Environment and Development
Inter-relationship must for a sustainable society
Development-environment conflict must be mitigated
We need to adopt more or less common perspective on certain key determinants of future conditions of environment and development and their inter-relationships. These include perspectives on population, environment and development; on education, science and technological development; on environment and economic development; and several others. As regards population, we need to consider strategies that offer the prospect of stabilization during the coming decades. Such strategies must spring from the values of the communities involved, and respect the diversity and plurality of global societies. Furthermore, different levels of economic and technological development, of education and of public information about natural resources and the environment, influence population dynamics in a complex way. As regards the broad relationship between environmental management and economic development, new perspectives have recently emerged virtually reversing some of the intimidating assumptions and concerns and provide us with a new and supportive basis. The experience of the past decade determines that: (a) the benefits generated by environmental measures, including avoidance of the damage cost, have generally been greater than their costs; (b) the micro-economic effect of environmental policies on investment, productivity and trade have been minor, and often positive; (c) as regards employment, more jobs have been created by environmental measures than have been lost; and (d) benefits for industry have varied. Many of those industries that have borne a significant proportion of the total investment in pollution control have developed a new process, clean technologies and more environmentally efficient products. A generally basic perspective for the work of us, therefore, is the mutually supportive relationship between environment and development, wherein the former is both a prerequisite for development and its end result. Experience has shown that the environmental effects of development activities, positive and negative, appear in the short, medium, long and even in the very long term. Therefore, the pertinent question relates to the time factor which should be considered while dealing with various issues. Another important perspective is that the systematic and complex nature of many environmental and development issues requires a multi-disciplinary approach. There has been little success to date, however, in overcoming the institutional barriers and constrains which prevent such approaches being developed and applied. There are at least six transcending themes against which we wish to examine the key issues. These are: interdependence; education and communication; sustainability; equity; security and environmental risk; and international cooperation. The growing interdependence of the international economic and political systems is a central concern for us as we examine the critical environment and development issues likely to dominate the world scheme in the coming years. In the context of demography, migration, agriculture, communications, energy, industry, minerals, technology and financial transfers, interdependence has become a dominant characteristic of many issues involving the environment and the ecological basis of development. Pollution problems that were once largely local are now regional and even global in scale; environmental effects that once appeared obvious, are now seen to be insidious and uncertain, slowly changing ecological systems critical to economic development and life itself. Reversible damage that was once thought to affect mainly the present generation, is now seen to seriously affect the health and welfare of the future generations. Cities and settlements that once grew more or less in response to employment generation, and in pace with basic services, are today mushrooming in developing countries. Questions of conversation versus development that were once confined to one or two political jurisdictions, are now seen to be highly complex, involving linkage and feedback among agriculture, energy and forestry development and transportation and trade policy, and raising farther questions of economic gain in short term versus unsustainable development and massive economic loss and social dislocation in the medium and longer terms. A major implication of economic and ecological interdependence is that the ability of the governments to deal unilaterally with problems on a national scale will diminish. Consequently, economic, social, energy and other problems with an environmental or ecological basis within countries will prove resolvable or avoidable only through increased cooperation among countries. Progress on the issues of environment and development depends on the support of an informed public opinion and that, in turn, depends on open forms of examination and assessment, and on the free flow of resulting information. Policy path to sustainable development (economic, social, health and education) is another central concern that will pre-occupy the critical issues. In many parts of the world, underdevelopment and poverty are the greatest source of destructive pressure on the environment. It is the poorest countries which lack the technical and financial resources most to protect the environmental and ecological basis of their future economic development. It is the poor within those countries, who are compelled to stream in ever increasing numbers into slums and squatter areas in and around the major settlements. In these slums and squatter areas new environmental and settlement problems are created. In all cases, it is the poor who are usually the worst sufferers. Security and the need to widen the definition of national security beyond military security to embrace economic and ecological interdependence and global environmental risks, is a further concern. In various parts of the world ecological degradation and environmental risks are becoming one of the significant casual factors of economic, social and political unrest. Environmental policy needs to become a comprehensive, horizontal field and an integral component of economic and social policy, whose objective is, at least, to anticipate damage and reduce the negative external effects of human activity and, at best, to propose and promote economic and social policies that expand the basis for sustainable development. In doing so, it should also allow for the diversity and uniqueness of specific regional and local situations. In addition, while still using the assimilative capacity of the environment as an economic resource, society avoids the downstream costs associated with damage to ecosystems, poverty and health. These can be heavy: Witness the economic and social impact that uncontrolled forestry operations can have on soil erosion and floods; or that irrigation projects undertaken without proper drainage can have on affected soils and communities; or the evidence concerning the adverse effects of acid rain on the productivity of soils and forests. Viewing environmental policy not as an 'add-on' but as an integral component of economic and social policy, to be 'built-in' to the institutions concerned, could generate constructive thinking on new and more effective forms of multinational discussion, agreement, international law and institutions. To achieve the objectives, the following strategies are suggested: (a) re-examine the critical issues of environment and development and formulate innovative and pragmatic action proposals to deal with them; (b) strengthen international cooperation on environment and development and assess and propose new forms of cooperation that can break out of existing patterns and influence policies and events in the direction of needed change; and (c) raise the level of understanding and commitment to action on the part of individual voluntary organizations, business, institutes, and governments.
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