Now that analysts have had seven months to ponder the achievements of the Earth Summit, it is time to consider the next step in attaining sustainable development. As the summit revealed, the big issues are formidable—among them, overconsumption in the North, overpopulation in the South, insufficient resource transfers from North to South, and limited resources to devote to global environmental problems. Each of these issues requires a trade-off between long-term global concerns and immediate national interests. Since technological solutions to the dilemma of furthering economic development while protecting the environment are neither quick nor cheap, this political reality suggests that progress may hinge on attention to some modest goals.
The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) took place in Rio de Janeiro this past June. The faithful believed that it was a successful first step toward environmentally sustainable economic development. To be sure, much was accomplished. More than one hundred government leaders came to endorse the goal of sustainable development. And negotiators agreed on a massive agenda for future action, climate and biodiversity conventions, and steps to embed the twin goals of environment and development in the global policy agenda.
All this, say the faithful, was enough to expect from one meeting. They may be right; considering the size and inclusiveness of the affair, it is a near miracle that anything got done. For this reason alone, some experienced diplomats view UNCED as an extraordinary accomplishment.
Extraordinary as it may have been as a first step, however, the Earth Summit at Rio also revealed that the next step will be even harder. The debate there showed that the fundamental problems of environment and development are so complex and deeply rooted that we hardly know how to approach their solution. To catch a glimpse of this frustration, consider just four of them.
Overconsumption, overpopulation, and other problems
Overconsumption in the North is a prominent theme of the environment and development debate. It is often pointed out that the industrialized countries have used more than their share of scarce environmental and natural resources, leaving too little for the expanding economies of the developing countries. For some, it quickly follows from this belief that the wealthy must consume less. In this view, the good life should be measured not by quantity but by quality. In the words of Maurice Strong, the Secretary-General of UNCED, it should be a life of "elegant simplicity."
There are surely sound and appealing reasons for deploring conspicuous and wasteful consumption, wherever it occurs. Even more to the point, achieving economic well-being without damaging the planet's resource base is the central objective of sustainable development. Nevertheless, making lifestyle changes is slow work, for they must come from new sets of values that can probably be achieved only at a generational pace.
Overpopulation in the South is no less a problem than overconsumption in the North. Even optimistic demographers suggest that the world's population will at least double before stabilizing toward the middle of the next century. The developing countries of the South will account for more than 90 percent of this growth. For many observers, the resource demands that so many poor would impose lie at the crux of the sustainable development challenge.
As serious as this growth may be, most of the persons who will be responsible for it have already been born. Short of truly draconian solutions, the world is pretty well stuck with a doubling of its population. And even relatively modest proposals to contain population growth clash with deeply held values in both North and South. Either way, the problem of overpopulation will not soon be resolved.
Insufficient resource transfers from North to South are another impediment to the simultaneous achievement of environmental protection and economic development goals. Poor countries need massive investments to develop economically, and adding the cost of environmental protection only increases the need. The UNCED Secretariat made a very rough estimate that the external financial aid required to carry out its agenda would be $125 billion annually. Present aid flows from North to South are less than half that.
Although more than twice the present amount of aid flowing from North to South is needed to carry out the UNCED Secretariat's agenda, domestic priorities in the North will limit increases in development assistance.
Many developed countries are striving to enlarge their foreign aid programs, but in only a few does the aid level approach 1 percent of gross national product. It seems likely that domestic priorities in most countries will limit increases in development assistance. Working over the long haul to enlarge North-South resource transfers is important, but to expect much soon would be unwise.
Conflicting priorities about global environmental problems pose another obstacle to environmentally sustainable economic development. Environmental problems that affect everyone, such as climate change and diminishing biodiversity, were prominent in discussions at the Earth Summit at Rio, but their solutions were not. At the insistence of the United States, the climate change convention signed at the summit lacked specific targets and timetables for reducing carbon dioxide emissions. And the United States did not subscribe to the biodiversity treaty because of concern over access to intellectual property rights associated with new products that might be developed from biological assets found in developing countries. In short, the United States showed little appetite for incurring costs that might hurt its own economy.
In solving global environmental problems, the United States is disinclined to incur costs that might hurt its economy, and developing countries are reluctant to divert their resources from more immediate problems such as poverty.
Developing countries seem no less inclined to put their own interests first. Although these countries have a genuine concern for global environmental issues, they are reluctant to divert their limited resources from the more immediate problems of poverty and basic public health. Not surprisingly, these countries suggest instead that the North should make room for their economic expansion by reducing its consumption and increasing the flow of concessionary financial and technology resource transfers. Thus do these complex issues fold into one another.
