suggested in Natural
Endowments. In May, the Bank publicly
proposed creating such a fund as a
three-year pilot project that would lend
from $300 to $400 million a year to
support environmental projects in the
developing world and Eastern Europe.
World Bank donors would contribute
the initial capital, and the fund would
be managed cooperatively by the Bank,
the United Nations Development
Programme, and the United Nations
Environment Programme.
Developing countries have
suffered inordinately from
destructive investment
schemes that yield quick
profits to a wealthy few ....
The Global Environment Fund would
differ from existing World Bank
programs in two important ways. First,
so-called middle-income countries, such
as Brazil or Poland, that have enormous
environmental problems could borrow
money from this new fund at low
interest rates—rather than the rates the
Bank usually charges them, which are
nearly as high as those charged by
commercial banks. Second, the new
fund would support projects targeted at
global environmental problems, unlike
existing World Bank environmental
investments, which tend to support
national action plans to improve
resource management and control local
environmental degradation. Through
such a fund, lending countries can share
the costs of efforts in developing
countries to mitigate global
environmental problems. The Global
Environmental Fund's top priorities
would include protecting the ozone
layer, controlling greenhouse gases, and
curbing deforestation and
desertification; however, loans might
also be available for cleaning up
pollution in Eastern Europe and in
regional seas and international rivers.
Unfortunately, the U.S. government
has not yet endorsed the Global
Environment Fund, saying instead that
existing World Bank funds should be
reprogrammed. However, given the huge
net capital outflows from the developing
countries, these countries will not
interpret an initiative that merely
rearranges existing aid flows as genuine
cost-sharing by the North. France and
other European nations are willing to
provide resources for the fund, but the
plan is unlikely to get very far unless
the United States also contributes.
The fund's chances of success also
depend on its credibility in the eyes of
developing countries, a judgment that
will focus on "additionality."
(Additionality, as the term suggests, is
the extent to which these funds for
global environmental protection are
added to whatever assistance is already
available.)
In mid-June, the Bush administration
reversed its month-long opposition to
the $100-million international fund to
help developing countries end their use
of ozone-depleting chemicals. Similar
enlightenment regarding the Global
Environment Fund would go a long way
toward restoring U.S. credibility as an
environmental leader.
Although useful, the environmental
funding mechanisms discussed above
are not, in themselves, enough. A more
far-reaching future initiative might, for
example, extend the "bubble" or
emissions-trading principle pioneered
under the Clean Air Act to the global
environment. In order to stabilize the
greenhouse-gas content of the
atmosphere, current emissions must be
cut by over 50 percent. Faced with such
stringent requirements, Northern
sources might find it advantageous to
finance abatement measures in the
South. One U.S. energy company is
already offsetting its CO2 emissions by
financing reforestation projects in
Guatemala.
If the North, which presently
generates most of the world's
climate-altering emissions, comes to
accept the necessity of substantial
abatement, there will be strategic
decisions to make. Countries of the
North may well find that the most
cost-effective way of reducing the
greenhouse-gas burden is by financing
investments in energy efficiency,
reforestation, and clean technologies in
the developing countries of the South, a
22
EPA JOURNAL
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The Challenge
to International Law and Institutions
by Scott Hajost
The last two decades have witnessed a
growing recognition that no part of
the globe is immune from the
environmental consequences of
activities carried out elsewhere. This
awareness has emphasized the need for
nations to cooperate at the global,
regional, and bilateral levels. To use a
term coined by legal scholars and
brought to popular attention by the
Polish trade movement, there is a
pressing need for international
"solidarity" to preserve our forests,
safeguard our oceans, and stabilize the
Earth's atmosphere. However, reaching
agreement on protecting the global
commons is especially challenging
becaus"e the benefits and the costs are
difficult to define from the individual
nation's point of view.
The international community has
made impressive gains in meeting the
challenge. Since the 1972 Stockholm
Conference, an array of international
agreements on environmental issues has
been developed. The United Nations
Environment Programme (UNEP) has
led two major negotiations on
ozone-layer depletion and one on
hazardous-waste exports, and has served
as a secretariat to these and numerous
other international agreements.
A key outcome of the Conference was
(Hajost is a senior attorney at the
Environmental Defense Fund and a
former Acting Associate Administrator
for InternationaJ Activities at EPA.)
its "Stockholm Declaration," which
defined a number of principles of
international environmental law. The
most significant and widely cited is
Principle 21, which states that while
countries have the right to develop, they
have an obligation not to damage the
environment outside their borders. This
includes not only other countries, but
the oceans and Antarctica. In the view
of many scholars, this principle now
represents customary international law;
law established by the pronouncements
and practices of states. Its application,
however, to certain international
problems is not clear cut. In the case of
global warming, for example, it is not
easy to delineate the impact of a
specific country.
Critical events in which nations
clearly perceive a common interest and
require concerted international
cooperation can lead to rapid
developments in international law.
Major oil spills in the 1960s and 1970s
led the International Maritime
Organization to reach agreements
rapidly on oil-spill liability and on
regulating oil discharges from ships.
The Montreal Protocol was negotiated,
entered into force, and amended in
record time in response to scientific
information on damage to the ozone
layer by synthetic chemicals. The Basel
Convention's conclusion was expedited
by the discovery that hazardous waste
and incinerator ash were being exported
to a dumpsite in Nigeria. And in the
aftermath of the Chernobyl nuclear
accident, the International Atomic
Energy Agency rapidly concluded new
treaties on notification and assistance. A
key feature codified the responsibility of
a state to notify others if there was risk
of transboundary damage.
International agreements, however,
are not an end in themselves. Adopting
and signing an agreement are only the
beginning. The true test is whether the
parties carry out their obligations. This
raises issues of verification and
enforcement. Generally speaking, the
more significant the obligations are, the
more serious the attention paid to
determining compliance. A number of
tools have been developed, including
reporting procedures, monitoring
systems, and dispute-settlement
mechanisms. They will be important in
developing a treaty on climate change
that will ensure the reliability of
emissions data and compliance with
agreed-upon controls.
There have been occasions in which
nations have adopted non-binding
guidelines, principles, or
recommendations to control behavior.
International lawyers call this soft law.
A good example is the work of the Food
and Agriculture Organization and UNEP
in developing guidelines for trade in
pesticides and industrial chemicals.
Over time this soft law may evolve into
customary law through practice, or it
may be codified in new agreements. For
hazardous waste exports, UNEP first
MIKE PETERS Reprinted by Permission: Tribune Media Services.
JULY/AUGUST 1990
23
-------
developed guidelines, then a
convention.
Ensuring the full participation of
developing countries is critical to
making international agreements work,
and that raises the difficult issue of
equity. If we are to succeed in
protecting the world's forests,
conserving biological diversity, and,
probably most important of all, limiting
global warming, we will have to be
creative in transferring technology and
in providing funding to developing
countries. We will have to help educate
them on the problems so that when they
come to the negotiating table, they can
participate effectively.
The problem of global warming,
which cuts across issues critical to both
developing and developed countries and
which is scheduled for treaty
negotiations in 1992, is the greatest
challenge in front of us. If we are to face
up to it, institutions will have to be
strengthened and decision-making will
have to be streamlined. Some have
called for the creation of new authority
for international institutions, authority
that transcends traditional
sovereign-nation decision-making.
Procedures providing for rapid changes
of agreement through technical annexes
have moved us in this direction. The
Montreal Protocol has taken us a step
further by providing for certain
decisions to be binding on a nation even
if it does not approve of
them—provisions similar to those in
national legislation. We may see an
expanded role for the World Court in
settling environmental disputes.
While progress has certainly been
made in those cases in which the
scientific nature and the economic and
technical implication of a problem have
been conceded, in the case of global
warming, where there is a lack of
consensus, the way forward is slow.
Lawyers and institutions can catalyze,
but they cannot mandate what nations
will accept.
The 1992 United Nations Conference
on Environment and Development in
Brazil will be a milepost for the
international community and a
benchmark for the future. International
law and institutions will play a key role
in mobilizing resources for a collective
response to the threats to our planet as
we enter the next century, o
International Agreements
Marine Environment
London Ocean Dumping
Convention, a direct outcome of
the Stockholm Conference,
regulates the disposal of wastes in
the world's oceans. One
unresolved issue is whether the
oceans can be used for disposal of
radioactive wastes, including
decommissioned U.S. nuclear
submarines.
International Convention for the
Prevention of Marine Pollution
from Ships (MARPOLJ regulates
the discharge of oil, chemicals,
and garbage, including plastics,
from ships. The convention will
play an increasing role in the
problem of marine debris,
including debris in the Gulf of
Mexico.
United Nations Environment
Programme's Regional Seas
Program is a broad
marine-conservation treaty with
supporting legal arrangements. It
has sparked a series of regional
agreements for the United States
concerning such areas as the Gulf
of Mexico, Caribbean, and South
Pacific. These agreements are the
only ones currently addressing the
increasing problem of land-based
pollution of the seas.
3982 United Nations Convention
on the Law of the Sea is not in
force. The United States objects to
the convention's seabed-mining
provision.
Wildlife and Habitat
1973 Convention on International
Trade in Endangered Species
(CITES] regulates all international
trade in endangered species. The
protection of the African elephant
through bans on ivory trade is a
recent initiative.
1973 Ramsar Convention on
Wetlands is an increasingly
recognized vehicle for conserving
wetlands worldwide.
Atmosphere
Vienna Convention on the
Protection of the Ozone Layer and
its Montreal Protocol is a global
effort on reducing ozone depletion.
Parties to the protocol met in June
1990 to strengthen the controls on
depleting substances and establish
financial assistance for developing
countries.
Convention on Long-Range
Transboundary Air Pollution and
its protocols controlling
nitrogen-oxide and sulfur-dioxide
emissions cover the United States
and Europe.
Hazardous-Waste Export
A global treaty on exports of
hazardous waste was adopted in
1989 in Basel, Switzerland, but is
not yet in force.
Antarctica
1959 Antarctic Treaty and related
instruments have sparked a
substantial body of law. The 1988
agreement, not yet in effect, would
regulate mineral exploitation. More
recent proposals would turn
Antarctica into a wilderness park
and ban mineral activities.
International Institutions
United Nations Environment
Programme fUNEPJ: See text.
International Maritime
Organization (1MO) is set up to
control marine pollution, primarily
from ships, and serves MARPOL
and the London Ocean Dumping
Convention agreements.
Food and Agriculture Organization
(FAOJ deals with forestry,
fisheries, and pesticide issues.
Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development
(OECDj consists of the United
States, Canada, Western Europe,
Australia, New Zealand, and
Japan. It is empowered to make
binding decisions. Its primary
successes have been in developing
international environmental law.
United Nations Economic
Commission for Europe (ECEj
develops East-West treaties on
environmental impact assessment
and protection of watercourses.
Multilateral Development Banks
include the World Bank and are
crucial in protecting the
environment through lending
policies.
World Conservation Union is a
combined governmental/
nongovernmental institution that
plays a significant role servicing
agreements, including those on
Earth's biological diversity.
24
EPA JOURNAL
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National Sovereignty
and Environmental Imperatives:
Two Views
by Fred Lee Smith, Jr.
The earJy federal experience with
environmental protection in the
United States repeatedly illustrated
that, as a rule, the individual states had
a built-in conflict of interest: They felt
responsible for their citizens' health, but
to compete with their neighbors in
attracting industry and ;obs, it seemed
they were best served by a laissez-faire
posture in environmental regulations.
The solution was to impose the same
federal standards on all, thereby
eliminating the environmental element
from the competition.
Now that the Earth faces global
environmental problems, aren't the
world's governments impaled on the
horns of basically the same dilemma?
To reach viable solutions, must national
sovereignty and national security as
such give way? Are international
standards necessary—standards that
apply equally to all nations?
EPA Journal asked two key observers
of international economics and
environmental issues to respond to the
questions posed in the preceding two
paragraphs. Their commentaries follow:
Concerns about the greenhouse effect,
the ozone layer, the loss of
biodiversity, and the tropical rain
forests have led to calls for "globalizing"
environmental policy. Just as the U.S.
EPA was created to assume control of
state and local environmental affairs, we
now need a global environmental
protection agency to protect Mother
Earth, the argument goes. Only
centralization, it appears, can eliminate
the conflict of interest that forces
nation-states to choose between
environmental quality and economic
growth.
However, before rushing to turn in
our citizenship papers, we should
consider what was sacrificed in
federalizing U.S. environmental policy
and whether global institutions are
likely to advance global environmental
(Smith heads the Competitive Enterprise
Institute, a pro-market public interest
group. Jane S. Shaw, Senior Associate
of the Political Economy Research
Center, assisted in the preparation of
this article.)
W:de World Photo
goals. First, consider the U.S.
experience under federalized
environmental policy.
Prior to federalization, the states, like
nations today, varied widely in their
interest in environmental issues and
their economic ability to resolve them.
More environmental quality (a "good
thing") had to be traded off against more
economic wealth (also a "good thing").
States that emphasized environmental
quality to the detriment of economic
growth could lose their tax base. The
impact of their choices was felt clearly
and directly.
Once EPA was formed, however, the
pressure to make tradeoffs disappeared.
People cannot simply move away from
their country the way they can move
from state to state. Federalization made
it easier to spend more money, to
mandate costly private expenditures on
pollution controls, and to impose
uniform standards across a very diverse
nation. Whether this was something that
the American people wanted is unclear.
Indeed, whether federal policy has even
advanced environmental goals is
unclear. Urban air remains polluted;
most of our waters are not much
cleaner.
Federalization separated people from
power by creating an additional layer of
bureaucracy and making it harder to
enlist people in the fight for a quality
ecology. In principle, environmental
policy is made only after "public:
participation." In reality, most people
lack the time and interest to affect
public policy, to become expert on such
issues as whether efficient refrigerants
should be banned or what the future of
the Amazon basin should be. Those
devoting the time to such pursuits are
highly motivated, either because of
economic interests or ideological
commitment. Such groups are unlikely
to represent the views of the public at
Held in Stockholm in June 1972, the United
Nations Conference on the Human
Environment heralded a growing
international perspective on environmental
problems. The author is concerned about
the possible "globalization" of
environmental policy.
25
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large; yet, in a politicized setting their
voices are the ones most likely to
prevail.
Federalization weakened the principle
that polluters should bear all
environmental damage costs. Politically
well-connected polluters—older firms
and city governments, for example—are
treated far more leniently than oil,
chemical, or other "pariah" polluters.
Political status, rather than damage to
the environment, becomes the metric for
apportioning responsibility. Of course,
this tendency makes a mockery of the
major goal of centralization, uniform
treatment of all polluters.
This politicization has caused EPA's
resources to be diverted to low-priority
environmental goals such as eliminating
asbestos in school buildings, even in the
face of research suggesting that it would
be safer to leave the asbestos in place, or
cleaning up abandoned waste sites
posing minimal risk. Politics has too
often used new environmental
arguments to justify old pork-barrel
programs. EPA's 1987 publication,
Unfinished Business, documents the
resulting misprioritization.
Moreover, federalization, in effect,
closed down the states as environmental
policy laboratories, discouraging the
experimentation that by now would
have yielded a wide range of less costly
and less complex remedies. Also, EPA
has become a monopoly supplier of
information on environmental risks.
Without state experimentation and
without local sources of dissenting
information, mistakes occur on a grand
scale. An open and experimental
program would have been far more
valuable to the Third World.
Indeed, our current policies have little
applicability to the rest of the world.
U.S. environmental policies depend
heavily on the expenditure of vast sums,
the mobilization of armies of
technicians, a civil service largely
immune to bribery, and an independent
citizen environmental movement. U.S.
environmental policies are possible only
because Americans are wealthy and
reasonably well-educated and because
America retains a reasonably honest
bureaucracy and a tradition of
respecting minority viewpoints. These
prerequisites are rare in much of the
world.
Globalization is all too likely to
follow the path we have seen with
federalization. Narrow, vocal interests
will hold sway, and the concerns of the
organized environmental groups will
probably prevail over those of Third
Worlders. We are likely to emphasize
Economic central planning has
failed. Why should we expect
ecological central planning to
do any better?
the eradication of trace pesticide levels
rather than the improvement of basic
diets and to be concerned with
disposing of "hazardous" wastes rather
than treating disease-carrying
contaminated water. Globalization, like
federalization, is likely to mean that
environmental priorities will be set by
the shrill rather than the serious.
Too, the lack of world government
means that enforcement of global
environmental polices will not be easy.
International environmental agreements
take the form of treaties, official
promises by one government to another.
History does not encourage us to expect
such promises always to be honored.
Indeed, the OPEC experience suggests
that nations find it hard to enforce
agreements even when they share
common goals. A global warming
treaty—given that warming will create
widely varying costs and benefits among
nations—would be far more complex to
enforce. Moreover, America's disastrous
record of negotiating international
agreements in such areas as trade and
telephone service does not indicate that
the United States will fare well under a
global environmental regime.
This rush to globalize public policy is
not new. Some years ago, a major push
was made to erase poverty by global
means. The Brandt report recommended
that the developed countries transfer
large quantities of wealth to the Third
World; the obvious international
agencies—the World Bank, the
International Monetary Fund, the
United Nations—responded. These are
also the agencies that supposedly will
protect and enhance the global
environment. Unfortunately, the track
record of these agencies in the economic
area provides little justification for
optimism in the ecological sphere.
Although these agencies spent vast
sums to reduce global poverty, Third
World conditions have improved little.
Economic central planning has failed.
Why should we expect ecological
central planning to do any better?
Indeed, globalization may divert
nations from taking appropriate local
action, encouraging them to count on
others to make the difficult decisions
needed to solve their internal
environmental problems. Only a nation
can reform its own legal and economic
policies to empower its people to
protect its environment. Moreover, as
anthropologist John Cordell in A Sea of
Small Boats notes, many Third World
countries have a rich tradition of
"rational, often elegant and ingenious
solutions" to natural resource
management problems. Globalization
may well ensure that these solutions are
ignored.
Globalization sends us in the wrong
direction. Like federalization, it makes it
too easy for politicians to operate in a
fantasy world, where costs are
irrelevant, where technologies spring
forth by legislative decree, and where
ideology can triumph over economic
and environmental reality. Before
advancing this approach, globalization
proponents should rethink the advice
offered long ago by Rene DuBois that we
think globally, but act locally! a
26
EPA JOURNAL
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... Two Views
(Continued)
by Jessica Tuchman Mathews
That individual American states were
"best served by a Jaissez-faire
posture in environmental regulations" is
a flawed premise. States that welcomed
polluting industries did indeed accrue
short-term benefits in the shape of jobs
and tax revenues. Over the longer term,
however, these benefits were far
outweighed by the costs of health care,
productivity losses due to
environmentally caused illness, and the
cost of cleaning up polluted water and
land. The tradeoff turned out to be a
Faustian bargain.
