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AN INDEPENDENT DECLARATION ON THE ENVIRONMENT

While delegates from 114 countries debated whether they should even discuss the draft Declaration on the Human Environment prepared for their United Nations conference in Stockholm ( June 5-17, 1972 ), Dai Dong’s Independent Conference on the Environment, also in Stockholm (June 1-6) produced its own declaration. Thirty-one participants from 24 countries, most of them distinguished scientists, produced the independent declaration, of which Stockholm Eco wrote: “This significant declaration was produced while the UN delegates were tediously chipping away at their interminable agenda…” It was circulated very widely by press, radio and television, and was read by Dai Dong’s director, Alfred Hassler, to a plenary session of the United Nations Conference on June 9th.

Human beings live as a part of a complex natural system with aspects of interdependence which have only recently become dramatically evident. They are also a part of complex social, economic and political systems which they themselves have created, usually without an appreciation of the unpredictable and sometimes disastrous effects of such systems on the life-giving capabilities of nature. These systems, moreover, contain faults and imbalances which prevent them from responding equally to the needs of all people, but provide a minority with a surfeit of goods, while leaving the greater part of the world's people in poverty and despair.

The interaction between the social and natural systems on this planet has in our time resulted in an environmental crisis which, although it can be traced largely to the economic practices of the industrial nations, affects every person on earth. The awareness of the environmental crisis has come at a time when the deprived nations and the poor and deprived people in all nations are struggling for power to control their own destinies and asserting their right to full participation in national and world affairs. The survival of humanity demands that the condition of the natural environment and the needs of human being be considered as interrelated parts of the same problem. This will require profound changes in our political, economic and social structures on the one hand and our individual life-styles on the other, with the aim not only one of survival, but of survival with the maximum possibility of human fulfillment. It will also require massive programs of education to enable people to understand the interrelatedness of the world’s problems, and the kinds of changes that need to be made. In such endeavors, certain guiding principles must be followed.

1. Human survival depends upon the life activities of uncounted thousands of species of plants, animals and micro-organisms, and upon intricate physical and chemical reactions in the atmosphere, oceans, fresh water, and on the land.

The vastness and complexity of this interdependence have recently become evident with increasing human intervention into the life-giving processes of our planet. All life is dependent on the interactions of matter and energy carried out in earth’s ecosystems. It is these interactions which we are altering, even before we fully comprehend them. The people of the world must come to understand them, to preserve them and, when altering them, to do it with care and wisdom.

2. There is a fundamental conflict between traditional concepts of economic growth and the preservation of the environment.

During the last century, uncontrolled continuous growth in the industrial production of environmentally harmful substances and products in some regions of the world has produced dangerous amounts of pollution and has been responsible for an inordinate waste of resources. At the same time, and increasing concentration of economic power and industrial activity has led to a centralization within a few nations of the benefits from the use of the earth’s natural resources, and the international political influence that is derived from the control of these resources. It has become clear that a more rational distribution of industrial power is necessary if the global problems of environment and society are to be solved. Such a redistribution would achieve at the same time a more equal apportionment of economic and political benefits among nations and individuals.

3. The exploitation of Third World national and regional resources by foreign corporations, with a consequent outflow of profits from the exploited regions, has resulted in a vast and growing economic disparity among nations and a monopoly of industrialized countries over production, energy, technology, information and political power.

Complementary to this is the flooding of developing countries with surplus goods and capital, with a resultant distortion of their economies, and the deformation of their environments into monocultures in the interest of further enriching the industrial states. The foreign investments, economic development and technological practices of such industrial states must be curbed and altered by the basic claim of a region’s people to control of its resources. Use of these resources, however, should not be dictated by the accidents of geography, but must be allocated in such ways as to serve the needs of the world’s people in this and future generations. The authority of any region’s people over resources and environment must include the obligation to recognize that the environment is an indivisible whole, not subject to political barriers. The environment must be protected from avoidable pollution, destruction and exploitation from all sources. 