This array of photovoltaic modules converts sunlight directly to electricity. The solar-power station at Davis, California, was developed by Advanced Photovoltaic Systems, Inc., to demonstrate that photovoltaic systems can supply enough power to meet large-scale utility needs. It is a stepping-stone in the application of photovoltaics to help utilities economically handle peak demands for electricity in an environmentally benign way. If photovoItaics were to provide a positive economic payback while producing a corollary benefit to the environment, investment in the technology would be regarded as a no-regrets strategy
Political reality
These issues are tough enough on their own, but dealing with them is further complicated by political reality. At one level, each of the aforementioned problems forces a trade-off between longer-term global concerns and more immediate national interests. Anyone acquainted with energy or agricultural policy can tell you that, even under the best of circumstances, this trade-off is agonizingly difficult to achieve.
Looking beyond the Earth Summit, however, circumstances are unlikely to be the best. A few cynics have argued that the environment-development debate is little more than a new and especially large tent under which to rehash special interest agendas. Some believe that, under the banner of sustainable development, the industrialized countries will continue to strive for political and commercial advantage over international competitors. Others see the debate as an opportunity for social reformers to pursue their elitist views on everything from lifestyle to family size. And a few pundits have already concluded that the Earth Summit was only another occasion for developing countries to justify concessionary financial and technological assistance from the North.
These positions may seem overstated and even a bit odd, but they are not entirely unsupported by the rhetoric at the summit. Certainly, both North and South found ample opportunity to elbow one another for position in the new world order. Indeed, it is hard to escape the feeling that this maneuvering for advantage accounted for much of the clamor when the United States fumbled a couple of balls, as it clearly did.
Uncritical reliance on technology
Further complicating the debate is a tendency to make the problems sound easier to solve than they really are. This simplicity is achieved by assuming that new technology will allow our limited resource base to feed the consumption of a growing population without serious environmental constraints. Over the long haul, this is a plausible if as yet unproven view. But even this solution is not a quick fix, because both technology and well-functioning markets are needed to make it work. Getting the right technology is not easy, and creating market economies is plainly a formidable matter.
Given limited resources and many attractive ways to use them, projects to garner environmental benefits, even if they have a positive economic payback, are not necessarily preferable to projects to garner other social benefits.
Uncritical reliance on technology becomes more distressing, however, when it is suggested that the technological solution is not only quick but cheap. It is easy to show that the United States (and other countries, for that matter) can invest in energy-efficient technologies that have a positive economic payback and produce a corollary benefit to the environment—reducing emissions of carbon dioxide, say. If full social cost, not just private cost, is used to measure the payback, then even more efficient technologies are affordable, and even more environmental benefits could be harvested at little or no incremental cost. In the jargon of sustainable development, this is called a "no-regrets" strategy because of its win-win outcome.
No-regrets strategies are immensely appealing, which is why their proponents spend quite a lot of time asking why they are not implemented forthwith. Yet they are not, even when the objective is so apparently desirable as improving energy efficiency in the United States. The reasons for this default remain elusive even in the industrialized North, where functioning markets should result in the correct demand for efficient technology.
In the context of the environment-development debate, however, no-regrets strategies face a more obvious obstacle. These strategies simply cannot get away from the basic problem that decision makers always face—that resources are limited and that there are more than enough attractive ways to use them. Thus, projects that have economic and environmental benefits are surely important, but so are the social benefits associated with improved health care and better education. That no-regrets strategies have a positive cash flow does not automatically make them preferable to all other possible uses of resources.
This is not to suggest that such strategies are unimportant. Pushed to extremes, however, no-regrets strategies can create the dangerous illusion that the big questions have cheap and easy answers. To believe this would not only be an obstacle to post-Earth Summit progress, but also deflect from the careful attention that these difficult issues rightly deserve.
Some modest goals
Absent easy answers to the big issues, modest goals are more likely to produce the kind of progress that the faithful think is already under way. It is not too hard to sketch what these goals are. Helping developing countries to define and balance their own economic and environmental priorities, and using these priorities to guide the planning of both public and private sector investments, would be welcome signs of progress. Such feasible and inexpensive assistance would exert useful leverage over the substantial transfers of financial and technological resources that are already taking place, especially in the private sector.
Equally encouraging would be growing investments in the development of technology to use natural and environmental resources more efficiently and in creating the market and other institutional mechanisms needed to assure use of these technologies. Efficient resource use may not prove to be a complete answer to the big questions of environment and development, much less one with no regrets. However, it will at least reduce the cost of dealing with the hard issues, and so make them more tractable.
As to the big issues, patience seems advisable. Careful research can begin to unravel their complexities. Ongoing negotiation to shape the difficult trade-offs that lie ahead is also needed. Central bankers, corporate chieftains, and others whose interests are at stake must be included in discussions of these trade-offs. Their participation would mean that sustainable development had become part of the policy mainstream, where it surely belongs.
The Earth Summit was the necessary first step toward all these goals. Like most first steps, it set directions and enlarged hopes for ultimate success. But the next step—the one into the underbrush of reality—is the hard part.
Robert W. Fri is president of and a senior fellow at Resources for the Future.
A version of this article appeared in print in the January 1993 issue of Resources magazine.
A version of this article appeared in print in the June 1993 issue of Resources magazine.