One of the notable developments of
the past decade or two has been the
growing recognition that the same
pattern holds true on an international
scale. Countries differ widely in their
commitment to environmental
protection and in their readiness—and
capacity—to spend governmental dollars
on it. But in sharp contrast to the
situation only a short while ago, no
country now sees it as being in its
national interest to attract international
business or investment by becoming a
so-called pollution haven.
While many countries lack the
bureaucratic capacity, the political will,
or the fiscal ability to strengthen weak
environmental regulations, few see
weakness in this area as a national
asset. The tragic lessons of Bhopal and
Cubatao, Brazil's "Valley of Death,"
have been well learned.
Bhopal has become a household word
for industrial disaster, but Cubatao, a
slow-motion industrial disaster brought
on by extreme concentration of
industries with lax or nonexistent
pollution controls, is less well known.
Cubatao was so polluted by industrial
poisons during the 1970s and early
1980s that hundreds died and
emergency evacuations became
commonplace. Even without an accident
or extreme concentration of industry in
(Dr. Mathews is Vice President of the
World Resources Institute, a center for
policy research on global resource and
environmental issues, located in
Washington, DC.J
Global warming may spawn increasingly violent weather, among other effects. The
author argues that the imperatives of controlling humanity's impacts on the planet are
changing traditional concepts of national security. Pictured is Typhoon June, near
Guam, photographed by NASA's Nimbus System.
one place, the chronic and worsening
environmental crisis in Eastern Europe
stands as a stark warning of the
long-term costs of industrializing
without paying adequate attention to
environmental protection.
That said, the calculus of determining
national posture towards environmental
regulation is evolving, in part because
environmental imperatives are changing
the concept of national sovereignty. The
post-postwar era is still unnamed, but
its defining characteristics are clear:
multipolarity, replacing the bipolar
U.S.-U.S.S.R. axis around which nations
used to array themselves; economic
interdependence; and diverse invasions
of national sovereignty.
Putting these trends together, it is
likely that international problem-solving
in the decades ahead will for the first
time depend on collective management,
not hegemony. And it is to precisely
this form of governance that global
environmental problems will yield.
Global environmental trends—loss of
species, ozone depletion, deforestation
on a scale that affects world climate,
and accelerating buildup of greenhouse
gases—all pose potentially serious
JULY/AUGUST 1990
27
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losses to national economies, defy
solution by one or a few countries, and
render geographic borders irrelevant. By
definition, then, they pose a major
challenge to national sovereignty.
In this the environmental trends are
not alone. Many policies and practices
once considered purely domestic
matters now spill over into the
international arena. The integration of
the global economy—with its
internationalization of markets, sources
of supply, and capital—makes industry
increasingly mobile, thereby
undercutting governments' rights to tax
and regulate.
In a very different domain,
governments' treatment of their own
citizens, which was once viewed as
strictly a domestic matter, is now held
to be within the realm of international
law. The boundary-erasing effects of
remote-sensing technologies and
telecommunications developments are
also evident, one consequence of which
is the rising influence of a body of
international public opinion.
The notion of what constitutes
national security is also changing. In its
original military sense, national security
was a zero-sum concept: The more
secure one nation became, the less
secure grew another. (The distinction
between offensive and defensive
military expenditures never held up
since one country's defensive buildup
looks like preparation for war in the
eyes of its enemy.) As the concept of
national security broadened in the
1970s to include economic strength, the
element of common security gained
ground, as exemplified, for instance, by
efforts to manage monetary policy
cooperatively and to achieve free trade.
Environmental concerns shift the
center of gravity still further toward
common security. Global environmental
degradation threatens nations' economic
potential and thereby their internal
political stability. But the potential
fallout goes far beyond economics.
Ozone depletion may put their citizens'
For both economic and
environmental reasons, the
notion of collective global
security is slowly replacing
that of individually defined
national security.
health at risk because of increased
ultraviolet radiation. The worst-case
scenarios associated with global
warming call into question some
nations' very existence—the biggest
national security threat of all.
Thus for both economic and
environmental reasons, the notion of
collective global security is slowly
replacing that of individually defined
national security. Nation states are not
going to disappear, nor is world
government in the offing. But nations
are seeing irrefutable evidence that their
future well-being rests increasingly on
actions taken far from their shores, an
insight that is putting an unprecedented
premium on international cooperation.
The idea that nations might gain from
competing in the environmental realm,
either by becoming pollution havens or
by hoping to emerge as a "winner" from
global climate change, has little support.
Instead, nations are acting as though
they believe that they have a strong
mutual interest in cooperation, as
demonstrated most spectacularly by the
tightened chlorofluorocarbon and
financing agreements under the
Montreal treaty reached by 93 nations
meeting in London in June 1990.
Turning.this mutual interest into
effective international environmental
management remains a distant goal. The
answer does not lie in a vain attempt to
apply uniform environmental standards
to a community of nations whose
members differ by one hundredfold in
per-capita income and have vastly
different cultures, climates, religions,
resources, and attitudes towards nature.
Instead, answers will be found only
through institutional innovations as
sweeping as those that inaugurated the
postwar period we're now emerging
from. The present international system
was set up to preserve the status quo
and to manage and contain conflict. The
new system that will allow us to deal
with the problems ahead must be
designed to catalyze cooperation.
Instead of the glacial pace required to
negotiate treaties that set particular
performance standards, we need fluid
international processes that can respond
quickly to changes in scientific
understanding and that set all nations
moving in the same direction at
whatever pace is realistic for each
nation's particular circumstances.
Scientific theories and economic,
political, and environmental
perturbations are all in a constant state
of flux. Only a new institutional agility
can keep international environmental
governance closely attuned to these
changing realities and ensure the best
possible outcome, o
28
EPA JOURNAL
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NASA photo
Demographers estimate
that at the current rate of
growth, the world population
will double in Jess than 40
years. Some experts are
convinced that unless this
population explosion is
brought under control, efforts
to come to grips with global
environmental problems are
bound to fail. Are they
correct? Should programs
like the United Nations
Population Fund be
revitalized and expanded? Or
should the population factor
not be considered in
proposing solutions? EPA
Journal posed these questions
to six key observers in the
population field. Their
responses follow:
Nafis Sadik
1
When Thomas Malthus
observed at the close of
the 18th century that
population growth might
threaten food supply, our
current world population of
5.3 billion would have been
literally unimaginable to him.
Even 150 years later, it was
hard for Paul Ehrlich and the
other prophets of the
"Population Bomb" to
swallow; they thought that
civilization would come to
an end first.
Yet here we are in 1990,
ticking along at an extra 92
million a year and rising;
expecting 6.25 billion people
by the end of the century, 8.5
billion by 2025, and a total of
maybe 10 or 11 billion by the
time growth finally stops.
Should we be worried?
The answer is; Yes, we
should. The momentum of
population growth is like that
of a giant oil tanker, slow to
develop, hard to turn, and
very hard to stop. The reefs
may be far ahead, but if you
haven't already stopped the
engines, you are going to run
aground. The momentum of
population is indeed slowing,
but quite gradually. Birth
rates are down in most parts
of the world, but simple
arithmetic means that annual
additions will continue to
rise until the end of the
century, and only then start
to decline. Population
growth, according to the
United Nations' most likely
projection, will not halt
altogether until about 2085.
Nearly all population
JULY/AUGUST 1990
growth, about 96 percent of
it, is in developing countries,
and the largest additions are
in the poorest countries."
Potentially, these new
arrivals are all contributors to
the solution; but they need at
least a 15-year supply of
food, clothing, health care.
and education before they
can begin to fulfill their
potential.
Already, most developing
countries are hard pressed.
Development strategies,
however successful and
sophisticated, cannot keep up
with populations growing at
3 to 4 percent a year, as they
are in most African countries.
Zimbabwe is one of Africa's
few success stories over the
last decade, with vigorous
development programs and
considerable international
assistance. Family planning
programs have been very
successful and growth rates
are now poised to fall below
3 percent.
Although we may be
able—theoretically—to
supply everyone's needs from
29
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the resources known to be
available, the Earth is not
merely a collection of
resources, but a vast and
complex life-support system.
It has enormous built-in
flexibility and capacity to
absorb punishment, but it is
showing signs of overload.
Damage to the ozone layer,
buildup of greenhouse gases
and toxic wastes, and
increasing acidification are
all symptoms. Most of the
burden of responsibility falls
on the "rich billion" people
in industrialized countries,
but developing countries, the
other 80 percent of the
population, are doing their
best to catch up.
Consider also the "bottom
billion," the fifth of the
world's population who live
in deepest poverty. Their
need is so desperate that they
are forced into a ferocious
assault on their environment
simply to survive. The
damage done by each
individual is small, but the
cumulative affects are
enormous. Look at the
equatorial rain forests, the
eroding river basins, the filth
and squalor of urban shanty
towns: Can the Earth survive
such a combination of
poverty and destruction?
This concerns all of us.
Clearly, development must
continue—if only because
poverty as well as wealth is
wrecking the ecological
balance. Equally,
development cannot proceed
on the basis of "business-as-
usual." There has to be an
all-out attack on the roots of
poverty. There has to be a
determined effort to find
technologies which permit
development without
despoiling the environment.
There also has to be an attack
on rapid population growth.
Governments representing
more then 90 percent of the
population of developing
countries are in favor of
slower population growth,
and they are acting to
achieve it, according to the
most recent survey by the
United Nations. The
international community
supports them: Last year in
Amsterdam, 79 countries
called for a doubling of the
funds going to population
programs worldwide, to
about $9 billion.
If this seems like a huge
amount of money, think of it
as less than 1 percent of the
global arms bill. If it still
seems like a lot, consider
what may happen if it isn't
found.
Ben J. Wattenberg
(Sadik is the Executive
Director of the United
Nations Population Fund.)
Due to recent
demographic trends in
less developed countries,
much of the argument about
the "population explosion"
has become moot. While
fertility rates were climbing,
or while those rates were
Demographic Terms and Definitions
Demographic Transition is
the historical shift of birth
and death rates from high to
low levels in a population.
The decline of mortality
usually precedes the decline
in fertility; thus rapid
population growth typically
occurs during the transition
period.
Population Momentum is
the tendency for population
growth to continue beyond
the juncture when
replacement-level fertility
(see below) is achieved.
Periods of high fertility
produce a relatively large
number of people who must
pass through childbearing
age before a stationary
population (or
zero-population growth) is
reached.
Total Fertility Rate is the
average number of children
that would be born alive to
a woman during her
lifetime if she follows
current age-specific patterns
of childbearing. It
represents the completed
family size of the "typical"
woman in a country.
Replacement-Level Fertility
is the level of fertility at
which couples have only
enough children to replace
themselves in the
population. The total
fertility rate is often used as
an indicator of
replacement-level fertility.
Because not all children
survive to reproductive
ages, the replacement-level
total fertility rate is
generally considered to be
2.1 children per woman.
Zero Population Growth
means a population in
equilibrium, achieved when
birth plus immigration
approximately equals death
plus emigration.
(Source: Population
Reference Bureau,
Population Handbook, 1988.J
essentially at a high plateau,
explosionists could cry
disaster. Opponents, on the
other hand, could maintain
that whatever problems
existed in those countries, be
they economic or
environmental, they were not
primarily demographic in
origin. Culture counts, we
anti-explosionists said: It's
what people do, not how
many there are or how fast
they reproduce, that makes
an economy sound or sick,
an environment healthy or
polluted.
But new fertility rates now
coming in show that we're
off the demographic plateau.
Total fertility rates have
either fallen dramatically, or
are now falling, typically
fairly rapidly, just about
everywhere.
It's been about two decades
since any major
industrialized nation,
including the United States,
has had a total fertility rate at
or above replacement-level
(see box).
Although from much
higher levels, Asian and
Latin American total fertility
rates have also been dropping
for several decades. During
the period 1960-65 to
1985-90, South Korea went
from 5.4 to 2.0; Indonesia,
from 5.4 to 3.3; India from
5.8 to 4.3; China, assisted by
coercive government policy,
from 5.4 to 2.0; Brazil from
6.1 to 3.5; and Mexico from
6.8 to 3.6.
Africa still has the highest
rates, but Egypt has fallen
from 7.1 to 4.8. A recent
fertility survey in other
African nations shows the
beginnings of a serious
decline even in Kenya, long
seen as the intractable
highest fertility country in
the world.
30
EPA JOURNAL
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Down, down, down. And
fertility rates are clearly
going to come down much,
much further as
modernization runs its
course.
Which is why the
argument is going to become
sterile. Those of us who
believe in supply-side
demography (culture counts)
never were against
international family planning
programs. Insofar as it is
responsible for lower fertility
rates, I applaud the effort.
And insofar as rates are
down because of economic
growth and modernization,
the explosionists should be
applauding and should
recant their snippy
characterization of our
position: "Capitalism is the
Best Contraceptive." It may
well be. The fact is both have
been operating together,
among families that have, in
any event, been deciding on
their own to lower their
fertility.
However, the built-in
demographic momentum of
earlier high-fertility rates will
produce an increase in the
total population, probably
doubling it by the middle of
next century. Can this
decline be speeded up?
Perhaps. Let's do what can be
done, but in a non-coercive
way.
Since the increase in total
population is already
programmed into the deck of
demographic momentum,
we're going to have to live
with it. If it's an
environmental disaster, we'll
have to cope until we reach,
first, stability, and then reach
what no one seems to
mention, the likely reduction
of human population toward
the end of next century.
If population growth is not
a key cause of environmental
degradation, which is what I
suspect and is the clear
conclusion of a 1986
blue-ribbon National
Academy of Science report,
we will still want to do the
best we can to let people
control their fertility.
We will be helped by
continuing economic
modernization, hopefully
accelerated due to the
sweeping global victory of
market economics. The
economic boost provided by
free-market philosophy may
prove to be as important to
lowering fertility as family
planning, and perhaps more
so. Are environmentalists
prepared to support market
incentives with the same
vigor that supply-siders
support contraceptive
programs?
(Waftenberg is a Senior
Fellow at the American
Enterprise Institute.)
Herman E. Daly
Human impact on the
environment is not
simply the product of the
impact of one person times
the total number of people.
All people and their impacts
are not equal. Rich people
use more matter and energy
per capita than do poor, and
thus one rich person is
equivalent to many poor
people in terms of load on
the environment.
Apparently affluence, not
poverty, is the big
environmental problem. Yet
we hear a lot about the close
connection between poverty
and environmental
degradation, and with reason.
Poverty hurts the
environment mainly because
there are so many more poor
people that their per-capita
consumption adds up. In
addition, the poor often are
forced to live on—and
overexploit—marginal land
for immediate survival at the
expense of the land's
long-run productivity.
Fertility among the poor is
also significantly higher than
for the rich. Unless direct
efforts are made to reduce
population growth, there will
be further degradation of the
environment, increases in
absolute poverty, and a
widening gap in the
distribution of income. And
the theory of demographic
transition, relied upon by
many to provide the
"automatic" solution to
population growth, is a false
hope.
Basically the demographic
transition theory says that as
poor people become rich they
will adopt the lower fertility
patterns of the rich. There is
some truth to this, but it is of
little relevance unless the
poor are actually becoming
richer. This is not happening
due to rapid population
growth among the poor
which keeps labor in
oversupply and wages low.
Even if it were true that the
fertility of the poor would
fall to the lower level of the
rich as the poor began to
consume more, there is still
the question of the
environmental impact of that
much extra consumption. If
the consumption of the
average Indian has to rise to
that of the average Swede for
Indian fertility to fall to the
Swedish level, then there is
not much hope for saving the
environment from total ruin.
Transition enthusiasts forget
that affluence is harder on
the environment than
poverty, other things being
equal. Population control is
essential—but we must
practice birth control for cars,
airplanes, buildings, etc., as
well as for people.
We must recognize that 10
billion lives are better than
five billion lives—as long as
they are not all lived
simultaneously! We should
strive to maximize the
cumulative number of lives
ever to be lived over time at
a per-capita standard of
resource consumption
sufficient for a good life. But
if we have too many people
and too much consumption
at any one time, we will
erode the Earth's long-run
carrying capacity and
therefore reduce the
population and standard of
consumption in all future
time periods. We will thus
reduce the cumulative total
of lives ever to be lived at a
decent level of consumption.
In the long run, it is the
neo-Malthusians who are
pro-life, not the population
and immigration boosters.
And even in the short run,
the consequence of
population and immigration
boosting is cheap labor'and a
lower standard of living for
workers, who constitute the
vast majority in every
country.
(Daly is a Senior Economist
in the World Bank's
Environment Department.
The views expressed here are
those of the author and
should in no way be
attributed to the World
Bank.)
Forum continued DM
Jic.xl put,'!1.
JULY/AUGUST 1990
31
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Barry Commoner
Both historic and current
population trends are
explained by the process
known as demographic
transition. Briefly stated,
rapid population growth is
the natural response to a
partial improvement in living
standards, one that reduces
the death rate without
creating the level of
economic security that
motivates a comparable
reduction in birth rate. After
a time, the birth rate also
begins to fall—if living
standards become high
enough to generate changes
such as increased education,
delayed marriage, and
reduced infant mortality, all
of which tend to reduce the
overall birth rate.
This pattern has occurred
universally in developed,
industrialized countries and
accounts for their nearly
stable populations. It is
currently occurring, although
more slowly, in many
developing countries.
The rapid population
growth that is characteristic
of developing countries is
largely due to their lack of
the economic: resources
needed to raise living
standards to levels that
enable the second,
population-stabilizing phase
of the demographic transition
to occur. Their predicament
is the unresolved residue of
the economic exploitation
these countries endured
during the period of
colonialism, which initiated
the first stage of the
demographic transition but
delayed the second.
Pressures on food supplies,
resources, and the
environment in developing
countries would be reduced
if birth rates were to decline
faster than they presently are.
Improvement in the standard
of living, and a resultant
decline in the birth rate,
would be hastened if the rate
of economic development
could be accelerated. If
development were based on
ecologically sound
technologies of production,
increased impact on
resources and the
environment could be
avoided.
These problems have a
common solution: the
elimination of poverty.
Poverty is the reason for the
failure thus far of developing
countries to stabilize their
populations. Poverty is the
reason why their peoples are
malnourished, sick, and
hungry. Poverty is the reason
why they experience such
difficulty in applying the
remedy: ecologically sound
economic development.
Poverty engenders poverty,
holding the efforts of
developing countries to
overcome its tragic effects in
a tight, nearly incapacitating
embrace.
In effect, colonialism has
determined the distribution
of both the world's wealth
and its human population,
accumulating most of the
wealth north of the equator
and most of the people south
of it. The only remedy, I am
convinced, is to return some
of the world's wealth to the
countries whose resources
and peoples have borne so
much of the burden of
producing it—the developing
nations.
Such reparations ought to
be paid not only in goods
but, more usefully, in the
means of producing them.
And the productive processes
should be those that correct
both the environmental and
economic defects of the
technologies that have
enveloped the global
ecosphere in pollution.