4. It is obvious that human population growth cannot continue indefinitely in a finite environment with finite resources. At the same time, population is one of a number of factors, no one of which in the long run is the most important or the most decisive in affecting the human environment.

In fact, the question of population is intrinsically inseparable from the question of access to resources. A true improvement in the living conditions of the people of developing countries would go further in stabilizing population growth than programs of population control. Population is not a single problem, but one which has a complex interrelationship with the social, economic and natural environments of human beings. Population size may be too small or too large at any particular time depending on the availability of natural resources and the stresses on the environment. The ecological principle regarding the role of population is equally applicable to human and animal populations. However, in human populations social organization is such as to change or modify this principle.

On a global scale, the population problems of the developing countries have coincided with the colonial expansions of the last two centuries, and the exclusion of Third World populations from full access to their own resources. This process of economic exploitation still continues in spite of the nominal independence of various former colonies and dependencies. Meanwhile the alliance between economic elites in the developing countries and industrial interests in the metropolitan countries makes it impossible for the people of the Third World to use their resources to fulfill their own needs. The redistribution of resource us on a global level is an unconditional prerequisite for correcting this historic process.

As long as resources are wasted, as they manifestly are, it is deceptive to describe population growth as if this were the source of all evils. There is obviously a confusion in many people’s minds between overcrowding and population, but the fact that some urban areas grow like cancers should not serve as a pretext to divert attention from the real task of our generation, which is to achieve proper management of resources and space. Those nations that are mainly responsible for this state of affairs have certainly no right to recommend population-stabilizing policies to the world’s hungry people.

It should be noted that, for economically developed countries, the combination of an increase in industrial consumption per capita with a stable population, or of stable consumption per capita with a growing population, will both lead to further resource depletion and pollution. This need not be true if the appropriate socio-economic changes that will lead to an ecologically sound production and consumption pattern are made.

5. Economic development of any kind will require technology.

Much conventional technology and many of its proliferating products have proved ecologically harmful. We cannot reject technology per se but we must restructure and reorient it. Ecologically sound technologies will minimize stresses to the environment. A rapid development of the new approach should be complemented by a technology review and surveillance system to assure that any new technology is ecologically compatible and will be used for human survival and fulfillment. It is not enough to add anti-pollution devices to existing technologies, although this might well be the initial stage of phasing out present polluting technologies.

6. The culture of the industrial nations reflects their political and economic ideology, and is based on an ever-increasing accumulation of material goods and an uncritical reliance on technology to solve humanity’s problems.

This ideology, in which the ethical element is a forgotten dimension, is spreading throughout the world; its acceptance will not only cause individual and national disappointment and frustration, but will make rational economic and environmental policies impossible to carry out. An increase in economic well-being will help deprived countries preserve their own cultural and spiritual heritages, but many people in industrial countries, faced with a reduction in their material possessions, will need to find new definitions of progress in values compatible with environmental and social well-being.

7. Among the most critical problems that constitute and existing and accelerating threat to human survival is war.

Even apart from the colossal cost in human suffering that all forms of war entail, arms expenditures place an overwhelming economic burden on rich and poor nations alike, and an equally heavy burden on the environment. Military technology, being such a large part of industrial activity, particularly in economically developed countries, is a major cause of global pollution and resource depletion. Thus, war and preparation for war are both directly related to environmental problems. With nuclear proliferation, both civil and military, the environmental hazard has become increasingly critical, arms control more difficult, and nuclear war more probable. The enormous sums consumed in military expenditures must be applied directly to the task of global redistribution and environmental improvement. As long as we tolerate the waste and the destructiveness of war itself, we cannot achieve the stable environment on which the survival of all of us depends.

Yet the determination to abolish war must be accompanied by a recognition of the right of peoples to struggle, and the certainty that they will struggle, to liberate themselves from national and international systems that oppress them. Those who most earnestly seek an end to war must affirm their solidarity with their fellow humans engaged in such a struggle, while simultaneously insisting on the need to develop effective nonviolent methods of solving the social and international conflicts of a world in danger of an annihilating war.

