March 22, 1972
Page 9456
ORGANIZATIONAL QUESTIONS BEFORE THE STOCKHOLM CONFERENCE
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, recently Prof. Richard N. Gardner presented an excellent paper on the organizational questions facing the United States at the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment to the Secretary of State's Advisory Committee on that Conference.
Professor Gardner is a Henry L. Moses professor of law and international organization at Columbia University. His expertise in the field of international organization is well known.
These comments should prove of great value in developing a clear insight into global environmental problems and the possible institutional means by which these problems can be solved. I ask unanimous consent that Mr. Gardner's remarks be printed in the RECORD.
There being no objection, the statement was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows;
STATEMENT OF RICHARD N. GARDNER TO THE SECRETARY OF STATE'S ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON THE U.N. CONFERENCE ON THE HUMAN ENVIRONMENT AT THE U.S. MISSION TO THE UNITED NATIONS, FRIDAY, MARCH 3, 1972
Richard N. Gardner, Professor of Law and International Organization at Columbia
University, served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs from 1961 to 1965. He is currently serving as consultant to the Secretary-General of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment on international organizational questions. He also serves as U.N. representative of the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN). This statement, however, is made in his personal capacity.
I am grateful for this opportunity to present my views to this distinguished Committee on the organizational questions that will face us at the Stockholm Conference. My views on these questions are set forth in detail in the attached statement entitled "The Role of the UN in Environmental Problems." In these brief introductory remarks, I would like to emphasize three points that I believe have not yet received sufficient attention in either official or public discussion of international environmental organization.
First: The desire of the United States for effective international arrangements for environmental regulation is unlikely to be realized without major changes in present U.S. policy toward the United Nations and multilateral development assistance.
I believe, and have argued for more than a decade, that the national security of the United States is gravely threatened by the expensive and dangerous arms race, the uncontrolled growth of world population, the progressive deterioration of the human environment and the spreading frustration of people in the developing countries at their inability to achieve a decent life. A study by the Club of Rome published only this week suggests the very real likelihood of massive breakdowns in world society within the lives of our children or grandchildren if present trends continue. Although the most devastating consequences of these trends may lie some decades in the future, the measures necessary to avert disaster must be taken now.
If this diagnoses is correct, the United States ought to be doing everything within its power to strengthen the United Nations and other international institutions to deal with these global problems. Unhappily, however, the Vietnam tragedy is impelling us not only to reduce our unilateral responsibilities, which is good, but to disengage from our multilateral responsibilities, which is bad. United States support for multilateral institutions is in doubt or disarray all along the line. We take no serious initiatives to enlarge the U.N. role in peacekeeping or development.
We take a penny-wise and pound-foolish attitude to the United Nations budget. We adopt a low financial profile as the United Nations drifts toward bankruptcy. We violate solemn treaty obligations by refusing to pay our assessments to the ILO and by breaching the Security Council's embargo on trade with Rhodesia. We move steadily away from the internationally agreed aid target of one percent of GNP as other industrialized nations move toward it. We fail to put up our promised share of funds for the multilateral aid agencies – the International Development Association, the Inter-American Development Bank and the Asian Development Bank.
We complain that the U.N. behaves "irresponsibly." How can we expect the institution to behave responsibly if we do not behave responsibly toward it? At a time of planetary emergency, we are rapidly becoming a global dropout. Our leadership is currently fascinated by the politics of the balance of power. Surely the time has come to devote more attention to the politics of world order.
What does all this have to do with the Stockholm Conference? Everything. A healthy set of environmental institutions is unlikely to flourish in a weak United Nations.
Moreover, an effective multilateral attack on the problems of environment and population growth is not likely to be mounted in the absence of an effective multilateral attack on poverty. Without an increase in the quantity and quality of global aid efforts, the financial and political basis for population control and environmental protection in the less developed countries will not exist.
Not only does action on the population and environmental problems cost money that the developing countries do not have, but political resistance to population and environment efforts is likely to grow in these countries if international assistance is static or declining. Already, at the U.N., some countries are charging that the new emphasis by the United States on the environment and population is a gigantic "cop out" to justify our declining foreign aid effort.
Second: The most important single objective of the Stockholm Conference is to establish a flexible institutional framework capable of future growth in response to the needs and demands of the world community.
I do not wish to minimize the importance of the other matters that will be before the Stockholm Conference, such as the Declaration on the Human Environment, the Action Plan, the Convention on Ocean Dumping and the World Heritage Foundation. But the overriding necessity of the Stockholm Conference is to establish an institutional framework to carry on the work which we have only begun. If this is missing, no other achievements can prevent Stockholm from being deemed a failure.
