September 17, 1971
Page 32331
CONFERENCE ON INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION AND THE ENVIRONMENT
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, last May there was a very fruitful 3-day conference held in New York on "International Organization and the Human Environment." It was my great privilege to address the opening session of this conference at U.N. headquarters.
The conference was organized by two private organizations – the Institute on Man and Science and the Aspen Institute of Humanistic Studies. Under the able chairmanship of Philip C. Jessup, former U.S. judge on the International Court of Justice, 40 key decisionmakers from governments, international agencies, and the scientific community spent 3 days probing the central question: "How can the international community be organized most effectively for environmental action?"
The conference last May was designed partly as a preparatory meeting for the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment which will reach a climax at Stockholm, Sweden, during the 2 weeks from June 5 through 16, 1972.
Mr. President, the Saturday Review of August 7 contains a very valuable article reviewing the conclusions of the conference last May. The article was written by one of the conference participants, Dr. Richard N. Gardner. Dr. Gardner is Henry L. Moses Professor of Law and International Organization at Columbia University and serves as the U.N. representative of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources. I ask unanimous consent that Dr. Gardner's article be printed in the RECORD.
There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
GLOBAL POLLUTION – U.N. AS POLICEMAN
(By Richard N. Gardner)
One of the boldest adventures in international cooperation ever attempted – the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment – will reach a climax at Stockholm, Sweden, during the two weeks from June 5 to 16, 1971. Representatives of 130 countries and several dozen international organizations will come together then to deal with six enormous subjects:
Planning and management of the environmental quality of human settlements everywhere.
Environmental aspects of natural resource management (defined broadly to include animal, botanical, and mineral resources).
Identification and control of environmental pollutants and nuisances of broad significance.
Educational, informational, social, and cultural aspects of environmental issues.
Economic development and the environment (including environmental policies as a component of comprehensive planning in developing countries).
International organizational implications of proposals for action.
Since the conference is limited to two weeks, and since Stockholm has only three conference halls large enough to hold all the proposed participants, there is only one week available to cover each of these items. How can it be done? One U.N. official answers: "The Stockholm conference is like a marriage ceremony. Most things are being arranged beforehand, and as little as possible will be left to chance on the day."
The simile is apt enough. It is difficult to remember any other U.N. meeting so thoroughly prepared in advance as this one. Under the overall direction of a twenty-seven-nation preparatory committee, intergovernmental working groups are drafting concrete proposals on marine pollution, soil conservation, environmental monitoring, a World Heritage Foundation, and the text of a Declaration on the Human Environment. Concurrently with these activities, governments are submitting reports describing their experience in environmental management and suggesting ideas for international action. And the interested specialized agencies of the U.N. are preparing a consolidated statement of their current work and future plans.
A conceptual framework for the Stockholm deliberations is expected to be ready for publication in the spring of 1972. It will be issued as a report on the state of the global environment.
Considering that Maurice Strong, Secretary General of the Stockholm Conference, only left his former post as head of Canada's International Development Agency to assume his new duties at the beginning of this year, he and his small staff in Geneva will perform a miracle if the conferees are able to take more than a fraction of the decisions necessary to preserve the global environment. A senior international official recently put the situation this way:
"The Stockholm conference comes both too late and too early. Too late if its purpose is to arouse public opinion; this has already happened, at least in the developed countries. Too early if it is to take decisive action: most governments aren't ready, and besides in many areas we simply don't have the knowledge necessary."
Inevitably, then, the most important agenda item at Stockholm will be the last one listed above – international organizational implications of proposals for action. For if final answers to the world's environmental problems cannot be looked for next June, there must be established at least an institutional framework in which those answers can be effectively sought in future years.
Curiously, nobody gave much thought to the organizational question until recently. To help move things forward, a kind of "Mini-Stockholm" was organized at the end of May by two private organizations – the Institute on Man and Science and the Aspen Institute of Humanistic Studies – at the former's idyllic headquarters in Rensselaervillle, New York. Under the chairmanship of Philip C. Jessup, former U.S. judge on the International Court of Justice, forty key decision makers from governments, international agencies, and the scientific community spent three days probing the central question: "How can the international community be organized most effectively for environmental action?"
While the meeting was not intended to and did not reach formal agreement on an institutional design, it yielded a surprising consensus on some issues and usefully clarified the choices facing the Stockholm conference on other matters. The areas of consensus may be summarized as follows:
The new institutions for environmental action should be within the framework of the United Nations. Environmental problems are global as well as regional and local; they need to be dealt with by global as well as regional and local institutions. An organization limited to developed countries or to NATO countries could not deal effectively with environmental problems on the territory of non-members or with the ocean environment, which is the common concern of all.
Despite much talk to the contrary, most developing countries face serious environmental problems and want help in solving them. As Strong told the Rensselaerville meetings:
"In my recent travels in the developing countries, I have found that while the word "environment" has not yet acquired the magic it has in the more industrialized countries, the issues it embraces are of real and growing concern to them: polluted water supplies, degradation of agricultural lands, depletion of wildlife and fisheries, and, perhaps most urgent, the problem of cities which are growing at rates unprecedented in human history. Some of these cities face the prospect of water contamination and health hazards which will make them unfit for human habitation within the next decade or so. Indeed, the "eco-catastrophes" of which we hear so much are much more likely to occur in the developing world than in the wealthier countries which have the resources to deal with these problems."
One thing not to do is to establish a new U.N. specialized agency. Environment covers a broad range of subjects already being dealt with within the functional responsibilities of existing U.N. agencies – atmospheric pollution in the World Meteorological Organization, environmental health in the World Health Organization, conservation of soil, forest, and animal resources in the Food and Agriculture Organization, etc. Environmental matters also are being dealt with in the U.N.'s Regional Economic Commissions. A specialized agency for the Environment would result in duplication of activities and philosophy on environmental problems. It was best stated by Senator Muskie at the opening session:
"The simple truth is that ... we are far from one world politically. But, by necessity if not by choice, we are one world environmentally. States have sovereign rights – but so do people. We cannot rely on the political habits of the past to save our environment for the future."