*  *

PARTICIPANTS IN THE CONFERENCE AND SIGNERS OF THE DECLARATION

SAMIR AMIN, Senegal                                
Director, Institut Africain de Développement Economique et de Planification, Dakar

MOHAMED ZAKI BARAKAT, U.A.R.                    
Faculty of Medicine, Azhar University, Cairo

HEINRICH CARSTENS, Germany                             
Chairman, Friends World Committee for Consultation

*DONALD ALFRED CHANT, Canada                      
Chairman, Department of Zoology, University of Toronto

MOHAMMED AHSEN CHAUDHRI, Pakistan         
Head, Department of International Relations, University of Karachi

DORA OBI CHIZBA, Nigeria                                      
President, African Environmental Association

JERZY CHODAN, Poland                                           
Head Department, Agricultural College, Olsztyn

*PURUSHOTTAM JAIKRISHNA DEORAS, India  
Professor, Haffkine Institute, Bombay

PETER DOHRN, Italy                                                  
Secretary, Mediterranean Association Marine Biology-Oceanology

YUSUF ALI BRAJ, Kenya                                          
Former President, Family Planning Association

*M. TAGHI FARVAR, Iran                         
Center for the Biology of Natural Systems, Washington University, St. Louis

ANDRE FAUSSURIER, France                  
Director, Centre de Reflexion et D’Etudes Scientifiques sure l’Environnement, Lyon

GONZALO FERNOS, Puerto Rico              
Chairman, Environmental Quality Commission, College of Architects and Surveyors

*NICHOLA GEORGECU-ROEGEN, USA
istinguished Professor of Economics, Vanderbilt University

THICH NHAT HANH, Vietnam (in exile)   
Buddhist monk, poet, educator

*BENGT HUBENDICK, Sweden                
Director, Naturhistoriska Museet, Goteberg

*JAIME HURTUBIA, Chile                         
Professor, Institute de Ecologia, Universidad Austral de Chile

CONRAD ALAN ISTOCK, USA                               
Professor, Department of Biology, University of Rochester

*FRED HAROLD KNEIMAN, Canada       
Professor, Humanities of Science Dept., Sir George Williams University, Montreal

SATISH KUMAR, India                              
Writer. Founder of the London School of Non-Violence

*JURGEN SCHUTT MOGRO, Bolivia (in exile)        
Former Professor, University of La Paz

JEAN MUSSARD, Switzerland                   
Former Director, UN Conference on the Human Environment

CAO NGOC PHUONG, Vietnam (in exile) 
Professor of Biology, Universities of Saigon and Hue

*JUGENNE H. PRIMAVERA, Philippines 
Professor of Biology, Mindanao State University

*HENRY A. REGIER, Canada                     
Professor of Zoology, University of Toronto

HENRYK SANDNER, Poland                     
Professor of Biology, Polish Academy of Sciences

RUDI SUPEK, Yugoslavia                           
Professor of Biology, University of Zagreb

JUN UI, Japan                                                               
Lecturer, Department of Urban Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Tokyo

ROEL VAN DUYN, Holland                       
Author. Leader of Kabouter Party

ARTHUR H. WESTING, USA                    
Professor of Botany, Windham College, Vermont

ERNST F. WINTER, Austria                        
Director of Transnational Research Center, Katzelsdorf

Signed June 6, 1972

Chairman of Conference:
HANNES DE GRAAF, Utrecht, Holland

Director of Dai Dong:      
ALFRED HASSLER, Nyack, New York

Deputy Director of Dai Dong for Europe: 
JENS BRODUM, Copenhagen, Denmark

*  Some participants have included with their support of the Declaration as a whole some specific qualifications which they have at certain points:

POINT IV.  M.Taghi Farvar, Jurgen Schutt Mogro, Jurgenne Primavera, and Jaime Hurtubia have signed the Declaration subject to the following rewording of the first sentence of Point IV:

Population is not the most important or the most decisive factor affecting the human environment, although it is apparent that human population growth cannot continue indefinitely in a finite environment with finite resources.

