To help our planet survive.

To help our planet survive

FIFTEEN years after the convening of the first world conference on the environment -- in Stockholm in 1972 -- the General Assembly has adopted a major document to guide Governments in helping to achieve environmentally-sound development.

The "Environmental Perspective to the Year 2000 and Beyond" is a 27-page, 120-paragraph blueprint for action on the local, regional and international levels.

It sets out 14 "shared perceptions" by Governments of the nature of environmental issues. It details issues, outlook, goals and specific recommended actions in six major sectors -- population, food and agriculture, energy, industry, health and human settlements and international economic relations.

It discusses other major environmental issues of global concern: pollution of oceans and seas, ensuring peaceful use of outer space, preserving biological diversity through saving species, and the relationship between security and environment.

Finally, it calls for ways to act to save the environment through assessment and collection of information, planning and establishing mechanisms and procedures to facilitate unified policies and direction for integrating environmental concerns, and environmental legislation to implement standards and regulate activities of enterprises and people in the light of environmental objectives.

The "Environmental Perspective" is the result of the four years' work of a special Intergovernmental Inter-sessional Preparatory Committee of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

The Governing Council of UNEP approved it on 19 June 1987; the General Assembly approved it without a vote on 11 December, agreeing, as the Perspective's introduction states, that action must be taken to combat unabated environmental degradation, which threatens "human well-being and, in some instances, the very survival of life on our planet".

The Assembly, in adopting the Perspective, welcomed the report of the World Commission on Environment and Development, headed by Gro Harlem Brundtland, now Prime Minister of Norway. The Commission is a high-powered independent group of world leaders and environmental experts from 21 nations which at the request of the General Assembly spent more than 900 days assembling basic information and formulating recommendations that became a prime input to the "Perspective" (see stories, pp. 36-39).

In other action related to the environment, the Assembly proclaimed the 1990s as the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction.

Drought and desertification in Africa were dealt with in reports and resolutions. Aid was asked for affected countries. The progress of the 1977 Plan of Action to Combat Desertification was reviewed.

The deterioration of the ozone layer, an issue which UNEP has successfully pushed to the forefront of international awareness, was also discussed by the Assembly. States were urged to become parties to the 1985 Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer and the Montreal Protocol, adopted last September, which restricts the use of substances that damage the ozone layer.

A study will be prepared on the impact on developing countries of the illegal traffic in toxics and dangerous products.