In the attached paper, I describe in some detail my own views about the institutional arrangements that are required – an Environment Secretariat of the highest quality with adequate power of initiative; an intergovernmental body to which governments will send senior environmental decision-makers; effective arrangements to draw upon the expertise of the private scientific community; a substantial environment fund to assure the financing of priority projects; new measures for the prevention and settlement of environment disputes; and the development of more effective arrangements to deal with the marine environment.
The basic point that I wish to stress in these preliminary remarks is that our principal attention in the development of these institutions should be on substance rather than form. To take an example, the question of whether the inter-governmental body is an organ of the General Assembly or of ECOSOC is less important than the question of whether governments are prepared to send as representatives to it their environmental ministers or senior environmental decision makers.
A related point is that we should not be too disappointed if the institutional arrangements do not spell out all the formal powers which some of us in the United States might like to include.
Experience with international institutions inside and outside the United Nations suggests that a general and somewhat vague grant of authority can provide the basis for impressive organic growth over the years in response to the needs and aspirations of the member states. The important thing is to get something going that has the capacity for growth.
Third: The United States should support the establishment within the United Nations of an "international environmental coalition" of those countries that are prepared to undertake special responsibilities for environmental action.
I strongly believe that our major efforts for environmental action should be taken through the United Nations and its family of agencies. No other institutions presently exist in which we can pursue environmental diplomacy with developing countries and Communist nations as well as with the members of the North Atlantic community and Japan. While regional cooperation is also
necessary, global action through the U.N. system is indispensable if we are to secure the cooperation of the developing world and take vital decisions to protect the world's oceans and atmosphere.
At the same time, we have to face the fact that action within the U.N. does present special difficulties. There are new more than 130 members of the United Nations and these members have widely varying attitudes as to the seriousness of environmental problems and as to the extent to which they should limit their national freedom of action to deal with them. We need some formula to reconcile the need for global cooperation within the United Nations with the equally compelling need for cooperation that is adequate to the challenge.
I believe that such a formula can be found in an "international environmental coalition" operating within the United Nations. The concept is simple. At the Stockholm Conference and in subsequent meetings, an attempt should be made to reach the highest level of agreement among all U.N. members on institutional and other issues. In the foreseeable future, however, this level of agreement will undoubtedly be disappointing to those of us who feel a sense of urgency about the environmental threat. Therefore, the United States should join in organizing a coalition of environmentally concerned nations who would accept voluntarily a higher level of obligation than the membership as a whole.
One obvious example of this higher level of obligation would be willingness to contribute generously to an environment fund. Less obvious, but no less important, would be the voluntary acceptance by the members of the coalition of certain procedures for periodic reporting and submission of environmental disputes to third party settlement.
To be somewhat more specific, the United States and other members of such a coalition should agree to report to the new Environment Secretariat on all national activities (private as well as public) that might affect the environment of others and to consult in good faith with other members and with international agencies when questions or objections are raised. The members of the coalition should also agree that environmental disputes to which they are a party can be taken to the new intergovernmental body at the request of any other party and that they will cooperate with any specially constituted scientific fact finding panel which might wish to make on the spot investigations on their territories. The members of the coalition should also agree to make use of the good offices of the Environment Secretariat and to permit non-governmental groups like IUCN and ICSU to present independent testimony on matters at issue in environmental disputes. In addition, wherever possible, international agreements on such specific matters as oil pollution of the sea or ocean dumping should provide for the settlement of disputes at the request of any party by an arbitral commission or the International Court of Justice, which could organize itself into special chambers for this purpose and make use of scientific "assessors."
I doubt that the members of the "international environmental coalition" would be ready to accept an "environmental veto" by international agencies, much less an environmental "police force." But an international review process of the kind outlined above, even if it did not lead to legally binding decisions by international agencies, would represent a great step forward. I believe it would serve the enlightened self-interest of our country to promote such a process among as many countries as possible and to discharge to the full the obligations involved.
Whatever institutions are created at Stockholm, their vitality will obviously depend on the behavior of governments. The hard question is whether those leaders who now use the rhetoric of "spaceship earth" are really prepared to accept the political and economic costs that this rhetoric implies. The answer will be found in the resources that they are prepared to devote to international environmental efforts and the limitations they are prepared to accept on their traditional freedom of national action.
The institutional decisions which governments take at Stockholm and after will have the most profound consequences not only on the quality of environmental cooperation but also more broadly on the whole system of international relations. Failure to devise a workable pattern of cooperation to cope with urgent environmental issues could lead to international disputes and a poisoning of political relations. On the other hand, success in environmental cooperation could help humanity deal with other pressing problems.
A record of successful achievement in this area would demonstrate the U.N.'s capacity to adjust its institutional habits and deal efficiently with major threats to the survival of mankind. It could show the way to new approaches in the economic and political areas. Perhaps, in the long run, it could stimulate new perceptions of interdependence and strengthen the political commitment of governments to a stronger United Nations.