Archive Article: Progress In International Environmental Protection 4 Oct 02.
December 29, 2008

The recent World Summit on Sustainable Development, held in Johannesburg, finished up with mixed results. But the international environmental situation is not entirely gloomy.

The Fridtjof Nansen Institute in Norway has just published its “Yearbook of International Co-operation on Environment and Development”.

There is a group of six chapters dealing with current issues. I have a chapter in the book reviewing the work of Friends of the Earth International, one of the world’s best known environmental non-governmental organizations.

About 80 per cent of the book (which has a total of over 300 pages) are given over to a summary of international agreements on environment and development, and the main international organizations and non-governmental organizations active on these matters. The lists on environmental agreements provide at a glance a very good overview of the range of international environmental legislation. The lists are probably far longer than most people realize. Many people know about the law of the sea treaty but there are many other environmental agreements.

If we take the 1972 Stockholm United Nations Conference on the Human Environment as the starting point for international action to protect the environment, then it is worth noting just how many agreements have been created. Almost all the agreements have come along since 1972.

Some of the agreements took longer to negotiate than was expected. For example, in December this year we will have the 20th anniversary of the UN law of the sea treaty. I was at the first main session of that conference in Geneva back in 1974. None of us expected that it would take eight years to complete the text. However, the finished treaty is one of the longest documents in the UN’s history and covers about 70 per cent of the planet’s surface as well as creating an international regime for exploiting the seabed.

Therefore the progress in negotiating the treaties has often been slow. But the important thing is that there is a clear trend line in favour of progress. This sign of hope is often overlooked in all the gloom and doom that some people express about the environment.

Second, there is a wide acceptance for the treaties. Not all countries are eligible to become a party to all treaties. For example, a treaty may only cover a specific geographical area and so many countries would be outside the geographical area of a treaty’s application. But there seems to a gradual realization by governments that they have to work together – or they will perish separately.

There is a growing governmental realization that there are no national solutions to international problems. A country may have its own very fine environmental laws and a large degree of respect for those laws by its own citizens. But all this will not be much help if the country lives downwind or downstream, of a dirty neighbour. Pollution and environmental decay do not recognize national boundaries.

Finally, the notion of sustainable development means that we not only have to protect the environment but also find ways of freeing the world’s poor from their poverty. Therefore a balance has to be maintained in environmental protection and economic development. This is a difficult task. But this Yearbook shows that some progress is being made.

Broadcast On Friday 4th October 2002 On Radio 2GB’s “Brian Wilshire Programme” At 9pm.