(Dr. Commoner is Director of
the Center for the Biology of
Natural Systems at Queens
College, City University of
New York.]
James T. McHugh
The doubling of world
population in the next 40
years is a projection that is
tenuous at best because most
demographers refrain from
projecting beyond 10 to 20
years. Nor is the doubling
alone the critical issue. One
has to consider a nation's
natural resources, financial
structure, workforce, and
productivity in assessing the
impact of population growth
rates.
Looking at the global
picture, one sees a variety of
population situations. Most
developed nations face the
problem of seriously
declining growth rates and
aging populations. With the
exception of Ireland, every
nation in Western Europe has
a birthrate below the
replacement level. Europe's
population is growing older
as its workforce continually
declines. The U.S. birthrate is
also below replacement level
and many sectors of the
workforce rely on immigrant
labor—legal or illegal.
In the developing nations,
population growth rates have
begun to decline and the
problem of rapid population
growth now exists in a small
number of countries, mostly
in sub-Saharan Africa and
Western Asia. The increase
in world growth rates from
1950 to 1970 was due
primarily to a decrease in
mortality, not to an explosion
of births.
Concern about
environmental problems was
expressed at both the 1974
and 1984 United Nations
World Population
conferences. There is general
agreement among population
specialists and ecologists that
environmental issues should
always be considered in the
context of socio-economic
development. The solution to
environmental problems
requires more careful
monitoring and control of
economic and production
strategies by the
industrialized countries,
since air and water
pollution—such as acid rain
and global warming—cross
geographic boundaries.
Industrialized countries also
influence developing nations
through their trade activities
and importation of natural
resources. Demographers and
economists increasingly
recognize that patterns of
production, consumption,
and economic activity,
particularly in the least
populated industrialized
countries, have more to do
with present ecological
problems than population
growth.
Two fundamental ethical
principles should inform our
strategies and guide our
32
EPA JOURNAL
-------
efforts: the integrity of all
creation and respect for
human life and human
dignity. We must come to
understand that the goods of
the Earth are part of the
heritage of the entire human
family.
Thus, there is an urgent
need for a new solidarity
among nations as a first step
toward global protection of
the environment. This calls
for a strengthening of
cooperation and peaceful
relations among all nations
and an end of hostility and
the arms race.
It also includes a
worldwide effort to correct
the structural forms of
poverty that exist throughout
the world, especially in the
poorer nations. And it
requires the affluent nations
to take a careful look at their
lifestyles, particularly the
demand for instant
gratification and unlimited
consumption.
It is not simply a matter of
counting heads and
proclaiming that there are too
many people. Rather it is a
matter of adjusting our
lifestyles and global strategies
to protect, enhance, and
sustain human life as well as
the global environment.
Dr. Karan Singh
(McHugh is the Bishop of the
Catholic Diocese of Camden,
New Jersey, and has been a
member of the Holy See
Delegation at the 1974 and
1984 United Nations
International Conference on
Population.)
Among the many factors
that are causing
environmental imbalance in
the biosphere, the
exponential rate of world
population growth must be
looked upon as one of the
most significant. The entire
developing world, in which I
include Asia, Africa, and
Latin America, is still
showing a calamitous rate of
population growth averaging
well over 2 percent per year.
The population of China is
already nearing one billion,
and India will be reaching
that figure by the year 2000.
In the mid-1970s India
experienced encouraging
developments which resulted
in the adoption of our
National Population Policy
by the Indian Parliament in
April 1976. The policy set
national goals for limiting
population growth. Although
the policy officially remains
in effect, it has not been
rigorously implemented over
the last decade. Therefore the
annual growth rate, which
when I was Minister of
Health and Family Planning I
had projected should by now
have fallen to 1.6 percent, is
still over 2 percent. This
involves a staggering increase
of over 15 million human
beings every year, which
equals the entire population
of Australia, a country with
two-and-one-half times the
land mass of India.
Such massive growth in
population involves
increasing pressure on
forests, resulting in
widespread deforestation;
rising demand for fossil fuel;
unplanned and chaotic
urbanization; enhanced
transportation requirements;
and many other factors that
directly impinge upon the
environment and deplete
non-renewable resources.
I fully agree with the view
that unless the population
explosion in the developing
world is brought under
control, dealing with the
global environment is
somewhat like bailing water
out of a sinking ship with a
ladle. It is totally unrealistic
to leave the population factor
out of consideration in
dealing with global
environmental problems. As
leader of the Indian
delegation to the World
Population Conference in
Bucharest, Romania, in 1975,
i said, "Development is the
best contraceptive," a phrase
that became widely quoted
around the world. While that
is certainly true, it is also
true that over-population is
potentially the worst
pollutant.
Because India is a secular
state, the National Population
Policy did not have any
particular religious
orientation. Generally, it can
be said that in comparison to
some of the Semitic religions,
Hinduism does not have a
strong built-in hostility to
family planning. However,
the resistance to family
planning by the Roman
Catholics—who represent
only a small fraction of
India's population—and more
importantly by the
Muslims—who constitute a
very sizeable minority—has
contributed to a negative
backlash to family-planning
programs in India.
Humanity is now
transforming into a global
society, and in my view the
United Nations Fund for
Population Activities needs
to be urgently expanded and
energized if we are to make
the transition smoothly.
Otherwise, with the present
imbalance in world
population—growing larger
every minute—we will find
ourselves in a position
where, while the threat of
nuclear annihilation is
steadily receding, the
population bomb is
inexorably ticking away with
consequences that in the long
run could be no less
disastrous, a
(Singh is a former
Ambassador to the United
States from India.)
JULY/AUGUST 199C
33
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Water Resources:
A Foreign-Policy Flash Point
by Joyce R. Starr
The U.S. Stale Department has
estimated that there are presently at
least 10 places in the world where war
could erupt over dwindling shared
water resources, the majority in the
Middle East. As nation after nation
around the world reaches its water
resource limits, the potential for conflict
between states—and even internal
conflict within water-besieged
states—will only intensify.
Water will be a paramount
foreign-policy resource issue of the
1990s and beyond. With the world's
population racing toward 12 to 14
billion people, our fragile,
interdependent global ecosystem will
barely be able to provide enough
potable water, let alone food and space.
The problem is not an overall
shortage of water, as water consumption
for all uses is actually less than
one-quarter of fresh water literally
available. Instead, the challenge,
according to the World Bank, is water
availability at an acceptable cost in
places where it is most needed and
vastly improved water management for
existing resources. Between 1985 and
2000, for example, urban areas around
the work! will absorb an additional 850
million people, pitting the David of
existing water and sanitation services
against the Goliath of demand.
Agriculture, industry, and human
health will be the victims of our
ignorance and inattention to the water
crisis ahead. By the turn of the century,
water will overshadow oil as the most
revered and precious commodity.
(Dr. Starr is chairman of the Global
Water Policy and Technology Summits
and co-chairman of the U.S. Global
Strategy Council. Six; lias ivritten
extensively on water politics, including
her well-known report on "U.S. Foreign
Policy on Water Resources in the;
Middle Kast.")
The era of water geopolitics has
dawned. But are we awake to the threat?
By the turn of the century,
water will overshadow oil as
the most revered and precious
commodity.
In Africa alone, 250 million people,
almost 40 percent of the population,
will suffer or die from water-related
problems by the year 2000. The United
Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF)
reports that currently 25,000 children
worldwide are dying daily from hunger
or disease caused by lack of water or
contaminated water supplies.
Egypt's burgeoning population is
expected to leap by 15 million within
the corning decade to over 70 million,
placing impossible strains on the Nile
watershed and leading an Egyptian
official to acknowledge that "Egypt's
national security is dependent on
water."
Experts predict that Jordan, Israel, the
West Bank, and the Gaza Strip will
deplete all renewable water sources by
1995, making water policies a key issue
in any future peace process. The Gaza
Strip, one of the most densely
populated places in the world, is
already a sewage time bomb waiting to
explode. Turkey, Syria, and Iraq have
been trading threats over the Euphrates.
Eastern Europe was benevolently
endowed by nature with ample water
resources. Yet, according to a recent
issue of Time magazine, Poland's river
water is so contaminated that almost 95
percent is unfit to drink and nearly all
of Romania's rivers and 50 percent of
those in Czechoslovakia are dangerously
polluted. Moreover, Christian Taylor of
the London Financial Times reported in
July 1989 that the ecological catastrophe
of the Aral Sea region in Soviet central
Asia was "worse than Chernobyl."
Soviet newspapers acknowledge that
two-thirds of the people in the area
suffer from hepatitis, typhoid, or throat
cancer from water-related pollutants.
With infant mortality skyrocketing and
deformities a common occurrence,
inhabitants call the Aral Sea the "salty
sea of death."
Michael Rozengurt, a Russian-born
and -educated oceanographer now
residing in California, led the initial
Soviet investigation on environmental
damage to rivers and lakes throughout
the Soviet Union. He has since testified
before the U.S. Congress on the dangers
of over-ambitious river diversion
projects, arguing that "severe economic
and environmental damage results from
greater than 30-percent reductions in
the natural flow."
Such figures may mean little to
average American readers, until they
learn that 98 percent of the San Joaquin
River in California has been diverted to
irrigate desert terrain. In addition, over
half the water that once flowed into the
San Francisco Bay-Delta estuary from
the Great Central Valley watershed has
been diverted elsewhere for farming,
industrial, and urban use. Rozengurt
believes that California's finest estuary
could be on the verge of collapse. And
California is certainly not the only state
in the Union threatened by severe water
shortages or water pollution.
Ironically, members of Congress from
water-stressed states also tend to be the
least interested in the global dimensions
of the problem. Often I've been told by a
senator or congressman from the South
or West, "My constituents would never
understand why I'm worrying about
water in Africa or the Middle East when
we have such severe water problems at
home."
Crops won't grow when there is
no water, but this farmer in the
Sahel, sub-Saharan Africa, is
practicing plowing so that his
oxen will be ready when the
rains come. A prolonged
drought has brought
distress to the area.
EPA JOURNAL
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The U.S. government, through its
many departments and agencies, has
undertaken extensive technical
assistance programs for water problems
throughout the world. Projects for every
conceivable purpose have been designed
and implemented, including wastewater
treatment plants, dams, feasibility
studies, and training programs for
regional experts. The quiet pool of
dedicated water-related talent—all but
hidden in the recesses of the U.S.
government—would mark the United
States as a leader in the global effort to
respond to the emergency, if only there
were the will to lead.
In 1987, M. Peter McPherson,
then-administrator of the U.S. Agency
for International Development, noted
that the "development of water
resources is a critical foreign policy
issue for the United States." McPherson
was a lone environmental visionary on
the American foreign-policy stage. Three
years have passed, but his message on
water has not yet caught the attention of
those American men and women who
have the political power to change the
course of human events.
Despite well-intentioned efforts,
federal departments rarely undertake
comprehensive, anticipatory planning
on water challenges abroad. American
experts are in the vanguard in
developing conflict-resolution
techniques on water sharing. Yet no
single agency has definitive
responsibility, let alone an adequate,
Congressionally authorized budget, to
carve a foreign policy niche for water.
Thus in place of a macro approach to
the water dilemmas of Africa, the
Middle East, Eastern Europe, or Latin
America, the United States continues to
rely on ad hoc responses.
The United Nations declared the
1980s as the International Drinking
Water Supply and Sanitation Decade.
Together with the World Bank, United
Nations organizations—notably the
United Nations Development
Programme, UNICEF, the United
Nations Environment Programme, the
World Health Organization, and the
United Nations Center for Human
Settlements (HABITAT)—have made a
resolute effort to slow the ticking clock.
But neither the World Bank, nor any of
the major United Nations bodies has the
effective political mandate or charter to
negotiate water controversies between
nations or to dictate appropriate water
management within. Instead, the most
concerned international players find
themselves walking a political tightrope
leagues above the seas and rivers, with
little expectation of a net.
Yet there is hope. The International
Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation
Decade may not have reached the
all-encompassing goals of its founders,
but water supply installations service
700 million new users and 350 million
persons have sanitary facilities that
didn't in 1981. The World Bank and
three multilateral regional banks—the
African Development Bank, Asian
Development Bank, and Inter-American
Development Bank—have already
marched to the front lines by providing
major contributions to water-related
sectors. The burden borne by women as
the water-carriers of the world is finally
being acknowledged as an injustice
having dire consequences for the
economic well-being of women,
children, and men. A wealth of
AID phofo
&.«£&
JULY/AUGUST 1990
35
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•^ k
.'. .,,
Not just water supplies, but
access to water that is clean
enough to meet drinking and
other needs will be a major
foreign-policy issue in the 1990s.
This woman is doing laundry in
a mercury-polluted stream near
Thor Chemical, Cato Ridge,
South Africa.
photo. Greenpeace.
experiences on the social, institutional,
human resources, and technical aspects
of planning and programming are now
at our disposal.
Moreover, a global initiative to
galvanize the highest-level political
leadership within water-resource
regions to face their common water
future—the Global Water Policy and
Technology Summits—was launched in
June 1990 under the auspices of the
U.S. Global Strategy Council. The
inaugural African Water Summit was
hosted by President Mubarak of Egypt
in his capacity as the chairman of the
Organization of African Unity and
co-sponsored by the Egyptian Ministry
of Foreign Affairs. Over 40 African
nations actively participated in a
dialogue for action. The African Water
Declaration resulting from the event
recognized that through a compact for
cooperation, African water and land
resources are potentially capable of
sustaining several times the present
population.
As chairman of the Summit Initiative,
1 am pleased to convey that President
Ozal of Turkey has agreed to hold the
Middle East Water Summit, and plans
are already under way for a special
program for Eastern Europe emphasizing
the critical need for major financial
investment in a peaceful war against
water pollution.
Moreover, on September 10, 1990. the
United Nations will hold a four-day
Global Consultation on water, hosted by
the Government of India, to recommend
strategies for the future, which in turn
will be presented to the Secretary-
General.
If the visibility of water as a
foreign-policy issue is increasing, the
The foreign-policy tools for
preserving global waters and
preventing conflict must merge
the fine art of diplomacy with
technology, management,
training, and financing ....
technological horizons are even more
encouraging. For example, Mr. Robert
Bisson, president of BCI-Geonetics, and
Dr. Farouk El-Baz, director of the Center
for Remote Sensing at Boston University,
recently presented a state-of-the-art
model for ground-water detection to a
major international conference on
desertification. Dr. El-Baz stated, "This
very practical use of space-age remote
sensing techniques ... creates a major
new opportunity for economic
development in water-restricted areas of
the world, especially in the Middle East
and arid Africa."
Breakthroughs in lowering the energy
costs of presently expensive
desalination technology could turn salt
water and brackish water into drinkable
water for millions of people around the
world. Advanced water-reuse
technologies will mean the recycling of
precious supplies, while vastly
improved pollution-control,
water-treatment, and waste-disposal
processes will help safeguard existing
resources. Plant breeding and high value
crops also hold tremendous potential.
The foreign-policy tools for preserving
global waters and preventing conflict
must merge the fine art of diplomacy
with technology, management, training,
and financing—in sum, a holistic
approach to integrated resource
management and sustainability.
According to John Kalbermatten, a water
expert instrumental in the promotion of
the Water Decade, the real unsung
heroes in bringing water and sanitation
to the poor have been non-governmental
organizations. It is time that the
governments of the world follow their
lead, n
36
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Business and the Environment
by Khristine L Hall
Environmental issues have taken on
an increasingly international and
sometimes global character in recent
years. One result is that business,
particularly those corporations that do
business in a number of countries, will
be increasingly involved in decisions on
courses of action concerning global
environmental issues both within the
business community and for society at
large.
Transnational corporations can, along
with other institutions, help define and
resolve the environmental problems that
face us. In fact, it is clear that the
complicated environmental issues
confronting society cannot be
successfully resolved without a high
degree of business involvement and
cooperative effort.
The most obvious form of business
involvement is through development of
products for the marketplace that help
define or solve environmental problems.
The past decade has witnessed a
phenomenal growth in business
opportunities that address
environmental protection in the United
States and other countries. As more
countries tighten environmental
requirements, business opportunities
also grow and international competition
is fostered.
Equipment that removes pollutants
from air and water, biotechnology that
renders toxic pollutants harmless,
consulting services that offer specialized
approaches, and computers that do
everything from collecting
environmental data for complex models
to helping industry better manage its
processes for environmental
compliance: All these are growth areas
that business is pursuing on an
international basis.
To serve the needs of business and
government, IBM has, for example,
undertaken a number of relevant
research and development projects,
including the development of air- and
water-pollution models, ocean-current
and climate models, oil-spill models,
and sand-storm studies. In 1989, the
company announced a $16 million
investment in its Scientific Center in
(Hall is a manager of Health, Safety
and Environment at IBM.)
Bergen, Norway, to make it the
international focus of the company's
research in the environmental area. The
Bergen center covers all major fields of
environmental science and emphasizes
the development of transferable software
tools and the acquisition of technical
competence and skills on environmental
issues.
Business can also play a major role by
insuring that its activity takes place
with as small a footprint as possible
consistent with producing quality
products in a competitive manner.
Many major multinational corporations
have explicit environmental policies
and stringent internal guidelines in
place that are applied on a worldwide
basis.
IBM's environmental policy, for
example, was first formalized in 1971. It
commits company management and
manufacturing worldwide to:
• Meet or exceed all applicable
regulations on the environment at all
locations
• Set our own standards where no
relevant government regulations exist
• Use non-polluting and
energy-efficient technologies wherever
possible in designing products and
processes
• Help governments and other
industries develop solutions to
environmental problems wherever our
knowledge and experience would be
useful.
To implement this policy, the
company has a series of comprehensive
internal guidelines that are usually more
stringent than local regulatory
requirements. In effect, all
manufacturing facilities, regardless of
whether they are located in Argentina or
the United States, are required to meet
the same stringent requirements
designed to protect the environment.
For example, chemicals used in every
plant are controlled through a central
database of information on each
chemical and its approved uses.
Chemicals that have not been
characterized for the database may not
be used for production.
When chemicals are stored on IBM
property, storage facilities must meet
stringent containment requirements.
requiring accessibility to facilitate
inspections and testing. Likewise,
distribution of chemicals on-site is
carefully controlled to prevent leaks,
discharges, and emissions.
Product managers are required to
complete an internal environmental
impact assessment prior to any
significant change in product or
manufacturing process. This allows us
to identify, early on, any environmental,
work-place health and safety, and
energy issues for resolution before they
become problems.
Hazardous waste is handled according
to a hierarchy that was in effect long
before it became part of the U.S.
Resource Conservation and Recovery
Act, This hierarchy applies worldwide
and does not allow plants to send waste
IBM photo
Businesses are
reorienting their
production processes
with the environment
in mind. Here, at
IBM's disk-drive
manufacturing facility
in San Jose, California,
an engineer inspects a
new aqueous cleaning
system which has
replaced CFC-113
cleaners.
