Development and environment: from Stockholm to Rio - excerpt from "Global Change and Sustainable Development - Critical Trends"

UN Chronicle, Summer, 1997

A comparison of the action plans adopted by the Stockholm and Rio Conferences illustrates a major shift in our understanding of, and approach to, the problems of long-term human development, says the report of the Secretary-General on "Global change and sustainable development - critical trends", issued on 20 January 1997, from which the following is excerpted.

The past 25 years have witnessed major changes in the way the issues of economic growth, human development and environmental protection are approached. Two international conferences serve as landmarks. The United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, held in Stockholm in 1972, was the first major discussion of environmental issues at the international level. The agenda was immense, touching on virtually all aspects of natural resource use, but the focus (reflecting the concerns of the developed countries which proposed the Conference) was on the threat to the natural environment posed by economic growth and industrial pollution. Developing countries, for whom these problems were still largely irrelevant, argued that poverty posed a greater threat to both human welfare and the environment, and that economic growth in their case was not the problem, but the solution. Stockholm thus marked a polarization between the priorities of economic growth and environmental protection, which has dominated the debate between rich and poor countries, and between interest groups within countries for many years and is still not fully resolved.

During the 1980s, a new political and developmental paradigm emerged which appeared to reconcile these conflicting objectives. In 1987, the World Commission on Environment and Development published its report, Our Common Future, better known as the Brundtland Report. The report set out the concept of"sustainable development", an integrated approach to policy and decision-making in which environmental protection and long-term economic growth are seen not as incompatible but as complementary, indeed mutually dependent: solving environmental problems requires resources which only economic growth can provide, while economic growth will falter if human health and natural resources are damaged by environmental degradation.

Publication of the Brundtland Report set in motion a process which culminated in the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. A comparison of the action plans produced by the Stockholm and Rio Conferences illustrates a major shift in our understanding of, and approach to, the problems of long-term human development. Where Stockholm adopted an issue-oriented approach to pollution and non-renewable resource depletion, Rio emphasized integrated strategies to promote human development through economic growth, based on sustainable management of the natural resource base. The UNCED action plan - Agenda 21 thus reaffirmed the Brundtland Report's central message: socio-economic development and environmental protection are intimately linked and effective policy-making must tackle them together.

This complex agenda, and the message of policy integration, have become widely accepted in the years since Rio, though integration remains a difficult concept to implement. Policy objectives in key areas can and do conflict and means of reconciling different interests, and achieving acceptable trade-offs remain under-developed. The challenge facing policy makers over the coming years will be to identify critical issues in domestic and international development, and to prioritize measures according to the severity of the problem and the time required for policy to take effect.

To what extent have trends in economic growth, consumption patterns and environmental degradation been influenced by policy intervention? Which policies have proved beneficial and which detrimental? Given the lessons of the past, and the likely shape of things to come (based on the best available projections), what appear to be the most urgent priorities in different regions of the world, and the most promising policy approaches? Any evaluation of trends and the role of policy must take account of the constraints under which Governments operate. The world is becoming increasingly integrated in its commercial and financial activities, while modern means of travel and communications are breaking down many of the traditional physical and cultural barriers between States. National Governments have little control over the forces of globalization and it seems likely that new international bodies or institutional reforms will be required to deal with emerging global issues in the future. However, many of the most pressing developmental and environmental problems are felt at the local or national level. While international action will often be part of the long-term solution, there remains great scope for short- and medium-term policy action at the national level.

An additional and powerful constraint on policy intervention to influence trends is the factor of time: different issues have their natural "pace of change" which becomes apparent when examined over a time span of 50 years or more. Population programmes, by definition, take at least one generation to take effect. Action to combat pollution can sometimes improve local air or surface water quality within a few years. Soil degradation and deforestation may be reversed only after decades of sustained effort, while contamination of groundwater reserves might never be corrected, necessitating the use of permanent and costly purification techniques. For these reasons, most problems of environmental degradation require long-term planning and consistent policy-making over many years. By contrast, economic and social problems may sometimes be remedied relatively quickly through targeted policy measures. Additionally, technologies and social behaviour patterns can change rapidly and, while these areas are not readily susceptible to government direction, they represent powerful agents of change and potential cause for optimism.