Page:Brundtland Report.djvu/165

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A/42/427
English
Page 165


The world is unfortunately not what we would like it to be. The problems are many and great. Actually, they can only be solved with cooperation and quick-wittedness.

I represent an organization called 'Nature and Youth'. I know that I have full support among our members when I say that we are worried about the future if drastic changes do not take place, concerning the world's way of treating our essential condition, nature.

We who work with youth, and are youth ourselves in Norway today, know very .well how the destroying of nature leads to an apathetic fear among youth concerning their future and how it will turn out.

It is of great importance that common people get the chance to take part in deciding how nature should be treated.

Frederic Hauge
Nature and Youth
WCED Public Hearing
Oslo, 24-25 June 1985

make conservation strategies as systematically selective as possible. No one cares for the prospect of consigning threatened species to oblivion. But insofar as choices are already being made, unwittingly, they should be made with selective discretion that takes into account the impact of the extinction of a species upon the biosphere or on the integrity of a given ecosystem.

68. But even though public effort may be concentrated on a few species, all species are important and deserve some degree of attention: this might take the form of tax credits to farmers willing to maintain primitive cultivars, an end to incentives to clear virgin forest, the promotion of research attention from local universities, and the preparation of basic inventories of native flora and fauna by national institutions.

VIII. THE NEED FOR ACTION

69. There are numerous signs that the loss of species and their ecosystems is being taken seriously as a phenomenon that carries practical implications for people all around the world. now and for generations to come.

70. The recent rise in public concern can be seen in such developments as the growth in Kenya's Wildlife Clubs, now numbering more than 1,500 school clubs with around 100,000 members.[1] A parallel development in conservation education has occurred in Zambia. In Indonesia, some 400 conservation groups have joined together under the banner of the Indonesian Environmental Forum and exert strong political influence.[2]In the United State, membership of the Audubon Society reached 385,000 in 1985.[3] In the soviet Union, nature clubs have

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  1. 'Kenya's Wildlife Clubs' (Brochure), Ed Wilson, WWF Regional Office for East and Central'Africa, personal communication, 3 February 1987.
  2. Centre for Environmental Studies, Environmental NGO's in Developing Countries (Copenhagen: 1985).
  3. Membership figure from Audubon circulation in Ulrich's Periodicals (New York: R.W. Bowker, 1985).