JULY/AUGUST 1990
37
-------
off-site for treatment or disposal unless
the waste vendor can meet certain
environmental requirements.
Approval of waste vendors is done
centrally. In a few countries, this has
created a dilemma, since no off-site
hazardous waste facilities there meet
our requirements. In those cases, we
store waste in specially designed
facilities until environmentally
acceptable vendors can be found.
This waste hierarchy emphasizes that
source reduction is the highest priority
of all, followed by recycling. Through
much hard work at the plant level, the
company has reduced its generation of
hazardous waste by 30 percent
worldwide between 1985 and 1989. In
addition, on a worldwide basis, we
recycle about 87 percent of our
production waste, 75 percent of it
on-site.
Chlorofluorocarbons have been a
major source of concern for the
electronics industry in general. CFC-113
has been widely used because it is
nontoxic, nonflammable, and has
unique cleaning qualities that have
generated large demand in the past
decade. IBM has established a goal of
ending CFG use by the end of 1993.
This will entail considerable expense,
since CFCs are used in hundreds of
product lines. There is no single,
drop-in solution. Hundreds of solutions
will have to be engineered.
IBM has reduced its worldwide
consumption of CFCs by 35 percent in
the last three years and is well on its
way to meeting its 1993 goal of total
elimination. In addition, our plants have
been advised not to use methyl
chloroform (also suspected of causing
ozone depletion, although at a much
reduced rate) and have begun the
research necessary to find replacements
for this chemical as well.
In addition to making sure
appropriate internal programs are in
place, business can also make a large
contribution to protecting the
environment through working
externally. By supporting well
thought-out international environmental
initiatives, communicating effective
approaches, sharing successful
management techniques, and making
available appropriate technological
solutions to governments and industry
in other countries, industry, particularly
major multinational companies, can
play a very valuable role.
As environmental requirements
continue to grow more stringent and
apply more broadly, it is in the interest
of the business community to take an
increasingly international approach to
specific environmental issues.
International approaches to
transnational environmental problems
will help insure that no one country's
industry bears a disproportionate share
of the burden of addressing an
international issue. For this reason, the
business community has recently
supported the Basel Convention on
Control of Transborder Movement of
Hazardous Waste and the Montreal
Protocol on Control of Ozone-Depleting
Substances.
Many major multinational
corporations have explicit
environmental policies and
stringent internal guidelines in
place that are applied on a
worldwide basis.
Increased international approaches,
however, have inherent difficulties for
developing countries in which local
industry may not have the resources
available to address environmental
controls. Thus an important issue of the
1990s is making technical
environmental knowledge available to
industry in developing countries.
Industry, particularly multinational
companies, has the largest reservoir of
technical and management know-how to
solve complicated environmental
problems. Making that knowledge
available to industry in other parts of
the world is not, however, a simple
matter. Although much attention has
focused on the issue of "technology
transfer," practical approaches remain
few in number.
In most instances, environmental
management skills are much more
important than simply adding on a
piece of equipment at the end of a pipe.
Transferring these skills to industry in
countries that do not have a tradition of
efficient production management is a
time-consuming process where results
are hard to measure. In addition,
decisions about what information is
proprietary and what technology is
appropriate to transfer to industry in
countries without the infrastructure of
highly developed countries are
sometimes very difficult.
There are no easy answers for the
many case-by-case determinations that
will have to be made over the coming
years. Much more cooperative dialogue
is necessary before efforts aimed at
technology transfer on a major scale can
be undertaken on an effective basis.
Nonetheless, industry is already
actively sharing its knowledge and
experience, both as individual
companies and through specific
organizations that have been set up to
foster and improve environmental
management skills in industry and to
transfer environmental technology and
know-how. Specifically, these
organizations are the World
Environment Center in New York, the
International Environmental Bureau, a
specialized division of the International
Chamber of Commerce in Geneva, and
the Global Environmental Management
Initiative, recently established by
industry in the United States.
In 1988 IBM donated $6.5 million
worth of equipment to the Global
Resource Information Database (GRID), a
United Nations Environmental
Programme project that converts
geographic and environmental data into
map form. IBM donated data-processing
equipment and software to installations
in Geneva and Nairobi, and 15 smaller
machines to African countries to link
into the GRID system.
GRID'S unique strength is the capacity
to examine the interactions between
different environmental databases, such
as data about geography, geology,
vegetation, population, etc. By
overlaying these databases, GRID can be
used, for example, to locate areas within
a region with specific soil, climate, and
vegetation within major population
centers. GRID can also be used to
investigate changes in geographic areas
as a result of changed climate
conditions, such as the greenhouse
effect.
National governments, international
bodies, institutions, and universities can
create databases to help them
understand what is happening or what
may happen in any region or country
for which basic data are available.
Increasingly, GRID is becoming an
important tool for economic
development in developing countries.
If we are to solve the serious
environmental issues confronting us,
new efforts must be made to involve all
relevant parties—business, government,
academia, and nongovernmental
organizations—in constructive dialogue.
Industry plays a critical role, both in
bringing resources to bear in defining
issues and problems, and in
contributing its knowledge and
experience to the solution of those
problems, a
38
EPA JOURNAL
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Third World Grievances
by Shridath S. Ramphal
[Sir Shridath S. Ramphal, currently
Chancellor of the Universities of
Guyana, Warwick (Britain], and the
West Indies and Chairman of the West
Indian Commission, was a member of
the World Commission on Environment
and Development. From 1975 to 1990
he was Secretary-General of the
Commonwealth, the association of 50
independent countries previously
administered by Britain. He is a former
Foreign and Justice Minister of Guyana.)
In Kenya, which has one of the
world's fastest growing populations,
subsistence is a day-to-day effort.
Food is often scarce for these
children, their parents, and six other
siblings, especially when baboons
and warthogs from the nearby game
park raid the garden.
As the collective experience of
industrialized as well as
still-developing countries shows, when
nations seek to harness new technology
and industry in order to grow rapidly,
stresses and conflicts are created.
Among such stresses are those that
affect the environment.
Rapid development can, and often
does, create irreversible damage through
pollution and the over-use of scarce
resources. But poverty and
underdevelopment are also gross, or
even grosser, pollutants. Not only the
excesses of wealth creation but the
extremities of stagnant poverty endanger
our global environment. How to escape
the horns of this particular dilemma is
already one of the great issues of the
age.
There is some basis at least for hope,
if not for optimism. Environmental
causes now receive political attention to
a degree well beyond our expectations
two years ago. In Western Europe, the
survival of governments can actually
turn on their treatment of "green"
issues. In Eastern Europe, the
acknowledgment of past environmental
neglect and the need for remedy are
central to glasnost and perestroika;
indeed, Mr. Gorbachev has shown
characteristic: foresight in proposing that
environmental cooperation should be
one of the main planks of the emerging
new international political order.
Throughout Latin America, Africa,
and Asia, environmental issues are
becoming politically sensitive and
command priority attention. And after a
long, frustrating period in which
multilateralism was in retreat, the
environment has provided the trigger for
a major burst of activity, much of it led
by the United Nations Environment
Programme (UNF.P). This activity
includes formulating international
principles and rules governing such
matters as ozone depletion, the
dumping of hazardous waste, species
preservation, and climate change. All
this is to the good, but it is not yet good
enough.
I must share with you some
reservations about the way in which
this "greening" of the international
agenda is taking place. Much of the
driving force for change is coming from
JULY/AUGUST 1990
39
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Rio de Janeiro, Brazil—a study
in contrasts Developing nations
must struggle with poverty
while trying to build strong
economies.
the affluent countries. That is welcome,
but perspectives can become skewed as
a result. Unlike most of humanity,
people in rich countries have achieved
high living standards, have stable
population levels, and can contemplate
with equanimity some reduction in
material welfare in order to create a
cleaner, quieter, and generally more
aesthetically pleasing environment. To
them, the concept of sustainable
development seems not only desirable
but attainable.
At its best, the new environmentali.sm
has produced a genuinely uplifting
moral philosophy whose concern for the
natural world is allied to deep respect
for the claims of all humanity and of
future generations. The political
"greens" are a force for good, recalling
us to these eternal values. But like all
new religions—and some old ones—the
new environmentalism is throwing up
its own breed of fundamentalists who
are narrow, intolerant, and extreme:
people who seem to believe that natural
resources should not be used at all to
sustain and improve conditions of
human life.
Such people seem to want the people
of the developing world to revert to a
kind of primeval, aboriginal state, in
which they can be stopped from cutting
down trees, growing cash crops, living
in cities, putting up factories, building
roads, and obtaining electricity for
cooking and lighting. That is a parody,
of course, but it is how some of the
environmental evangelism is coming
across.
It is not difficult to see why
environmental questions are often
perceived quite differently in developed
and developing countries. The Western
world passed through a period of
remarkable and largely unexpected
economic success in the 1980s,
reinforcing its existing prosperity. This
prosperity created many undesirable
environmental side effects, but it has
also created the resources to provide an
antidote to most of them. In the more
environmentally aware countries, there
are already measurable results in
cleaner air and rivers and reduced
pollution.
This, however, contrasts sharply with
the position of large numbers of
developing countries where poverty
actually has increased and there is little
short-term prospect of any amelioration.
It is estimated, for example, that in 21
out of 35 low-income developing
countries, the overall daily calorie
supply per capita was lower in 1985
than in 1965. Almost half of 115
developing countries have experienced
falling per capita staple food
consumption this decade. Significant
numbers of African countries are
reporting falling life expectancy, rising
infant mortality—and famine. For
hundreds of millions of people, life has
Ecology and economy are
inseparable. Lip service has
been given to tnis proposition;
but it is clear that it is still not
widely understood.
long been a struggle for bare survival; in
the 1980s, their numbers greatly
increased. Many fail to survive; the
World Food Council estimates that there
were 14 million unnecessary child
deaths from hunger and disease in the
first half of the decade. Where the
priority for individuals is managing to
survive, where for governments it is not
much different—with issues like debt
and adjustment to overwhelming
growth—"sustainable development" will
inevitably be seen as a very distant goal.
Developed and developing countries
come to the environmental
crisis—which is a common crisis—out
of such vastly different economic:
experiences and with such vastly
different capacities that the crisis itself
is in danger of being perceived
differently—with potentially serious
consequences for North/South relations.
The current arguments over tropical
forests, and over environmental
conditionally—the setting of
environmental conditions for flows of
international finance including foreign
aid—are symptoms of this. If these
divisions were to widen, it would be
extremely difficult to achieve
harmonious solutions to global
environmental problems.
For this reason, I believe we have to
take a fresh and urgent look at the link
between environment and development
and at how it can properly be addressed
in international relations. The truth is
that mass poverty in the world is not
merely unacceptable and unnecessary
but that, in environmental terms, it is
both exacerbated by and contributes to
environmental stress. Ecology and
economy are inseparable. Lip service
has been given to this proposition; but it
is clear that it is still not widely
understood.
The clamor by non-governmental
organizations in industrialized countries
to try to stop deforestation by banning
trade in tropical hardwood is a case in
point. Clearly, there is some serious
over-exploitation by commercial loggers
and, equally clearly, forestry industries
have to be made subject to economic
disciplines leading to sustainable use;
but to concentrate attention on this
issue detracts from a more serious
problem in most countries: forests
retreating in the face of growing
numbers of poor people looking for land
for crops and grazing and for
firewood—processes that will continue
or even accelerate if the trade ceases.
But, of course, the former involves the
relatively easy task of lecturing
developing countries; the latter involves
alleviating poverty through facilitating
development.
Western governments know that such
lectures are not the answer. But since,
by and large they are not ready to
provide the alternative answers in
concrete terms, they might even go
along with the polemics—and, of
course, in doing so, make matters worse.
If the environmental crisis is to be
tackled effectively, the development
dimension has to be grasped in a
purposeful manner, and if this is to
happen, there will have to be major
changes in basic approaches of both
developed and developing countries.
For the moment, in industrial countries,
the environmental issue is a populist
platform. In fact, the measures that
governments—all governments—will
have to introduce to achieve
It)
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AID photo
"sustainable development" could be
anything but popular. The
"polluter-pays" principle, now being
advocated as the guiding principle for
economic policy, almost certainly
means, in practice, higher prices to be
paid by consumers—rich and poor alike.
Much higher prices for energy are one
obvious example. But if the United
States cannot muster the political
courage to stop the environmental
damage caused by cheap gasoline (or,
for that matter, by the cutting down of
the temperate rain forest of Alaska), it is
not difficult to understand why
governments in more politically fragile
societies also fail to act.
Another area of difficulty is
agriculture. It has now been abundantly
demonstrated that the protection and
subsidization of farming in rich
countries—particularly in the European
Community and Japan—have contributed
to the overuse of environmentally
damaging inputs, as well as the
distortion of world trade. By contrast,
developing country governments have
often neglected agriculture to subsidize
the cities, damaging the rural
environment by neglect.
A change of direction will require
governments to stand firm against
powerful pressure groups: the farmers of
the North; the urban masses of the
South. The implication may well be that
in the transition to saner world
agriculture, food prices should rise.
Governments will have the awesome
task of persuading their people that, in
this and other ways, sustainable
development offers no easy options and
may be very painful. In fact, at present,
many developing-country governments
are being forced—through conditions
attached to financial assistance—to
inflict this pain; but in the developed
world, where per-capita consumption of
energy, food, and other resources is very
much higher, "green" rhetoric is not
being matched by real action.
Meanwhile, however, developing
countries cannot let the default of the
rich encourage them to default as well
on some politically forbidding long-term
issues critical to their survival—like
reducing population growth where it is
outstripping the availability of fertile
land and economic resources. The
success of countries such as Japan and
others in Southeast Asia points to the
crucial importance of progress in this
area. It may involve confronting deeply
held religious beliefs and traditional
prejudices about the role of women.
Some governments—Zimbabwe is
one—have set a courageous example,
but let no one underestimate the
difficulties. These changes could be
difficult enough but are in turn being
superimposed on big changes in
economic policy to reflect the
importance of sound finance, market
instruments, the private sector, and the
primacy of the agricultural sector.
Developing-country governments need
sensitive encouragement and practical
help.
At present, with "development"
virtually off the agenda of the rich, the
poor can be forgiven for believing that
too much is being asked of them; if they
cannot expect some results—at least in
terms of reduced poverty—they will be
tempted not to persist. For results, they
do need help. The examples that are
widely cited of successful
reforms—Ghana in Africa, Bolivia in
Latin America—relied heavily on
external assistance.
For many developing countries,
external debt is an often insupportable
burden, and recent relief measures for
both middle-income and low-income
debtors, while welcome, barely scratch
the surface of the problem.
Protectionism remains a serious
problem for countries trying to diversify
from resource-based exports. Capital
flows to developing countries are
restricted. All these factors contribute to
poverty and increase the difficulty in
JULY/AUGUST 1990
41
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these countries of attending to long-term
environmental issues.
Unless the developed world is willing
to do much more to alleviate these
burdens of poverty, many developing
countries will not get beyond their
current hand-to-mouth existence, let
alone to the point of giving due weight
to long-term "sustainable development."
For Western industrial countries, this is
a crucial time that could easily be
wasted basking in a warm glow of smug
complacency because the rest of the
world now wishes to follow their
political and economic example.
Fortunately, there are signs that some
member countries of the Organization
for Economic Cooperation and
Development realize the dangers. The
trouble is, however, that to the extent
that the growing environmental
sensitivity of the North is in fact
spilling over into North-South relations,
it is often taking the form of stringent
"environmental" conditions attached to
aid. Some of this is genuinely
well-intentioned, is designed to produce
better projects, and—when associated
with generous aid flows—is accepted by
most developing countries. But there is
a growing stridency and
self-righteousness in some of the
attempts to influence policy. These
attitudes are particularly invidious
when they come from countries where
wasteful lifestyles and massive
pollution have already contributed to
serious depletion of the world's
ecological capital. "Don't do as I do: Just
do as I say" is how some of this comes
across.
Environmental conditionality is
actually slowing down aid flows at a
time when many countries are desperate
for liquidity. Conditions are often
capricious. For example, countries are
being urged to switch away from fossil
and nuclear fuels, then hydro-power
projects are opposed on environmental
grounds. Underlying the technical
issues is a political concern by
developing countries that, without
increasing their overall concessional
resource flows, developed countries are
increasing their control over key areas
of developing-country policy. The
World Commission on Environment
and Development has specifically
warned that increased flows must
accompany any increased emphasis on
environment conditions. The danger of
ignoring that warning is the risk of a
backlash against environmentalism in
general.
It is vital to deal with these issues in
a proper spirit of cooperation. As
weaker members of the international
community, most developing countries
have much to gain from global, rather
than national, approaches to pollution
and resource management. At the same
time, their cooperation is indispensable
if amicable international agreements are
to be reached. This applies especially to
management of the global commons (the
oceans, the atmosphere, space, and
Antarctica) and to international trade (as
with toxic waste disposal and trade in
threatened species and tropical timber).
The current interest in strengthening
legal statutes and international
cooperation is to be welcomed, as is the
higher status and profile being given to
UNEP. But it must proceed iri a way
that keeps the development dimension
at the center of attention. Thus, if there
is to be satisfactory global
environmental management, it must be
equitable and must address the causes
of problems—including poverty and
inequality—as well as the symptoms.
Developing Nations:
Four Environmental Profiles
Countries such as the Philippines,
Egypt, Mexico, and Kenya suffer
from massive environmental
degradation and have rapidly growing
populations besides. Except for Kenya,
these are so-called middle-income
countries, and all have made real gains
in the decades since World War II. But
in the 1980s those gains were eroded by
explosive population growth, urban
pollution, deforestation, soil
degradation, and declining water and
energy supplies.
• Mexico presents a complicated
foreign-policy challenge for the United
States, for the two countries share
long-standing cultural and economic ties.
Mexico, the United States' third-largest
trading partner, bought $25 billion
worth of our exported goods in 1989.
We buy half of its petroleum exports,
and 40 percent of our winter fruits and
vegetables are from Mexico. Our
2,000-mile permeable border and
the pressure of nearly a million workers
joining the Mexican labor force each
year emphasize that it's in our own
national interest to help Mexico solve
its environmental and economic
problems.
Concern in Mexico is rising, as
illustrated by President Salinas's major
address on World Environment Day in
(Dr. Brown is Senior Associate at the
World Resources Institute and editor of
In the U.S. Interest: Resources, Growth,
and Security in the Developing World,
which includes case studies of the four
countries discussed here.]
June and the nationwide planting of five
million trees, but the continuing
problems are daunting. Mexico City,
home to nearly a quarter of the
country's population, is the largest city
in the world and one of the most
environmentally damaged. It suffers
from horrific air and water pollution,
thanks to a heavy concentration of
industry and a motor vehicle fleet that
has grown six times as fast as the
population has over the past 40 years.
Throughout the country, nearly a
million acres of forest are lost each year
and desertification proceeds apace.
