A/42/427
English
Page 289
How can the world of nature and the community of peoples with their national economies be harmonized? Posing the question this way suggests that the two are separate. But not so. Humanity. the human species, exists and is supported within the world of nature. And I mean that not figuratively but literally.
We are deep-air animals living inside an ecological system. We draw boundaries, of course, on the ecosphere or national and regional purposes. But it is all of one piece.
When, therefore, we optimistically declare that economic development and environmental maintenance can go along hand in hand, this qualifier must immediately be added: only if the maintenance of the ecosphere is made the first priority. Economic development must be secondary, guided by strict ecological standards. These fundamental ideas are far from being universally accepted.
Stanley Rowe
Saskatchewan Environmental Society
WCED Public Hearing
Ottawa, 26-27 May 1986
protected wate use going to agriculture. Yet 80 countries, with 40 per cent of the world's population, already suffer serious water shortages.[1] There will be growing competition for water for irrigation, industry, and domestic use. River water disputes have already occurred in North America (the Rio Grande). South America (the Rio de la Plata and Parana), South and Southeast Asia (the Mekong and the Ganges), Africa (the Nile), and the Middle East (the Jordan, Litani, and Orontes. as well as the Euphrates).
14. Fisheries, whether coastal or oceanic, are fundamental to the diets of many countries. For some countries, fishing is a key economic sector, and overfishing poses immediate dangers to several national economies. In 1974 Iceland, largely dependent on its fishing industry, found itself embroiled with the United Kingdom in a 'cod war' Similar tensions exist in the Japanese and Korean seas and on both sides of the South Atlantic. The 1986 declaration of an exclusive fishery zone around the Falkland/Malvinas Islands has further unsettled relations between Britain and Argentina. Disputes over fishing rights in the South Pacific and the search for tuna by distant-water fleets led to increased competition for diplomatic and fisheries advantages by the major powers in that region in 1986. Fisheries-related disputes may well become more frequent as nations harvest fish stocks beyond the level of sustainable yields.
15. Environmental threats to security are now beginning to emerge on a global scale, The most worrisome of these stem from the possible consequences o! global warming caused by the atmospheric build.-up of carbon dioxide and other gases.[2] (See Chapter 7.) Any such climatic change would quite probably be unequal in its effects, disrupting agricultural systems in areas
- ↑ M. Falkenmark, 'New Ecological Approach to the Water Cycle: Ticket to the Future', Ambio, Vol. 13, No. 3, 1984: 5. Postel, Water: Rethinking Management in an Age of Scarcity. Worldwatch Paper 62 (Washington, DC: Worldwatch Institute, 1984).
- ↑ B. Bolin etal., The Greenhouse Effect: Climatic Change and Ecosystems (Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, 1986); National Research Council, Chanqing Climate (Washington, PC: National Academy Press, 1983); S. Seidel and D. Keyes, Can We Delay a Greenhouse Warming? (Washington, PC: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 1983).
