A/42/427
English
Page 43
If people destroy vegetation in order to get land, food, fodder, fuel, or timber, the soil is no longer protected. Rain creates surface runoff, and the soil erodes. When the soil is gone, no water is retained and the land can no longer produce enough food, fodder, fuel, or timber, so people need to turn to new land and start the process all over again.
All major disaster problems in the Third World are essentially unsolved development problems. Disaster prevention is thus primarily an aspect of development, and this must be a development that takes place within the sustainable limits.
Odd Grann
Secretary General,
Norwegian Red Cross
WCED Public Hearing
Oslo, 24-25 June 1985
environmental degradation, which leads in turn to even greater poverty.
2. Growth
18. In some parts of the world, particularly since the mid-1950s, growth and development have vastly improved living standards and the quality of life. Many of the products and technologies that have gone into this improvement are raw material- and energy-intensive and entail a substantial amount of pollution. The consequent impact on the environment is greater than ever before in human history.
19. Over the past century, the use of fossil fuels has grown nearly thirtyfold, and industrial production has increased move than fiftyfold. The bulk of this increase, about three-quarters in the case of fossil fuels and a little over four-fifths in the case of industrial production, has taken place since 1950. The annual increase in industrial production today is perhaps as large as the total production in Europe around the end of the 1930s.[1] Into every year we now squeeze the decades of industrial growth and environmental disruption that formed the basis of the pre-war European economy.
20. Environmental stresses also arise from more traditional forms of production. More land has been cleared for settled cultivation in the past 100 years than in all the previous centuries of human existence. Interventions in the water cycles have increased greatly. Massive dams, most of them built after 1960, impound a large proportion of the river flow. In Europe and Asia, water use has reached 10 per cent of the annual run off, a figure that is expected to rise to 20-25 per cent by the end of the century.[2]
21. The impact of growth and rising income levels can be seen in the distribution of world consumption of a variety of resource intensive produce. The more affluent industrialized countries use most of the world's metals and fossil fuels. Even
- ↑ Based on data from W.W. Rostow, The World Economy: History and Prospect (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1976); UN, World Energy Supplies in Selected Years 1929-1950 (New York: 1952); UN, Statistical Yearbook 1982 (New York: 1985); UNCTAD, Handbook of International Trade and Development Statistics 1985 Supplement (New York: 1985); W.S. and E.S. Woytinsky, World Population and Production: Trends and Outlook (New York: Twentieth Century Fund, 1953).
- ↑ USSR Committee for the International Hydrological Decade, World Water Balance and Water Resources of the Earth (Paris: UNESCO, 1978).