Forty percent of rural Mexicans are
malnourished, and basic food grains
must be imported. Real wages fell at
least 20 percent in the 1980s as oil
prices dropped and debt payments
consumed half of export earnings.
Restless and rebellious, the voters of
Mexico in 1988 seriously challenged the
ruling party for the first time in 60
years.
• Egypt may be poor in natural
resources—only 4 percent of its land is
arable, its water supplies are uncertain,
and its known oil reserve could be
exhausted in 15 years—but it is rich in
human resources. Its chief asset is a
resilient, industrious, and educated
people, three million of whom work
'overseas and send part of their wages
home, thereby fueling an informal
economy that belies official statistics.
Population doubled between 1952 and
1980, but economic growth kept pace
and the progressive social policies that
Egypt adopted allowed it to avoid the
extremes of wealth and poverty found
in many developing countries.
42
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The environment is a rapidly evolving
subject. Just a few years ago, climate
change was not seen, as it is now, as a
central issue. Major new subjects, and
threats, are emerging over the
horizon—acid fog, pollution by
particulates, algae blooms, and the
hazards of biotechnology and genetic
engineering. There is a danger that a
mixture of despair, boredom, and
confusion could come to paralyze
policymakers faced by demands for
action on a multitude of subjects that
are barely understood.
We therefore have to keep the
fundamentals clearly in focus:
Environment is not an afterthought, but
central to good economic policy; rapid
but "green" growth is feasible and
necessary; overcoming poverty is a
global not just a developing-country
responsibility; an endangered
environment demands truly
international, not nationalistic, thinking
and action. Only through such
readjustments in thinking can
sustainable development pass from
aspiration to reality. Q
by Janet Welsh Brown
But in the 1980s, oil prices collapsed
and debt payments rose, putting Egypt
in a financial bind at the same time that
the balance between population and
resources began to shift. Soil and water
degradation plague both rural and urban
areas. Damming the Nile at Aswan
allowed regulated irrigation that greatly
increased food production in the short
term, but also led to the waterlogging
and salini/.ation that now affect perhaps
one third of Egypt's arable land. Some
irrigated land, once lush and green, is
now salt-encrusted, and food production
is off by an estimated 10 percent.
The cities, where nearly half the
population lives, don't have adequate
water or sanitation systems, and urban
air is dirty. At current growth rates,
Egypt's population of 50 million will
double by 2012. Will the country's
limited and already severely strained
resource base be able to support twice
as many people? No development
scenario yet proposed can keep up with
such rapidly growing population
pressure on land and water resources.
Environmental degradation and
population rarely surface in discussions
of Egypt's security, but their
uncontrolled growth threatens the
economic prospects and political
stability of the United States' key Arab
ally.
• Kenya, the East African country most
important to the United States, is in
many ways the most promising state in
sub-Saharan Africa. It has met various
economic, political, and ethnic
challenges and has survived the 1980s'
droughts without loss of life. But
Kenya's economy is hostage to many
factors beyond its control: the vagaries
of the world coffee and tea markets, the
fads and fears of European tourists, the
price of imported oil, and the weather.
With one of the world's highest fertility
rates—eight children per woman during
the early 1980s—Kenya doubled its
population from 8 million to 16 million
between 1960 and 1980. And if present
increases continue, the population is
expected to reach 40 million by the end
of the century and 80 million by 2020 or
so.
Meanwhile, Kenya's arable land—20
percent of the total land area—is losing
productivity at an alarming rate. Thanks
to soil erosion caused by deforestation
and other land-use changes, crop yields
in some areas are expected to fall 50 to
75 percent by 2000. Although only 3
percent of Kenya is forested, fuelwood
provides 74 percent of the country's
energy. The government is pushing tree
planting, but this burgeoning fuelwood
crisis demands much more agroforestry
training and higher energy-efficiency
gains than are presently in the pipeline.
Water is also a problem, both for urban
areas straining to absorb rural migrants
and urban babies and for subsistence
farmers in the country's vast semiarid
regions. Since Kenya is East Africa's
leading market economy, its
management of these natural-resource
problems will have repercussions far
beyond its borders.
• The U.S. interest in the
Philippines—maintaining U.S. bases
there and nurturing democracy—is
compromised by destruction of the
nation's resource base and strong
population pressures. "If we have a
revolution in this country," a
Philippine official once said, "it will
start in the uplands." His logic is
impeccable, for the uplands—where up
to one quarter of the population now
lives—bear the brunt of the country's
environmental problems. The Philippine
population more than tripled between
1948 and 1988, from 19 million to 63
million.
A small group of wealthy families
owns most of the good cropland, so
throngs of impoverished, landless
migrants push into the uplands, where
they clear steep, forested slopes to raise
food for their families. Heavy rains of
the twice-yearly monsoons rush down
the denuded slopes and carry off topsoil
that silts streams, damages hydroelectric
plants, and spoils fish-spawning
grounds—a particular disaster for a
people whose main protein source is
fish. Commercial logging, much of it
illegal, also contributes to deforestation.
Logging so wasteful and corrupt that it
can only be described as rapacious was
a hallmark of the Marcos government.
But destruction of mangrove forests,
dynamiting of coral reefs, and
overfishing are still commonplace in
spite of environmental laws. So far,
improving resource management and
curbing population growth can't be
counted among the Aquino
Government's priorities.
JULY/AUGUST 1990
43
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Unintended Consequences
By Al Binger
Sugar cane being harvested in Louisiana. Price supports that protect
U.S. producers can put people out of work in other countries.
Displaced Third World farmers and other workers may
then resort to survival measures that destroy
natural resources.
J. M Cross photo. USDA.
The next time you buy that pound of
sugar, chocolate, or cookies, or that
ice cream cone or soft drink, you will
pay an artificially high price. You will
also contribute, indirectly, to
environmental degradation, poverty, and
the cultivation of illegal crops like coca
and marijuana in developing countries
in Latin America, the Caribbean, and
Southeast Asia.
(Dr. Binger is Presidenf <>|
Users' Network, a not-for-profit
international organization of developing
countries that focuses on ivtiyx to
maiuijv! r
-------
sugar. Consequently, the EC has gone
from being a sugar importer to a major
exporter in 10 years.
The result of these trends and other
factors has been a severe contraction in
the world market for sugar and highly
unstable sugar prices, with devastating
effects on developing countries where
sugar production has been an economic
cornerstone. In many of these countries,
sugar has not been just a crop, readily
interchangeable with other crops, but
the foundation of an industry that
produced staple products including
processed sugar and molasses. Until the
late 1970s, the sugar industry provided
a livelihood for an estimated 50 million
people in developing countries.
In the last three years, world prices
for sugar have fluctuated between 4 and
13 cents per pound (U.S. currency).
These fluctuations have not affected
producers in the United States or the EC
because price supports have kept sugar
prices in these countries in the range of
18 to 23 cents per pound.
The real impact has been felt in
sugar-producing developing countries,
most of which have significantly
reduced their production in order to cut
their losses. In the vast majority of
cases, sugar production has not been
successfully replaced by any
comparable new agricultural-industrial
activity. The net effect: a severe negative
impact on the quality of rural life and
the environment.
Most displaced field and industry
workers, unable to find other
employment, have few alternatives:
slash-and-burn subsistence farming;
migration to urban centers in search of
employment; or illegal crops like coca
and marijuana, which are more lucrative
than legal crops. A new wave of
subsistence farmers has accelerated the
destruction of forested areas in
developing countries, particularly in
Latin America, the Caribbean, and
Southeast Asia. In Negros Occidental in
the Philippines (the largest
sugar-producing region in that country),
forested areas have declined by about 60
percent since the downturn of sugar
prices in the early 1980s.
Agricultural subsidies for sugar and
other crops in the EC, the United States,
and Japan amount to more than $240
billion a year—a figure equivalent to
almost 10 percent of developing
countries' economies. In this era of
heightened concern for the
environment, it is time to reconsider
these policies in light of their
detrimental consequences.
Until the late 1970s, the sugar
industry provided a livelihood
for an estimated 50 million
people in developing
countries.
Moreover, there is a readily available
"win-win" solution to the
sugar-industry problem: The answer is
not an abrupt end to subsidies in
industrialized countries, but rather a
scenario in which financial and
technological means are provided to
help developing countries diversify the
products they can derive from
sugarcane.
Proven technologies are now available
to accomplish this. It is possible to
produce more than 30 products ranging
from paper to chemicals and
bio-degradable plastics, from building
materials to energy, using various
processing technologies for sugarcane.
For example, sugarcane-based energy
production (electricity and ethanol) has
tremendous potential for developing
countries. It makes sense given their
dependence on imported petroleum and
problems of availability. And the
environmental payoffs are indisputable
In the face of global climate change and
.the need to reduce emissions of
greenhouse gases such as carbon
dioxide (CO2), energy derived from
sugarcane represents a readily
deployable option with no net release of
CO2.
These many environmentally and
economically beneficial uses of
sugarcane are easily within reach with
modest amounts of capital investment.
Just one percent of the amount
industrialized countries will spend on
agricultural subsidies over the next five
years (approximately $12.5 billion)
would be required to carry out the
diversification of the sugar industry of
developing countries. If these funds
were redirected for this purpose, a
dying industry could be transformed
into an engine for rural economic
development and global environmental
protection.
From the perspective of industrialized
countries, such an approach offers the
advantage of significantly reducing the
need of developing countries to export
sugar, even if their production levels
increased substantially. This would lead
to more market stability and, therefore,
a reduced need for price supports for
domestic producers at the expense of
taxpayers. Equally important, this
approach represents a mechanism for
weaning producers from addiction to
subsidies with minimal pain.
During most of the past decade,'
multilateral financial institutions such
as the World Bank, as well as some
bilateral donors, have attempted to help
sugar-producing developing countries
bury their failing centuries-old sugar
industries. This has taken the form of
structural-adjustment and
crop-diversification loans. In most cases,
the results have been dismal failures.
Clearly the time has come for new
thinking and new approaches based on
the larger picture and not just the
pieces. After all, the environment knows
no boundaries, a
JULY/AUGUST 1990
45
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Hazardous Waste Exports: Changes in Sight
by Wendy Grieder
The trans-frontier movement of waste
is a subject that has been receiving
increased attention over the past six
years. Americans have been fascinated
by the tales of the IsJip Garbage Barge
roaming the high seas looking for a
home for its cargo. They have followed
the Khian Sea from Philadelphia to
Singapore, with stops between and
changes in name, searching for a place
to dispose of its load of incinerator ash.
Nevertheless, stories in the press to
the contrary, EPA has little concrete
evidence that large-scale "dumping" of
wastes is taking place. The Agency
works closely with the Department of
State, the Customs Service, and law
enforcement agencies to detect illegal
shipments of waste across our borders.
There have been a few isolated cases of
clumping; however, by and large, waste
exporters comply with U.S.
notice-and-consent regulations which
require the formal consent of the
receiving country before waste can be
shipped.
To be sure, interest in exporting waste
remains high. Each day EPA receives
inquiries, some with bizarre aspects.
One company wants to send west coast
garbage to the Marshall Islands to build
atolls. Another proposes to send
incinerator ash to Guatemala to build
roads. And still another would like to
send sewage sludge from an east coast
city to Tibet for agricultural purposes.
In the past, the Agency has received a
number of proposals to send barrels of
hazardous wastes to some of the poorest
countries in Africa, which are tempted
by the income it would generate for
them. However, in all these cases the
shipments were rejected when the
United States sent notice about the
proposed exports.
Most hazardous-waste exports from
the United States go to Canada and
Mexico under bilateral agreements. In
1989, the United States generated 275
million tons of hazardous waste. Of
that, only 150,000 tons was exported,
with more than 80 percent going to
Canada for both disposal and recycling.
Most other exports go to Mexico for
recycling or to countries in Western
(Grieder is a hazardous waste specialist
in EPA's Office of International
Activities.!
Europe for the reclamation of materials
such as gold and platinum. Small
amounts go to Brazil, Japan, and South
Africa.
As the impact of the Resource
Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA)
regulations is felt, hazardous-waste
generators in the United States look for
disposal facilities in other countries that
are either cheaper or more readily
available: For example, most U.S.
generators who export to Canada are
located near the border; proximity
reduces transport risks and the
consequent liability costs.
The RCRA regulations prohibit the
export of hazardous waste unless EPA is
notified in advance of the intent to
export and the receiving country
provides prior written consent. EPA will
forward the consent to the exporter, and
a copy must accompany each shipment.
The regulations apply only to waste
classified as hazardous by EPA. At the
present time, they do not cover
household waste or municipal
incinerator ash.
In response to continuing public and
Congressional concern about several
highly publicized proposals to export
waste to developing countries, President
Bush announced in March 1989 that he
would seek legislative authority to ban
the export of hazardous waste except
where there was a bilateral agreement
with the receiving country. This
agreement would be negotiated to assure
the environmentally sound management
Although progress is being made, illegal
international traffic in hazardous waste
has not yet been eliminated. Between
1987 and 1988, almost 4,000 tons of
toxic waste from Italy were illegally
dumped in Nigeria. Following the
Nigerian government's discovery
of the contraband, it was loaded
onto the Karin B. and another
ship for removal.
of the waste in the receiving country.
Also in March 1989, negotiations
were concluded on the Basel
Convention on the Transboundary
Movement of Waste, sponsored by the
United Nations Environment
Programme. Fifty-four countries have
become signatories, including the
United States. The Convention provides
for limiting transboundary movements
of wastes among parties, setting up
notice and consent procedures for
international shipments, and it defines
illegal traffic and the responsibilities of
the parties involved. The Convention
also allows countries to enter into
separate, bilateral agreements. EPA has
developed legislation that would
implement the Basel Convention and
extend our current export regulations to
household waste and municipal
incinerator ash.
The accelerated interest in exporting
hazardous waste is illustrated by the
increase in the notices of intent received
by EPA. In 1980, the Agency received
12 notices; in 1989, 554; and to date, the
number for 1990 is 441. Until there are
better ways to reduce the generation of
hazardous waste, such as more recycling
and waste minimization, the interest
will continue to rise.
The task is to strengthen the
regulations in such a way as not to
hinder legitimate exports in the waste
trade, but still to protect those countries
that do not have the capability of safely
managing waste, n
Gremo photo Gteenpeace
• Hi
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Making a Difference with Solar Ovens
bv William F. Lankford
Firewood to meet
villagers'everyday cooking
needs is increasingly a scarce
and expensive commodity.
There was a small crash outside, but
in the rural villages of Guatemala the
noise level is generally high, and the
sound was ignored. Jan finished a lunch
that had been cooked in her solar oven
and went out to cover it up—only to
discover a huge pig just finishing off the
flavorful fiber-glass insulation from the
oven door. Poor pig, poor family that
owned the pig if it died, but the door
could be repaired, and this was only a
minor setback in ongoing efforts to
promote solar cooking in Central
America.
This incident offers an apt metaphor
for the kind of social factors that can
complicate the introduction of solar
cooking in impoverished areas of
developing countries such as
Guatemala, Costa Rica, and Nicaragua.
The obvious question is, Why are solar
ovens being promoted in these
seemingly improbable places? And why
is a Norteamericano like me involved in
these efforts?
Some of the reasons have to do with
local subsistence economics. Firewood
to meet villagers' everyday cooking
needs is increasingly a scarce and
expensive commodity. In many areas of
Guatemala, for example, the Indians
must depend on local landowners to
allow them to cut firewood on private
lands. Not all landowners are
sympathetic, and some are actively
hostile to trespassers.
In addition, there are compelling
health and environmental arguments for
solar cooking in the developing
countries of Central America, where the
equatorial sun is a ready resource
(notwithstanding those few days when
the sunshine does not break through the
clouds). Solar ovens do not produce
wood smoke, a source of indoor and
outdoor air pollution that has the
potential to cause retinal damage and
respiratory diseases. And from a broader
environmental perspective, solar ovens
are advantageous for the simple reason
that they afford an alternative to
widespread reliance on firewood as fuel
for cooking. As in many areas of the
world, deforestation is a very real
environmental problem in Central
{Dr. Lankford is a professor of physics
at George Mason University in Fairfax,
Virginia, and at the National
Autonomous University of Nicaragua.)
Cooking with Cardboard
East of the capital of Guatemala,
there is a long, almost totally
deforested valley around the towns
of El Progreso and Zacapa. There,
Professor Robert Metcalf of the
California State University,
Sacramento, working with the
local Foster Parents Plan, has
introduced several hundred
cardboard solar box cookers. While
the cardboard models are cheap
and easy to build, they are, of
course, susceptible to unexpected
rain. However, in the present
near-desert conditions there, that
is hardly a worry. The clear air
and relatively high elevation
provide such intense sunshine that
these simple cookers work
beautifully.
To date, the success of this
program is mixed. While some
families are avid solar cookers,
others have been discouraged by
obstacles such as finding a secure,
sunny place for the oven, or the
uncertainty of whether the day
will remain sunny enough to
complete cooking. Lack of
understanding of the principles of
operating the oven is also
sometimes a problem. All of these
things are under study.
America, with consequences that may
be implicated with climate change: the
now-famous greenhouse effect.
The physics of solar ovens is really
quite simple. The oven I am working
with is basically a wooden box. There
are no electrical connections, no
chemicals, no fire.
With the right materials and a little
instruction, anyone can build a solar
oven. The main components consist of a
box with glass at the top to let in the
sunshine and a black metal plate at the
bottom to absorb the sunlight and turn
it into heat. If the sides and bottom are
well-insulated, the oven will easily
reach temperatures above 300 degrees
Fahrenheit. To ensure good insulation,
certain details of construction, such as a
double versus single pane of glass, can
be important.
Solar ovens work because the glass is
transparent to the visible sunlight
coming in, but opaque to the infrared
radiation given off by the
light-absorbent black metal plate.
Currently, there are a number of
efforts to establish the practice of solar
cooking in Central America, and there is
an active thermal solar research program
in the Physics Department of the
National University of Costa Rica. My
work is part of a resurgent interest in
the idea.
Some 20 years ago, the Rockefeller
Foundation funded an ambitious
program in Mexico to introduce a
reflector-type solar cooker. The program
was not successful, however; likewise a
number of early solar oven projects
failed to take hold. Initially, there were
some technical problems. For instance,
the particular kind of solar ovens used
in Mexico produced a high-temperature
hot plate, but users found them unstable
in the wind and inconvenient to use.
People had to stand in the hot sun to
cook, avoid the bright reflection, and
frequently move the cookers to track the
sun.
More important, this early program
suffered the flaw that has characterized
JULY/AUGUST 1990
47
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Solar ovens free users from their traditional
dependence on scarce firewood and from
exposure to wood smoke. Cooked at
temperatures that can exceed 300 degrees
Fahrenheit, the food is hot and tasty.
Lankford photo
EPA JOURNAL
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As in many areas of the world,
deforestation is a very real
environmental problem in
Central America ....
so many U.S. aid efforts: a lack of
understanding of the social factors
involved. In this case, the cookers were
presented as outright gifts, unsolicited
by the prospective users; as a result, the
ovens were not valued and not used.
