The first international environmental conference organized by the United Nations (UN) was held in Sweden in 1972. Hans H. Landsberg, senior fellow emeritus and resident consultant at Resources for the Future, was an adviser to the UN secretary general during the conference.
The desire to project past experience on the present is as irrepressible as the difficulty of doing so is great. Would one's intense involvement in the 1972 Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment—the first international environmental conclave organized and funded by the UN under a resolution of the General Assembly—impart any insight into its upcoming sequel, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED)? A few points suggested by my personal recollections deserve brief mention.
Although the passage of twenty years makes meaningful comparisons between the conferences tenuous, UNCED may share some of the issues and problems that arose prior to and during the Stockholm conference, the resolution of which may suggest lessons for UNCED. I would submit that one lesson is that any issues concerning conference goals that are not resolved when the opening gavel is heard at UNCED will in all likelihood not be resolved by the closing gavel.
In the case of Stockholm, a major concern in the two years leading up to the conference was the attitude of the developing countries. What was in the conference for them? Would funds that otherwise go into development be diverted to environmental goals that had a low priority in the developing countries' scheme of things? The view of the developing world was that the industrial nations cause the pollution, so let them foot the bill. This view's potential for disruption kept the secretary general busy attempting to persuade the developing countries that development and environmental protection were indeed complementary, not antithetical. His efforts culminated in a pre-conference meeting in which the concerns of developing countries received in-depth consideration. The resulting Founex Declaration was critical in defusing the politically explosive environment-versus-development issue.
In addition to the importance of resolving concerns about goals, the Stockholm conference suggests the need for similar conferences to handle deftly any issues brought before them that are tangential to their main agenda. Means of securing "fair prices" for raw materials produced and exported by developing countries and adequate provision of housing were fiequently demanded at Stockholm. There were two reactions: Pass a resolution! Fight consideration! Since what was voted on at Stockholm lacked binding force, the first course usually won out. It saved time and avoided acrimony. The main point for UNCED is to be prepared for the intrusion of irrelevancies and to have a strategy for dealing with them.
The Stockholm conference also suggests the need to handle participation by nongovernment organizations (NGOs) in similar events. At Stockholm, NGOs turned up in large numbers and had widely divergent aims. Faced with an elaborate conference agenda and the determination of the secretariat to have it endorsed without excursions, the NGOs groped for ways to make an impact; but even staying informed as to what went on in the meetings proved a daunting task. If there was a plan by the conference secretariat to cope with the NGOs' role, it was not apparent. Fortunately, two resourceful women, Barbara Ward (Lady Jackson) and Margaret Mead, created an organized way of integrating the NGOs' activities into the work of the conference.
Looking back at the Stockholm conference, one wonders why the donkey did not collapse under the burden put on its back—to wit, writing and winning endorsement of an Action Plan that comprised 109 resolutions; of the institutional framework for continuity expected to be provided by a new UN agency concerned with the environment; and of a Declaration on the Human Environment that was to embrace everything from polluted air and rivers to gene pools to apartheid to nuclear weapons to Viet Nam, the acceptance of which was a cliff-hanger until the last hour of the conference. Although whatever was voted on at Stockholm had no binding force, much survived in subsequent actions, including the establishment of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
Absent a formula that explains what kept the Stockholm conference from being a failure (and might enhance UNCED's prospects for success), I venture to think that Stockholm's success was attributable to three main factors. The first was the nonbinding nature of conference recommendations and decisions, which minimized controversy (although it also encouraged sloppiness). The second was early identification of the potential clash between development and environmental protection as the major divisive issue—and the successful effort preceding the conference to sort it out. The third was a leadership that recognized its task as dealing as much with the politics of the enterprise as with the issues themselves and that was fully aware of the educational aspect of the enterprise and the value of the process that was being set in motion.
A version of this article appeared in print in the January 1992 issue of Resources magazine.
A version of this article appeared in print in the January 1992 issue of Resources magazine.
