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Introduction: Preserving the Earth: Beyond Ideology
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20297 |
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SPECIAL SECTION
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7 / 1992 |
1,055 Words |
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The Earth Summit, the popular name for the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), held in Rio de Janeiro during the first two weeks of June, has put environmental issues at the center of world attention. The UN organizers hoped that the conference might do for international cooperation on the environment what Bretton Woods did for the free world's monetary and economic system after World War II. While that may have proved overly optimistic, it is clear that even after the hoopla surrounding the Rio conference has died down, environmental issues are going to play an increasingly important role in the future on both domestic and international political agendas.
Along with trade, the environment looks set to become a critical cog in the machinery of a new post-Cold War geopolitics. Already, certain developing countries, concerned that the end of the Cold War will lead to drying up of foreign aid, see the industrialized world's concern for global environmental problems as a mean to keep that aid flowing in return for their cooperation. The watchword in Rio was sustainable development. The practical implications of the phrase are still hotly debated, but its broad meaning is clear. There are limits to the earth's resources and to its capacity to absorb the waste products of industry; this must be taken into account in the process of economic development so that the legacy we leave our grandchildren and their grandchildren is not a planet in a worse state of health than we inherited.
Sustainable development may be a catchphrase, but it is, nevertheless, a serviceable symbol of what may prove a new level of progress in thinking about the environment. Aided no doubt by a media taste for the sensational, environmental reporting often seemed to involve the conflict of irreconcilables. It was economic growth or ecological conservation; owls or loggers' jobs; tree-spikers maiming lumberjacks or French secret agents bombing a Greenpeace ship in New Zealand.
This approach potentially pits the rich nations against the poor. Do we encourage industrial growth, so that the Third World can share the benefits enjoyed by the advanced nations--but at a cost to the environment--or do we preserve the environment by keeping the poor that way? Such zero-sum propositions came to be judged intolerable. While the communist bloc proved it possible to have neither economic prosperity nor ecological health, the challenge now is to achieve both.
That is the idea behind sustainable development. It calls for pushing back the limits
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