The failure of this and similar early
programs left solar cooking with a
negative image that more recent efforts
have had to work to overcome.
There is little doubt that the solar box
cooker, as presently designed, performs
as it should. Instead, the real challenge
is to change long-standing indigenous
habits of cooking with firewood: to
bring solar cooking into the daily ritual
of Central American families. In this
respect, we have learned a lot from the
programs that have foundered in the
past.
In India, an estimated 80,000 solar
box cookers have been purchased by
Indian citizens to date, with a
50-percent government subsidy. In
Guatemala and Nicaragua, there are
current efforts to establish solar cooking
by selling the ovens, rather than
providing them gratis.
However, among the really poor
majority of Central Americans,
purchasing a solar oven is seldom a
possibility. People who have enough
money to buy an oven can usually buy a
gas stove and use subsidized propane
gas. Thus, a basic premise of the work I
am involved in is to have the users
build their own ovens. In this way,
potential users contribute their own
manual labor, while the necessary tools
and materials are provided. I believe
this kind of subsidy will prove to be
more effective than outright or even
partial gifts.
I first became involved with solar
ovens in 1987 while a visiting professor
of physics at the National Autonomous
University of Nicaragua in Managua. A
first-year project with five students
studying the efficiency of the oven,
brought home the fact that solar ovens
really do work under the intense
Managua sunshine. The first model we
built benefitted from a consultation with
thermal researchers at the National
University of Costa Rica.
Our solar-oven project attracted
increasing attention, and the university
continues to give the project as much
support as resources allow. However, at
first I wondered if my Nicaraguan
students' enthusiasm for their solar
efficiency study was due more to the
great variety of food we cooked than
their interest in the physics of the
device. One day we even cooked a great
pizza. The question was whether their
excitement would carry over to their
parents, who bear the constant burden
of providing food for their families.
The following year, with some
assistance from my students, I began
working with solar ovens off-campus in
an effort to teach villagers to build their
own solar ovens—first in Nicaragua and
then in other Central American
countries. Nicaragua turned out to be a
receptive initial project site. It is a
country looking for new solutions to old
problems, searching for pragmatic
approaches that hold promise to help its
vast majority of impoverished citizens.
Basically, the whole process goes like
this. First a respected person is found in
a village or neighborhood, and that
person forms a local organizing group of
people who either like the idea of
building their own solar ovens and/or
trust the initial contact person. A
cooking demonstration is arranged in
which they prepare and cook their own
food, and as the "expert," I give an
illustrated talk to explain how the ovens
and the project work. Usually about 20
to 40 people attend. Those who are
interested in participating in a
construction workshop sign UD.
By the time the necessary organizing
meetings are over and actual
construction begins, the group is
typically down to about a dozen people.
They spend several weeks to several
months working during evenings and
weekends after their regular jobs. When
the ovens are finished, the proud new
owners take them home to keep. This is
when the real test comes—whether the
ovens will be put to use on a daily
basis—and this is where we are
concentrating our efforts.
The initial enthusiasm is encouraging.
Certainly many people are anxious to
build their own solar ovens, and their
dedication builds as the work proceeds.
While the work is going on, the model
oven can be used to experiment with
cooking various foods—at least until the
model must be moved to the next
project. As with anything new,
experience is needed to get the cooking
details right. How much water should
be added to new rice? To old rice? How
much more cooking time is needed for
last year's beans as compared to the
current harvest?
The U.S. Fulbright Commission has
awarded me a six-month research grant
to do a follow-up study and an
evaluation of solar-oven use in Central
America. The results should be
available in late 1990. If the results are
as positive as early data indicate, the
next step will be to solicit funding to
enlarge the project. Several funding
agencies have expressed interest.
Because an essential part of the project
is local involvement, growth will not be
rapid. However, as is so often heard
here: "poco a poco" or "little by little,"
solutions will be found.
And the pig that ate the fiber glass in
Guatemala? It's doing fine. Perhaps that
is an encouraging sign. D
JULY/AUGUST 1990
49
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Eastern Europe:
Restoring a Damaged Environment
by Richard A. Liroff
Whole sectors of industry are producing
things in which no one is interested,
while things we need are in short
supply .... Our outdated economy is
squandering energy .... We have laid
waste to our soil and the rivers and the
forests our/ore/others bequeathed us,
and we have the worst environment in
all of Europe today.
—Vaclev Havel, President of
Czechoslovakia
(Liroff directs the Eastern Europe
Environment Program at World Wildlife
Fund and The Conservation
Foundation. Previously affiliated, these
groups were formally merged in 1990 to
form a private, non-profit conservation
organization involved in research and
environmental protection.]
President Havel's assessment of his
nation's economic and
environmental ills applies broadly
across Eastern Europe. The Iron Curtain
has been lifted to reveal truly appalling
environmental conditions. Eastern
Europe has been savaged by
economic-development policies
indifferent to the carrying capacity of its
ecosystems and to the health and
well-being of its citizens. The East's
central planners have demonstrated they
can be as environmentally callous and
cavalier as the worst private-sector
managers in market-oriented economies.
The United States, together with
Western Europe, is supporting the
economic and political transition of
Eastern Europe. The United States
should offer a balanced, integrated
program of environmental and economic
assistance that fosters full restoration of
a healthy environment in Eastern
Europe. Such a program would help
reduce the region's contribution to
global warming and encourage use of
both American technologies and
innovative approaches to pollution
prevention.
The Environmental Challenge
The German Democratic Republic
(GDR), Czechoslovakia, and Poland are
among the world's largest emitters of
sulfur dioxide (SO2). Moreover, in
Europe, as elsewhere in the world, air
pollution does not respect political
boundaries. The Eastern European states
export from 59 percent to 74 percent of
their SO2 emissions. According to
monitoring data, however, of the total
amount of S02 deposited in these
nations, 36 to 59 percent originates
outside their borders.
The forests of western
Czechoslovakia, southwestern Poland,
and the southern GDR have been
devastated. Budapest, Prague, Krakow,
and other major cities routinely have
air-pollution readings well above
existing health standards.
Drinking-water supplies throughout
Eastern Europe are heavily
contaminated. Vast reaches of the
Vistula River in Poland, which drains
much of the country, are classified as
unfit for use even by industry. The
Baltic and Black Sea coasts are badly
degraded by domestic sewage,
agricultural run-off, and heavy metals
and organic pollutants from industry.
Water quality problems are both
domestic and transboundary; domestic
progress in combating pollution has
been slow, and multilateral cooperation
negligible.
The soil, too, is polluted. Industrial
discharges have contaminated soils and
domestic food supplies. In the Upper
Silesia region of Poland, for example,
lead, zinc, cadmium, and mercury levels
in samples of garden produce are 30 to
70 percent higher than World Health
Organization norms.
Eastern Europe's mines and industries
yield prodigious amounts of solid and
hazardous waste. Waste generators in
Hungary reportedly dispose of over
500,000 tons of hazardous waste
annually in illegal landfills. In addition,
substantial amounts of hazardous waste
have been shipped east from Western
nations. The GDR has reported
importing one million tons of waste
annually, but Greenpeace contends that
the amount of imports has been
disguised and is really five times
greater. Few safeguards have been
developed to assure appropriate
management of these wastes.
The devastation of the environment is
revealed through effects on human
health and welfare. In especially
contaminated areas, statistics and
anecdotal evidence show dramatically
elevated rates of respiratory disease,
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reproductive and developmental
problems, and shortened life spans.
These areas include Poland's officially
designated ecological disaster areas, the
coal-burning and industrial areas of
Czechoslovakia and the GDR, and
industrial centers in Romania and
Bulgaria. Upper Silesia, one of Poland's
ecological disaster areas, has circulatory
and respiratory disease rates that are,
respectively, 15 and 47 percent higher
than national norms.
Human populations have been
removed from some contaminated areas,
and in other areas people have been
offered economic incentives to remain.
For example, in Bitterfeld, GDR, labeled
by Der Spiegel as "the dirtiest city in
Europe," wages are comparatively high
to attract workers to the area. Also
residents are given extra money to buy
vegetables, to compensate for the loss of
contaminated home-grown produce.
Economic and Political Roots of the
Problem
Eastern Europe's heavy industries are
inefficient, requiring larger inputs of
energy and raw materials than
counterpart industries in Western
Europe. On average, Eastern European
economies use about twice as much
energy and water per unit of Gross
Domestic Product as do West European
economies. Little has been spent on
pollution control, and there is virtually
no domestic pollution-control industry.
Countries have been unwilling to spend
scarce hard currency on Western
pollution-control technology.
Eastern European societies have not
been "societies of law" in the Western
sense. Even when strong environmental
laws have been enacted in these
nations, they have had little impact,
because decision-makers have not been
held accountable for enforcing them.
Watchdog nongovernmental
organizations (NGOs) have rarely been
tolerated.
The environment has had very low
priority in planning. Heavy subsidies for
inefficient industries and the lack of
real pricing of goods have undercut any
meaningful role for fines, penalties, and
other economic tools in environmental
protection. For example, Poland levies
fines on polluters, but they constitute a
very small percentage of clean-up costs.
Until a few years ago, fines were
negotiated away in talks between tin-
environment ministry and other
ministries.
Discharge fees in other Eastern
European nations have had similarly
small impact. State environmental
functionaries generally have had little
success policing state industrial
enterprises. The fox has been guarding
the chicken coop.
Guidelines for U.S. Programs
The principal U.S. programs to assist
Eastern Europe in its economic,
political, and environmental transition
are authorized by Congress in the
Support for Eastern European
Democracy (SEED) Act of 19HH. Tim
U.S. Agency for International
Development, EPA, the Department of
Energy, the Peace Corps, and the
Overseas Private Investment
Corporation, among others, are
authorized to launch multimillion
51
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dollar assistance programs in Poland
and Hungary.
SEED's environmental programs
include a regional environmental center
in Budapest, Hungary, a report to be
prepared by EPA on environmental
problems and priorities in Hungary and
Poland, and clean-coal retrofitting,
air-monitoring, drinking-water, and
wastewater projects for Krakow, Poland.
Reflecting the rapid pace of change in
Eastern Europe, Congress is considering
new legislation, SEED II, that will
expand programs to other Eastern
European nations and authorize U.S.
participation in a new multilateral
development bank for Eastern Europe.
The United States should observe the
following guidelines as it expands its
program in Eastern Europe:
• Emphasize energy efficiency. Many of
Eastern Europe's environmental
problems stem from mining and burning
poor-quality brown coal. Slowing or
reducing energy demand can reduce
stress on the environment in a
significant, cost-effective way. As
Eastern European governments
restructure their economies and
eliminate subsidies for energy, they will
encourage energy efficiency. If the
United States and other Western nations
transfer efficient technologies, they will
hasten this process.
• Stress pollution prevention. The
United States should encourage Eastern
European governments to promote
process changes in manufacturing rather
than "end-of-the-pipe" approaches to
pollution control. The United States is
only just now focusing on process
changes in domestic environmental
policy, after having emphasized
end-of-the-pipe solutions for more than
20 years. Because Eastern Europe is
starting fresh with environmental
policies, it can be a fertile testing
ground for pollution-prevention
approaches.
• Promote Cost-Effective
Technologies.The U.S. government
should also encourage Eastern European
governments to develop cost-effective
solutions to pollution problems at
existing sources. Competing vendors of
pollution-control technology have
already descended upon Eastern Europe,
hoping to sell the new governments
technologies that can remove nearly all
the pollutants from waste streams—but
often only at a very high cost in money
or energy per unit of pollutant removed.
For existing sources, it might be better
to promote broad use of alternative
technologies that, pound for pound of
pollutants, would cost less to operate.
More cleanup of existing sources might
thus be achieved at less cost. All new
sources should be required to meet the
most stringent Western standards.
• Build Self-Reliance by Strengthening
Education and Institutions. Eastern
Europe boasts a well-educated
population and a rich tradition of
scientific innovation. Unfortunately, in
recent years, it has been cut off from the
latest developments in environmental
science and technology. The United
States should invest in the development
and upgrading of environmental
curricula, the training of officials at all
levels of government, and the education
of a new cadre of industrial managers.
Both ministries and enterprises will
need assistance in taking an integrated
approach to management that
incorporates economics, technology, and
Budapest Conference Center
The Budapest Center, originating
with President Bush, was
established by the governments of
Hungary, the United States, and
Austria as well as those of the
European Community. Housed in a
200-year-old silk mill in the old
section of Buda, the Center's
central mission is to help citizens,
non-government organizations, the
private sector, and government
agencies in Central and Eastern
Europe address problems
threatening sustained economic
growth in the region. Initially, it
will focus on health, energy
efficiency, and pollution
prevention.
A key start-up project is an
air-pollution monitoring network
EPA is running in Krakow, Poland.
EPA officials will also help
upgrade that city's drinking water
and wastewater treatment
facilities.
In addition, EPA scientists,
particularly in the Office of
Research and Development, are
collaborating with their East
European counterparts under
science-and-technology
cooperation agreements with
Poland, Yugoslavia, and
Hungary.
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Smoke belches from the stacks of an East German power plant that uses high-sulfur brown coal. This fuel, commonly
used in Eastern Europe, causes high sulfur-dioxide emissions.
administration. A landmark World
Bank-funded program for Poland is a
strategic example here. The Bank is
funding the staffing and training of a
new planning and investment unit in
the Environment Ministry, the creation
of a new regional regime for managing
watersheds, and the development of
environmental auditing for state-owned
industries.
As part of its institutional investment,
the United States should promote
innovative economic approaches to
environmental management.
Domestically, it has relied heavily on
"command-and-control" approaches to
reduce discharges. These have been
supplemented on a small scale with
such economic incentives as the trading
of air-emission privileges. Eastern
European officials have expressed
considerable interest in economic
incentives, recognizing that these may
yield environmental gains more
efficiently than traditional regulatory
approaches. They should be encouraged
to combine such incentives with
integrated approaches to reducing
discharges to air, land, and water.
The investment in people should
include the NGO community.
Environmental awareness and
organizing have grown dramatically in
Eastern Europe, and nascent
environmental organizations have been
key players in the region's
democratization. But environmental
organizations suffer from lack of
information and resources. In many
cases, they lack the most basic supplies
and equipment needed to carry out their
activities. They need technical
information, and they could benefit
from training in organizing programs
and reaching out to the public more
effectively.
The United States should stress the
urgent need for informing and involving
the public as Eastern European
countries revise their environmental
programs. In Eastern Europe, until
recently, environmental data have been
treated as state secrets, and
environmental dissent has been
suppressed. The United States should
push hard for freedom of information
and involvement.
• Encourage Environmentally Sound
Investments. The United States and its
Western European allies should press an
environmental agenda on the new,
$12-billion European Bank for
Reconstruction and Development. The
United States holds a 10-percent share,
the European Community nations just
over 50 percent. The bank, which will
be investing in both the public and
private sector in Eastern Europe, is the
first multilateral development bank
whose charter requires promotion of
"environmentally sound" development.
But that mandate must be acted upon.
Priority should be given to clean,
efficient technologies and to ensuring
that new investments are scrutinized for
their environmental soundness.
The European Community nations are
pushing for an environmental code of
ethics for Western investors in Eastern
Europe, and the United States should
join in this effort. Occidental Petroleum,
a U.S. corporation, provides a promising
JULY/AUGUST 1990
53
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example in this regard: As a matter of
corporate policy, the new facilities built
in foreign lands must meet U.S. or local
environmental standards, whichever are
more strict.
The United States, together with other
Western nations, should encourage
development of a pollution-control
industry in the East to serve both
Eastern and Western markets. Strong
U.S. support for strict enforcement of
laws by new environmental
administrators in Eastern Europe will
further foster home-grown
pollution-control industries.
The Imperative for Sustainable
Development
Development strategies in Eastern
Europe have failed in terms of both
economics and the environment. Much
of Eastern Europe is a wasteland. Tens
and perhaps hundreds of billions of
dollars will be required to restore and
protect the environment.
One frequently hears the question,
"Will the East Europeans be willing to
pay for cleanup?" This question
assumes a tradeoff between economic
well-being and a sound environment.
Trade-offs and hard choices
undoubtedly will be necessary, but they
should not be overstated. An enormous
economic price already is being paid for
environmental degradation. Poland's
present pollution damage will cost the
country an estimated 10 to 20 percent of
its Gross Domestic Product.
Environmental Conditions in Eastern Europe
Poland
Mining and burning of coal lie at the root
of many of Poland's environmental
problems. It is the world's fourth largest
producer of coal and seventh largest
emitter of SO2- Coal supplies 78 percent of
the country's domestic energy needs.
Coal-mining operations discharge 7,000
tons per day of salts into the headwaters
of Poland's two major rivers, the Oder and
the Vistula. Mines and industries produce
large amounts of solid and hazardous
waste, and severe pollution of land and
water by heavy metals is reported.
Between the late 1960s and early 1980s,
Poland's water quality deteriorated
dramatically. The proportion of rivers
classified as suitable for municipal water
supply dropped from 33 percent to 6
percent, while the proportion so polluted
as to be unfit even for industrial use rose
from 23 percent to 38 percent. About 60
percent of the Vistula is unsuitable for
industrial use.
The government has designated 27
"areas of ecological hazard,"
encompassing 11 percent of the country's
area and just over a third of its
population. Five of these are "areas of
ecological disaster." The five include
Gdansk on the Baltic Coast, the
copper-mining and -refining region of
Legnica-Glogow in west central Poland,
and the contiguous, industrially impacted
areas of Upper Silesia, Krakow, and
Rybnik in southwestern Poland.
Bulgaria
Bulgaria, less industrialized and less
dependent on coal for its energy, does not
have as pervasive an air-pollution problem
as other East European countries. But it
does have "hot spots" of industrial
pollution. Health statistics have only
recently been released. Bulgarians living
near industrial complexes have markedly
higher instances of numerous diseases
and, in some cases, body tissue levels of
heavy metals two to four times standards
set by the World Health Organization.
The widespread harvesting of trees, the
heavy contamination of air, water, and soil
from industrial pollutants and agricultural
chemicals, and other harmful practices
have affected plants and animals as well.
Forty percent of the country's bird species,
25 percent of its mammals, reptiles, and
amphibians, and 20 percent of its plant
species have been designated by the
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences as
endangered or rare.
Bulgaria's coastal resort trade is
threatened by continuing decline in the
quality of the Black Sea. The Danube
River, which forms part of the boundary
between Bulgaria and Romania, drains the
agricultural, industrial, and municipal
waste of eight highly industrialized
countries into the sea.
Under the stress of these discharges, and
as a consequence of reduced inflows of
fresh water from rivers that have been
dammed for energy and irrigation, the
depth of the oxygen-rich upper fresh-water
layer of the Black Sea has diminished. The
U.S.S.R, Romania, and Turkey, all of
whom also have coasts on the Black Sea,
share in the problem.
Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia, dependent on brown coal
for 60 percent of its domestic energy, is
the sixth largest emitter of S02 in the
world. Northern Bohemia bears the brunt
of the impacts of coalmining and burning.
Government studies leaked several years
ago indicated that life expectancy in
northern Bohemia is several years lower
than the average for the balance of the
country, and rates of infant mortality,
childhood illness, and respiratory illness
are markedly higher. Those willing to
work in the area for 10 or more years
receive cash bonuses; skeptics among the
citizenry label the funds "burial money."
As in the German Democratic Republic,
large swaths of forest are devastated by air
pollution.
Czechoslovakia, like other East
European nations, is reassessing the role
of nuclear power in meeting its energy
demands. The Chernobyl accident raised
public concern throughout Eastern Europe
about the safety of nuclear power, but at
the time the effect of public opinion on
government policies was limited. In
January 1990, the government announced
it was suspending plans to construct two
nuclear reactors in Temelin, in southern
Bohemia near the Austrian border.
However, two others are scheduled to go
on line there in 1992.
Prague, Czechoslovakia's capital, suffers
from severe air-pollution problems,
especially in winter. The pollution stems
from auto emissions, household burning of
coal, and factories. Prague's factories
generate 11 percent of Czechoslovakia's
industrial output. Prague's city planners
cannot account for about 80 percent of the
estimated 40,000 tons of hazardous waste
produced in the city each year.
German Democratic Republic
The German Democratic Republic (GDR) is
the richest nation in Eastern Europe, as
measured in terms of Gross National
Product per capita. But this conventional
measure of economic well-being fails to
capture fully the toll the GDR's industrial
machine is taking on human health and
the environment.
The GDR depends on brown coal for 70
percent of its domestic energy demand. It
is one of the largest emitters of S02 in the
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EPA JOURNAL
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Currently, many of the worst polluters
may be the most inefficient operations.
And as subsidies for energy are
eliminated, market prices introduced,
and other adjustments made, many
facilities will become uncompetitive
and shut down. The environment will
benefit. Moreover, steps taken to make
remaining operations more efficient by
reducing resource consumption and
making other process changes will yield
additional environmental benefits.
Political forecasts about Eastern
Europe have been notoriously wide of
the mark in the last few years. But it is
reasonable to believe that in heavily
affected regions where forests are dying,
babies are born prematurely, children
are retarded, men and women are dying
young, and the search for clean air takes
people to distant areas, people will be
willing to endure temporary
unemployment and other economic
dislocations for the promise of an
economically and environmentally
sustainable future, o
world. Recently released data on
air-pollution levels—previously kept
secret—reveal that in such centers of
heavy industry as Leipzig, Halle, and
Bitterfeld, average annual levels of SO2 in
the air are five times the U.S. standard,
and average annual levels of particulate
are 13 times the U.S. standard.
The impact of pollutants on human
health is readily visible. In the Pirna area
near Dresden, children have unusually
high rates of neurological and
motor-development problems. Near the
coal-processing facility of Espenhain, 50
percent of the children have respiratory
ailments, and 33 percent suffer from
eczema.
The GDR is the most industrialized
nation in Eastern Europe but, by one
estimate, as much as 60 to 70 percent of
its chemical industry could be forced to
shut down if it were subject to West
German environmental standards. Much of
the industry might be uneconomical to
operate anyway. One chemical plant near
Bitterfeld discharges 44 pounds of
mercury into the Saale River each day, 10
times as much as the yearly discharges of
mercury by the major BASF chemical
facility in West Germany.
The GDR has been a major dumping
ground for West German domestic and
industrial wastes. West Germany is now
being reunited with its wastes and will
need to address this legacy.
Hungary
Oil and gas satisfy 60 percent of Hungary's
energy demands, yet air pollution is a
serious problem. It is especially
pronounced in Budapest; automobile
emissions are a major culprit.
Water pollution is a priority concern.
Most of Hungary's water, enters the nation
in degraded condition from its neighbors.
(This includes the Danube, which enters
Hungary after passing through West
Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia.)
Ground-water contamination from overuse
of agricultural chemicals in Hungary poses
a risk to public health. Water in hundreds
of villages and towns is unfit to drink.
Lake Balaton has been the focus of a major
clean-up effort; much progress has been
made in eliminating the phosphorus that
contributed to the lake's decline.
The proposed Nagymoros Dam on the
Danube River has been the most
prominent Hungarian environmental issue
in recent years. The dam, whose
construction is nearly complete, is the
lower portion of a larger hydroelectric
project that will affect about 200
kilometers of the Danube. An upper dam
is being built at Gabcikovo in
Czechoslovakia. After having ignored
several years of public outcry and
scientists' forecasts that the project would
disrupt the ground-water system
supplying Budapest's drinking water, the
Hungarian government recently agreed to
abandon the dam. The final outcome
remains to be seen.
Romania
Relatively little is known about
environmental conditions in Romania
because of the Ceausescu regime's veil of
secrecy over environmental data.
Romania is much less dependent on
coal for its energy than other East
European nations. It relies on imports
from the Soviet Union and domestic oil
and gas for 64 percent of its energy needs.
The Danube Delta is Romania's most
noteworthy ecological feature. One of the
largest reedbeds in the world, and home to
more than 160 breeding species of birds,
the delta is a major stopping point for
birds migrating between Europe, the
Mediterranean, the Middle East, and
Africa. In the late 1960s and early 1970s,
hundreds of thousands to over a million
ducks were counted in the region during
the winters. The Delta has been damaged
by draining and diking, a product of
Ceausescu's promotion of irrigated
agriculture and construction of a shipping
channel.
Pollution is greatest in five heavily
industrialized regions. There is serious
contamination of air, water, and soil by
heavy metals. Characterizing the impact of
two factories in the town of Copsa Mica, a
New York Times reporter has written, "For
about 15 miles around, every growing
thing in this once-gentle valley looks as if
it has been dipped in ink."
Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia's environmental problems have
not drawn as much attention in the West
as those of other East European nations.
As they enter Yugoslavia, the Danube
and other rivers are substantially
degraded, a result of upstream industrial,
municipal, and agricultural discharges.
Yugoslavia's largest internal river, the
Sava, flows through the greatest industrial
concentration in the country. The Sava is
categorized as suitable only for irrigation
and industrial uses or as requiring special
treatment prior to any use.
Northern Yugoslavia is more
industrialized than the south, thereby
producing greater pollution, but concern
about industrial discharges is found
throughout the country. Yugoslavia's
forests are subject to lower levels of SO2
deposition than forests in the German
Democratic Republic, Czechoslovakia, and
Poland. Consequently, they have not
experienced the substantial damage found
in these other nations, but there is concern
that levels of S02 may increase in the
future.
JULY/AUGUST 1990
55
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Saving the Arctic: Challenge
to Eight Nations
by Oran R. Young
Celebrated far and wide as one of the
last great pristine areas on Earth, the
Arctic has recently entered the era of
burgeoning threats to the natural
environment with a vengeance.
Some of these threats are
Arctic-specific, arising from the postwar
increase in the extraction, processing,
and shipment of raw materials.
Oil-and-gas development over the last
20 years in the Soviet Arctic has
destroyed an estimated six million
hectares of reindeer pasture in
northwestern Siberia's Yamal-Nenetz
Autonomous District. Sulfur emissions
from the mining complexes of the Kola
Peninsula, immediately east of northern
Finland, are twice the emissions of all
of Finland.
Closer to home, the oil fields at
Prudhoe Bay in Alaska are estimated to
produce annual emissions of nitrogen
oxides, a key source of photochemical
smog, that equal or surpass those from
the entire Washington, DC, metropolitan
area. The Exxon Vuldez oil spill, at over
10 million gallons the worst ever to
occur within the jurisdiction of the
United States, is directly attributable to
the extraction of oil at Prudhoe Hay.
The James Bay hydroelectric: complex in
northern Quebec, Canada, has already
inundated thousands of square
kilometers of wildlife habitat; it will
engulf considerably more over the next
several decades if current plans for
additional development go forward.
Other threats to the Arctic originate
far beyond its southern i.-mit.s. They are
intensified by natural conditions: a
combination of air and water currents of
the Northern Hemisphere and
(Dr. Y'oung is director of the Institute of
Arctic Studies (it Dartmouth College. He
also serves as a member of the Polar
Hcswirch Board of the Natural Academy
of Sciences and as co-chair of (he
nongovernmental Working Group on
Arctic [nternationaJ Relations.)
environmental conditions prevailing in
the Arctic itself.
Air currents deliver carbon, sulfur,
and other pollutants from Eurasia to the
Arctic Basin; the low level of
precipitation in the Arctic ensures that
these pollutants remain in the
atmosphere for considerable periods of
time. This gives rise to Arctic haze,
which casts a pall over large segments
each winter and spring and rivals the
annual mean level of photochemical
smog over Los Angeles, California.
Similar dynamics are at work with
respect to the movement of carbon
dioxide, chlorofluorocarbons, and other
greenhouse gases from the mid-latitudes
to the Arctic.
Water currents also function as
conveyor belts to bring pollutants from
distant sources. For some time,
observers have noted unusually high
levels of toxic substances in seals and
polar bears. Such substances soon make
their way to the top of the food chain;
mercury, for example, is found in
mother's milk in many parts of the
Arctic.
The Arctic, as a distinctive region,
also plays a significant role in the
overall dynamics of the Earth. Nowhere
is this more apparent than in the
region's connection with the prospect of
global warming. Most global circulation
models project temperature increases in
the Arctic twice those expected in the
mid-latitudes. While the driving forces
behind this occurrence lie outside the
Arctic, resultant changes in the region
may well impact the mid-latitudes
profoundly.
U S Coast Guaid photo
International cooperation will be required to protect the Arctic
environment. Pictured is a scene in the far North—an iceberg off
Greenland estimated to be 200 feet high.
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The melting of sea ice will lower the
albedo or reflective power of the Arctic
Basin, in turn lowering the Earth's
ability to reflect solar radiation. This
will enhance the greenhouse effect,
thereby raising the Earth's temperature.
Higher temperatures may release large
quantities of carbon and methane by
melting Arctic permafrost and
destabilizing Arctic clathrates.
(Clathrates are chemically interwoven
deposits of methane, ice, and water ice
on the sea bottom.) The retreat of Arctic
glaciers and the melting of the
Greenland icecap may contribute
substantially to a worldwide rise in sea
levels.
What is more, scientists today are
documenting the crucial role that the
Arctic and its elements—ocean, ice, and
atmosphere—play in determining
weather patterns throughout the
Northern Hemisphere. These
relationships reinforce the rising interest
in the role of the Arctic: in global
climate change.
Taken together, these threats lend a
sense of urgency to the search for
international measures to protect the
Arctic's environment. To be sure, some
of the problems can be traced to
activities taking place within the
jurisdictions of individual states. There
is no denying the severity of the
environmental problems arising in the
Kola Peninsula, the Yamal Peninsula,
and other parts of the Soviet Arctic.
Nonetheless, it would be a mistake to
overemphasize jurisdictional boundaries
in considering ways to come to grips
with the growing threats to the natural
environment of the Arctic. The
problems are circumpolar in scale. No
single jurisdiction's actions will stop the
threats.
In the face of these environmental
threats, the initiation of a multilateral
process aimed at reaching international
agreement on measures to protect the
Arctic's environment is a welcome
development. At the invitation of the
government of Finland, representatives
of the eight Arctic states—Canada,
Denmark/Greenland, Finland, Iceland,
Norway, the Soviet Union, Sweden, and
the United States—met in Rovaniemi,
Finland, during September 1989 to
explore options for advancing
international cooperation.
The process launched at Rovaniemi is
continuing. A second consultative
meeting, attended by about 80
representatives from the Arctic states,
took place in Yellowknife, Ganada,
during April 1990. A third is now
planned for January 1991 in Sweden to
conclude preparations for a ministerial
meeting at Rovaniemi in the spring of
1991.
Numerous complex issues and hard
choices have yet to be faced and
resolved. How should the legitimate
interests of non-state actors, like
organizations representing the interests
of the Arctic's aboriginal peoples, be
taken into account in devising
protective measures for the Arctic
environment? Ls the model of an initial
framework convention followed by a
series of protocols, as used in tin; recent
agreements for the protection of
.stratospheric ozone, suitable for the
Arctic?
The questions continue. How can the
parties deal effectively with threats, like
Arctic haze, that originate in industrial
processes centered far beyond the Arctic
region? To what extent is it desirable to
link environmental issues with other
matters, like scientific research,
economic development, commerce, and
the rights of indigenous peoples, in
negotiating the terms of a regional
environmental regime for the Arctic? Is
there a role for a standing conference on
the Arctic environment, either in
working out the terms of protocols
dealing with substantive issues or in
overseeing the implementation of
specific measures to protect the Arctic's
environment?
Achieving cooperation in dealing with
the environmental threats to the Arctic
will be hard. The difficulties of
collective action that affect all
international efforts are joined, in the
case of the Arctic, by a number of
complexities relating to identifying the
participants and reaching consensus on
the nature of what can be done.
However, the process initiated at
Rovaniemi has built up a considerable
head of steam, and there is a palpable
sense that the Arctic states are not
willing to walk away from this process
empty-handed.
What is critical at this juncture is for
the ministers, who are expected to
gather in Rovaniemi sometime in tlHtl.
to exercise the political will needed to
make full use of the opportunities
handed to them. The reward for doing
so will be an achievement of lasting
value—the protection of the Arctic's
environment. It may also yield a set of
multilateral cooperative agreements that
can serve as a model for achieving
effective international cooperation to
cope with environmental threats in
other regions of the world, a
JULY/AUGUST 1990
57
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The European Community:
An Environmental Force
by Nigel Haigh and Konrad von Moltke
In the 1970s, Europeans frequently
looked across the Atlantic; to the
United States for inspiration when
developing their own environmental
policies. They may not have adopted all
they saw, but at least they looked.
In the 1990s, Americans may find
themselves looking increasingly to
Europe, and to the European
Community (EC) in particular, in
conjunction with the growing
internationalization of the
environmental agenda. Certainly the EC
has come of age as an international
actor. Less than 10 years ago, the United
States was questioning whether the EC
could sign the Vienna Convention on
Protection of the Stratospheric O/.one
Layer as an independent entity. Today
the need to deal with the EC as a unit is
an indisputable reality, not only on
trade and agricultural policy issues but
also in many environmental matters.
The EC] is something of a puzzle to
many people in Europe; thus it is hardly
surprising that people outside Europe
often find it difficult understand. The
EC fits no existing model.of
international relations. It is not a federal
nation state—a kind of United States of
Europe—although there are plenty who
think it should become one. Nor is it
just another international organization
like the Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development or the
United Nations Environment
Programme, within which countries
collaborate without giving up important
elements of sovereignty.
On issues where the EC has enacted
legislation—for example customs duties,
agricultural policy, and many aspects of
fHaigh is the Director of the Institute for
European Environmental Policy,
London. Dr. von Moltke is a Senior
Fellow at World Wildlife Fund and The
Conservation Foundation and adjunct
professor of environmental studies at
Dartmouth College.)
Low-lying Holland, a member of the
European Community, is already worried
about sea-level rise from global warming.
The Delta Works is a major dyke system
currently being built.
environmental management—it has the
authority to represent all 12 member
states in external relations. This can get
complicated since some international
treaties cover some matters on which
the EC has passed legislation and other
issues on which it has not.
For example, in recent negotiations to
tighten the Montreal Protocol on
Substances that Deplete the
Stratospheric Ozone Layer, the EC was
the undisputed representative of the
member states when deciding which
substances to include and how
vigorously to control them. But it was
unclear whether the EC as a whole—or
its individual member states—would
participate in the new fund tc help less
developed countries comply with the
requirements of the protocol.
The EC has long puzzled the United
States, which appears torn between the
advantages of a strong "Europe" which
can commit 12 countries at one stroke
and the disadvantages of having to
Roland de Bruin photo. Netherlands Board of Tounsrn
negotiate with this strong entity rather
than with its much weaker constituent
parts. A unified European entity is
welcome for the strength of the Western
alliance, but it inevitably reduces the
relative importance of the United States
within that alliance.
A case study in this ambivalence
occurred in 1988. Just before the
Montreal Protocol entered into force, the
U.S. negotiator criticized the EC for
insisting on joint ratification by its
member states—which entailed the risk
of holding up the rest of the world in
protecting the ozone layer. It was well
known that a number of member states
were ready to ratify and that these
individual ratifications could suffice to
bring the protocol into force.
As it turned out, the member states
did ratify collectively and in time. The
U.S. negotiator had not anticipated the
advantages of joint action, nor the
contributions of the EC in making the
protocol successful. Just a few months
58
EPA JOURNAL
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later, the EC forced the pace in dealing
with stratospheric ozone depletion by
calling for rapid phase-out of al!
controlled chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs).
How did the EC get so deeply
involved in environmental affairs that it
is now an important international
negotiator? Its original goal was to
create closer relations among member
states by establishing a "common
market." (See box.) Unity through
economic development was very much
an idea of the 1950s and 60s. Prosperity
has helped ease tensions between
traditional antagonists, but the EC has
certainly not yet replaced the sovereign
instincts of its member states. Indeed,
often the most effective way to
influence EC decisions is to work with
the member states individually.
As the economic reforms of the EC
began to take hold, the costs of
economic growth without regard for the
environment became increasingly
apparent. It also became apparent that
separate initiatives by individual
member states to adopt environmental
standards might be futile and might
even conflict with the free-market goals
of the EC. Differing standards could
distort competition in some industries.
Thus in 1972 a decision was made to
launch an "environmental action
programme" for the EC.
The economic technocrats who shape
EC decisions did not exactly welcome
this new venture with open arms. In
fact, the first decade of EC
environmental policy was eked out in a
minefield of economic interests. For
example, the original decisions on the
control of CFCs were shaped to avoid
any real impact on the industries
concerned.
It is little short of a miracle that the
"Cinderella" of EC environmental
policies managed to survive,
presumably because growing public
pressure was forcing member states to
act. From inauspicious beginnings,
environmental policy has now become
one of the mainstays of the EC, recently
JULY/AUGUST 1990
institutionalized in the same set of
amendments to the European Economic
Community (EEC) Treaties which
designated 1992 as the date for removal
of ail barriers to trade.
Over the years EC environmental
legislation has proliferated: More than
200 directives and regulations cover
most aspects of environmental
management, sometimes in great detail.
These legal instruments differ widely in
their significance. Some involve
relatively small matters while others are
comparable in importance to federal
legislation in the United States. Some of
the more important EC environmental
legislation is highlighted below:
• The "Sixth Amendment," adopted in
1979, regulates the labeling and
packaging of chemicals as well as
testing requirements for new chemicals
before they are marketed. It established
a notification scheme which allows
manufacturers to market new chemicals
anywhere in the EC after notifying
public authorities in one country only.
• The "Seveso Directive," adopted in
1982, was a response to a major
accident, an explosion in a chemical
factory, in Italy in 1976. Due to this
directive, long before the Bhopal
disaster, the European chemical
industry was accustomed to preparing
safety reports and on-site and off-site
emergency plans, and the public was
being informed of the correct
procedures to follow in the event of an
accident.
• A 1985 directive established an
environmental assessment procedure for
major public and private projects in all
EC countries. Stimulated by the U.S.
experience with the National
Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the
European directive ended up being very
different from NEPA because it had to
be integrated with the advanced systems
for land-use planning which were
already in place in most European
countries.
• The acid rain directive (1988) requires
emissions of sulfur dioxide from
existing large power stations to be
reduced overall by 58 percent by the
year 2003 from a 1980 baseline;
however, different reductions are
allocated to different countries. This
agreement was reached after long and
painful negotiations because the fuel
supplies and the economic and
geographical circumstances of the
member states were so different. Thus
the EC, an international body, was able
to resolve its own inter-regional
disputes on acid rain much more
quickly than the United Status.
• Over the years, a number of
instruments have been adopted which
effectively made the EC the key
negotiator on the control of CFCs. The
original decisions were merely symbolic
in some respects, but they did define
the controlling philosophy which
ultimately was incorporated in the
Montreal Protocol: limitation of overall
69
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production and use rather than
regulation of individual applications.
Arguably the international negotiating
logjam on stratospheric ozone depletion
was finally broken in 1986 when first
U.S. environmental organizations and
then industry were pried loose from the
U.S. government's negotiating position
and embraced the EC approach.
It is important to keep in mind that in
areas where the EC has passed
legislation, it acquires external authority
and thereby becomes an important
negotiating partner for other countries.
Moreover, EC environmental legislation
is now so extensive that it is impossible
to understand fully the national
legislation of any member state without
an understanding of the framework of
EC law within which the national laws
must fit. The member states with
comparatively weak environmental
The European Communfty in Profile
The European Community (EC)
was founded in 1957 through the
Treaty of Rome. It comprises the
European Coal and Steel
Community, the European
Economic Community, and the
European Atomic Energy
Community.
The six original EC parties were
France, the Federal Republic of
Germany, Italy, Belgium, the
Netherlands, and Luxembourg. The
United Kingdom, Denmark, and
Ireland joined in 1973; Greece
acceded in 1981 and Portugal and
Spain in 1986. Thus the EC
presently consists of 12 member
nations. Several other nations have
applied to join.
The EC has four main
institutions:
• The European Parliament is a
directly elected body with a given
number of seats for each member
nation, depending on the size of
its population. The Parliament is
not primarily a legislative body.
However, proposed legislation
cannot be adopted by the Council
(see below) unless the Parliament
has given an opinion on the
proposal.
• The Commission consists of 17
individuals appointed by the
governments of member states (one
or two from each member state).
Together with the Council, the
Commission comprises the EC's
legislature. The power to propose
legislation lies solely with the
Commission, but only the Council
may adopt it.
• The Council, which is composed
of one minister from each member
state, is empowered to enact
legislation for the EC. (Once
legislation is adopted, member
states are responsible for
implementing the law.)
• The Court of Justice is the
judicial body of the EC. The Court
decides cases referred to it by the
Commission. For example, such
cases would include instances in
which the Commission believes
member states have not fully
implemented EC legislation.
The principle task of the EC, as
defined in the Treaty of Rome, is
to create closer relations among
the member states by establishing
a common market. The Single
European Act of 1987 refined this
mandate to require, by the end of
1992, the creation of an internal
market comprising an "area
without internal frontiers in which
the free movement of goods,
person, services, and capital is
ensured." The 1987 treaty also
delineated various common
policies in areas including
transport, agriculture, and the
environment.
records, such as Greece, Spain, and
Portugal, are now building their policies
in concert with the EC framework. But
even the more enthusiastic countries
such as Germany, the Netherlands, and
Denmark, have had their environmental
policies improved by EC legislation.
The EC has become a force to reckon
with on environmental and other issues.
Member states deal with each other on a
day-to-day basis in evolving
environmental policies. The solutions
they develop reflect the constraints of
international cooperation, but these
solutions are often more advanced than
can be achieved in other international
negotiations. Moreover, much like the
United States, once EC countries reach
consensus among themselves, they are
unlikely to change their stance under
external pressure. It is therefore
essential for the United States to follow
EC legislation closely and to seek input
while influence is possible.
The reality of EC environmental
policy has added a new dimension to
U.S. foreign environmental policy. EC
decision-making is complex and
difficult to influence from the outside.
EC decisions, once reached, are very
difficult to change through the
traditional means of bilateral diplomacy
with member states. The experience of
stratospheric ozone depletion may prove
instructive.
The United States did much of the
underlying research and took the first
steps to act on the problem. But in
recent years, the EC has emerged as the
leader on the issue. It is not
inconceivable that this pattern may be
repeated on other international
environmental issues ranging from
tropical deforestation to global
warming. D
Note: A book by Nigel Haigh entitled
EEC Environmental Policy and Britain is
available for $40 from The Conservation
Foundation, P.O. Box 4866, Hampden
Post Of/ice, Baltimore, Maryland 21211;
telephone (301] 338-6998.
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Strategies for Change;
Reasons for Hope
by Maurice Strong
(Strong will chair the U.N,
environmental conference in 1992.)
199^ I
Envn .-id Devei.
The 1972 United Nations Conference
on the Human Environment in
Stockholm, Sweden, put the
environment on the agenda of the world
community. The goal of the 1992
Conference on Environment and
Development in Brazil is to place the
environment squarely at the center of
economic decision-making, so that we
can balance our economic aspirations
against our environmental imperatives.
While the recent explosion of
environmental concern provided the
impetus for the 1992 Conference,
realistically it is only within the
processes of economic development that
most actions to deal with environmental
concerns can be taken successfully.
The idea that the environment and
development are related is not new.
Indeed, the concept was articulated
persuasively as early as the seminal
meeting of experts and policymakers at
Founex, near Geneva, Switzerland, in
1971. That meeting provided ihe
intellectual basis for the Stockholm
Conference. It also paved the way for
the participation of developing
countries in the Conference. Prime
Minister Indira Gandhi of India made
the point dramatically at Stockholm
when she pointed to poverty itself as
the principal source of pollution in
developing countries.
When the United Nations
Environment Programme was
established following the Stockholm
Conference, it became a strong advocate
of the environment-development link.
Nevertheless, by 1983, when the United
Nations General Assembly established
the World Commission on Environment
and Development to take a new look at
the issue in the perspective of 2000 and
beyond, there had been very little
recognition of the relationship in
national decisionmaking.
The Brundtland Commission rcjcctiul
"no growth" as a goal for the world
community, but made it clear that no
growth would be the inevitable result of
continuing on the path of
environmentally destructive
development. It called for a transition to
sustainable development, particularly in
developing countries, to meet the need
for growth. The recommendations
contained in its report, Our Common
Future, provide a basis for the issues to
be addressed at the 1992 Conference.
The 1992 Conference, or ECO '92 as it
is already being called, will deal with a
broad range of issues bearing on the
transition to sustainable development.
These include climate change,
transboundary air pollution,
JULY/AUGUST 1990
-------
management of waste, protection and
management of land resources,
conservation of biological diversity,
protection of the oceans and coastal
areas, and the quality and supply of
freshwater resources. Cutting across
these will be the financial and
technological requirements of
developing countries for joining in
global cooperative actions and the
institutional changes needed to foster
cooperation.
Cooperation can only be based on
common interests. At the Stockholm
Conference, developing countries were
deeply concerned that their overriding
need to alleviate poverty might be
prejudiced by the growing
preoccupation of the industrialized
countries with environmental problems.
Some said they would welcome
pollution if it was a necessary
accompaniment to the economic growth
they urgently required.
Since Stockholm, air and water
pollution and the cancerous spread of
urban blight have added cities like
Mexico City, Cairo, Sao Paulo, and
Manila to the list of the world's most
polluted environments. Shortages of
supply and rising tides of toxic
substances have been added to loss of
soil, forest cover, and whole species of
plant and animal life to produce a new
generation of risks to the health of
peoples in developing countries. As
fragile economies struggle to
accommodate growing populations, the
vicious circle of poverty drives millions
of-people to undermine the very resources
on which their survival depends.
In Western industrialized countries
and in Japan, the environment has
become deeply entrenched as one of the
central concerns of the public. This has
led to vigorous action and some notable
progress in attacking local
environmental problems. The new
openness of the Soviet Union and its
allies in eastern and central Europe has
revealed widespread environmental
degradation in those countries. At the
same time, there has been a growing
focus on such major global risks as
climate change, ozone depletion, and
the deterioration of biological and
genetic resources.
ECO '92 will focus on the concrete
steps we must take to effect a transition
to sustainability in our economic life.
The industrialized countries must
clearly take the lead in this transition. It
will be no easy task. Inertia is as
powerful a force in human affairs as it is
in the physical world. Although the
transition to sustainable development
ultimately will produce more
opportunities than will continuing along
the "business-as-usual" pathway, the
changes themselves will be disruptive.
There will be strong resistance from
those most immediately threatened.
The transition must derive primarily
from incentives rather than regulatory
measures. Market forces can be a
powerful ally in providing the
incentives. It would be fully consistent
with market-economy principles that
environmental costs be met by
incorporating them into the products
which give rise to them. Such a change
would amount to nothing less than an
"eco-industrial" revolution, one
that would create a whole new
generation of economic opportunity.
The substantial reductions by Western
Europe and Japan in the materials and
energy used in industrial production
illustrate that environmental measures
can be integrated into economic growth
and vitality. Japan uses only about half
as much energy per unit of production
as does the United States, giving it a
competitive advantage of five percent in
the United States market. Further, waste
management and pollution control are
now among the leading growth
industries in industrialized countries.
Upcoming Events by Jonathan Elkind
Reflecting the heightened
importance of environmental
issues, the next 12 months will
bring a number of major
international events that relate
directly and indirectly to the
environment. Following are some
of the highlights of the upcoming
year:
• Fourth Plenary Session of the
Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC)
August 27-30, Sindsvall, Sweden
The United Nations-sponsored
IPCC, the major international body
investigating climate change, will
prepare a summary report
reflecting its final assessment of
the scientific issues,
socio-economic impacts, and
response strategies that the panel
has been developing. The panel
will also discuss the scope of its
future work.
• Opening of the Regional
Environmental Center
September 6, Budapest, Hungary
This independent center will be
visible evidence of the political
changes of the last year. First
proposed by President George
Bush and jointly sponsored by the
United States, the European
Community, and the Hungarian
government, the center will focus
on environmental health effects,
pollution prevention, and energy
efficiency in a region plagued by
the effects of heavy
(Elkind is a policy analyst with the
President's Council on
EnvironmentaJ Quality.)
industrialization. It will support
the development of independent
environmental institutions
throughout Eastern and Central
Europe.
• Montreal Protocol on
Substances that Deplete the Ozone
Layer—Meeting of the Executive
Committee of the Parties
September 21, Montreal, Canada
Discussions will center on
implementing the Financial
Mechanism. The Financial
Mechanism will help developing
nations with the cost of
introducing new technologies or
industrial processes which do not
use ozone layer-threatening
substances.
• World Bank/International
Monetary Fund Annual Meetings
September 25-27, Washington DC
World Bank officials and
participating nations will address
the question of creating an
environment-focused "Green
Fund"—officially called the
Global Environmental Facility—as
well as the environmental impacts
the Bank's regular lending
activities have on such issues as
energy efficiency, conservation,
and tropical-forest preservation.
Some nations, including the
United States, have been urging
the Bank to assess environmental
impact as a routine part of its
lending process.
• Second World Climate
Conference
October 29-November 7, Geneva,
Switzerland
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Making such changes in our economic
life requires as much industrial as it
does political statesmanship. It is
encouraging to see the interest
industrial leaders have shown in
contributing to preparations for ECO
'92.
Changes within industrialized
economies must be accompanied by
new relationships with developing
countries that will enable the latter to
become full and equal partners in
ensuring global security. One of the
principal challenges to the 1992
Conference will be to find a way to
substantially increase the flow of
resources to these countries, as well as
to provide them access to
environmentally sound technologies.
One principal product of the
conference will be an agenda for action
by the world community for the
remainder of this decade and the
beginning of the 21st century—"Agenda
21." In addition, the Conference will
spur the negotiation of conventions in
such key areas as climate change and
bio-diversity. However, these actions
will be meaningful only to the extent
that they are accompanied by
commitment to the financial resources,
technologies, and institutional
mechanisms needed to carry them out.
No one conference can fully resolve
issues of such fundamental importance
and complexity. However, ECO '92 must
produce a fundamental shift in our
economic attitudes, and establish the
foundations for a cooperative global
alliance if we are to ensure that the
planet remains a secure home for
human and other forms of life. The road
to Brazil will be a difficult and crowded,
but it offers the most promising
and hopeful pathway to "Our Common
Future." o
Meeting only two months after the
IPCC Plenary Session (see above),
delegates to this United
Nations-sponsored conference will
review the World Climate Research
Program, the recent IPCC report,
and the need for adopting a
climate framework convention.
• Antarctic Treaty Meeting
Late November, Santiago, Chile
Parties to the treaty will meet to
discuss measures for Antarctic
environmental protection and
specifically the Convention on the
Regulation of Antarctic Mineral
Resource Activities (CRAMRA).
Some member nations have
expressed concern about whether
CRAMRA will be used to promote
minerals development in
Antarctica or whether it will
provide effective international
control of minerals development.
• Convention on International
Trade in Endangered Species of
Wild Fauna and Flora
(CITES)—Meeting of the Standing
Committee
November 19-23, Perth, Australia
The Standing Committee, which is
comprised of representatives of
convention parties from each
continent, will meet during a time
of growing global awareness of the
importance of biological diversity.
The meeting also comes at the end
of a period of instability in the
management and operations of
CITES.
• International Union for the
Conservation of Nature and
Natural Resources
(IUCN)—General Assembly
Meeting
November 28-December 5, Perth,
Australia
As the principal forum bringing
together most major environmental
non-governmental organizations
(NGOs), this meeting will focus on
discussing plans for a possible
international treaty on biological
diversify. It will also be an
opportunity for the NGOs to
review and critique their
government's preparations for the
1992 UNEP meeting.
• General Agreement on Tariffs
and Trade (GATT)—Ministerial
Meeting
December 3-7, Brussels, Belgium
Although the GATT process has
not been considered
"environmental" in the past,
current renewal negotiations for
this major international trade
agreement have incorporated the
environmental implications of
agricultural trade policy,
natural-resource trade policy,
import-export quota restrictions,
and other issues.
• Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development
(OECD) Environment Ministerial
Meeting
January 30-31, 1991. Paris, France
This traditionally economic
organization, which grew out of
the post-World War II Marshall
Plan, has recently turned its
attention in part to integration of
economic and environmental
concerns. By elaborating concepts
of sustainable economic
development, member states aim
to develop an environmental
agenda for the 1990s and produce
documents which wi!l be of
assistance to the UNEP 1992
Conference.
• Framework Convention on
Global Climate—First Negotiating
Session
February, 1991, United States
At July's economic summit
meeting in Houston, the United
States and the other G-7 nations
agreed to complete a Climate
Framework Convention by 1992.
The Bush Administration has
repeatedly proposed that the first
negotiating session for the
convention take place in the
United States, although the
specific location and date of such
a session have not yet been
finalized.
• Negotiation Meeting on a World
Forestry Convention
(To be arranged)
The G-7 Summit meeting
generated a declaration calling for
the negotiation of a world forestry
convention. The aims of the
convention would be curbing
deforestation, protecting biological
diversity, stimulating positive
forestry actions, and addressing
threats to the world's temperate
and tropical forests.
JULY/AUGUST 1990
63
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Appointments
Judge Daniel M. Head is one
of the Agency's new
Administrative Law Judges.
Previously Judge Head was
an administrative law judge
at the Department of
Transportation, the Federal
Energy Regulatory
Commission, and the Federal
Communications
Commission. In addition, he
served for over four years as
board chairman on licensing
boards for various nuclear
power plants.
Judge Head served as a
trial attorney with the
Pollution Control Section of
the Department of Justice and
performed civil trial work in
private practice for almost
eight years. He earned his
bachelor's degree from the
Georgetown University in
1956 and his law degree from
the Georgetown University
Law Center in 1962.
Frank Covington is the
Director of EPA's National
Enforcement Investigations
Center (NEIC), located in
Denver, Colorado.
Before joining the NEIC,
Covington served as Deputy
Regional Administrator of
Region 5, headquartered in
Chicago, Illinois. He has been
with EPA since its creation,
serving in various executive
positions in Region 9, which
is headquartered in San
Francisco, California.
Covington began his
federal career with the
Federal Water Pollution
Control Administration.
Before that he was Director of
State Planning in Iowa and
worked in California at state
and local government
positions. He earned his
bachelor's degree from San
Francisco State University in
1958 and a master's degree in
business administration from
Golden Gate University in
1962.
The new Deputy Regional
Administrator for Region 5,
headquartered in Chicago,
Illinois, is Ralph R. "Dick"
Bauer.
Bauer spent the past year
at Indiana University's
School of Public and
Environmental Affairs as a
visiting scholar under a
government exchange
program. Most of his career,
however, was spent with the
Agency's Region 10,
headquartered in Seattle,
Washington. Since 1971, he
has held various executive
positions there, including
that of Deputy Regional
Administrator.
Bauer served in the U.S.
Army in the early 1960s,
before joining the Federal
Water Pollution Control
Administration in 1966. He
earned his bachelor's degree
from the University of
Southern California in 1960
and a master's of public
administration from the
University of Washington in
1981. He has been awarded
the Agency's Bronze and
Silver Medals.
Dr. Walter W. Kovalick, Jr.,
is the Director of EPA's
Technology Innovation
Office.
For the previous five years,
Dr. Kovalick was the Deputy
Director of the Superfund
program. From 1978 to 1984,
he directed a staff office in
the Office of Toxic
Substances. He joined the
Agency in 1970, working
extensively with the states on
the Clean Air Act
implementation plans.
Dr. Kovalick earned his
bachelor of science degree in
industrial engineering and
management science from
Northwestern University and
his master's in business
administration from Harvard
Business School. He holds a
Ph.D. in public
administration from Virginia
Tech. He is a member of the
American Society for Public
Administration, the Institute
for Industrial Engineers, the
Association of Public Policy
and Management, and the
Academy of Management, a
EPA JOURNAL
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fu Bruce Coleman
Efforts to protect the African elephant
recently resulted in a ban against
international trade in ivory from the
animal's tusks. Shown is an elephant in the
Etosha Preserve in Namibia. See story on
page 15.
Back Cover: Market in Malang, Indonesia.
How Third World countries can attain
higher living standards without degrading
the local and global environment has
become a major international issue. Photo
by Chuck O'Rear for Woodfin Camp. See
story on page 39.
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