POINT IV.  Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, P.J. Deoras, Bengt Hubendick, Donald A. Chant, Henry Regier, and Fred Knelman have signed the Declaration subject to the following footnote:

In several parts of this document, the environmental issues have become largely submerged in statements more relevant in one of a number or ideological polarities. A current controversy, concerning the quantitative measure of significance to be attached at this point in time to the various aspects of ‘population factor’ in comparison to other important factors, has confused the issue. The differences provoking the scientific controversy in themselves do not concern directly the point we make here: In various places and at various times the ‘population issue’ has become or will become critical, being preceded or followed in time by other critical factors not closely related to the population factor.

POINT VII. Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, Donald A. Chant, and Henry Regier have signed subject to the following rewording of the final paragraph of Point VII:

Those who most earnestly seek an end to war call upon the nations who are oppressing or may in the future oppress militarily, economically, or politically other nations or sectors of their own populations to desist from such actions. They also call upon those who are now or will in the future be the object of oppression to refrain from violence and to act so as to expose the aggressor and deny him the possibility of invoking the pretext of self-defense and, thus, of continuing or triggering new wars.

A message signed by 2,200 scientists from 23 countries, addressed to their “three and a half billion neighbours on planet earth”, warning of the “unprecedented common danger” facing mankind, was handed to the United Nations Secretary-General U Thant at a simple ceremony in New York on May 11, 1971.
To the six distinguished scientists who presented the message (reproduced in full on these pages), the Secretary-General declared:
“I believe that mankind is at last aware of the fact that there is a delicate equilibrium of physical and biological phenomena on and around the earth which cannot be thoughtlessly disturbed as we race along the road of technological development. .. This global concern in the face of a grave common danger, which carries the seeds of extinction for the human species, may well prove to be the elusive force which can bind men together. The battle for human survival can only be won by all nations joining together in a concerted drive to preserve life on this planet.”
Since it was originally drafted, at a meeting at Menton, in France, the “Menton Message”, as it has come to be known, has been circulated among biologists and environmental scientists in Europe, North America, Africa, Asia and South America.
The meeting was convened by a new, voluntary, non-governmental, transnational peace movement known as “Dai Dong”. Literally the name means “a world of the great togetherness”, a concept which originated in pre-Confucian China more than 2,500 years ago.
Among the 2,200 signatories of the Menton Message are four Nobel Prize laureates (Salvador Luria, Jacques Monod, Albert Szent-Gyorgyi and George Wald), and such famous names from the world of science as Jean Rostand, Sir Julian Huxley, Thor Heyerdahl, Paul Ehrlich, Margaret Mead, Rene Dumont, Lord Ritchie-Calder, Shutaro Yamamoto, Gerardo Budowski, Enrique Beltran and Mohamed Zaki Barakat.

Widely separated though we are geographically, with very different cultures, languages, attitudes, political and religious loyalties, we are united in our time by an unprecedented common danger. This danger, of a nature and magnitude never before faced by man, is born of a confluence of several phenomena. Each of them would present us with almost unmanageable problems: together they present not only the probability of vast increases in human suffering in the immediate future, but the possibility of the extinction, or virtual extinction, of human life on earth.

As biological and other environmental scientists, we do not speak to the feasibility of particular solutions to these problems, but out of our conviction that the problems exists, are global and interrelated, and that solutions can be found only if we abandon limited selfish interests to the realization of a common need.

THE PROBLEMS

. Environmental Deterioration.  The quality of our environment is deteriorating at an unprecedented rate. It is more obvious in some parts of the world than in others, and in those areas public alarm has begun to express itself, while in other areas environmental deterioration seems a remote and irrelevant phenomenon.

But there is only one environment; what happens to a part affects the whole. The most widely recognized example of this process is the penetration into food-chains all over the world of poisonous substances such as mercury, lead, cadmium, DDT, and other chlorinated organic compounds, which have been found in the tissues of birds and other animals far removed from the origin of the poisons.

Oil spills, industrial refuse, and effluents of various kinds have adversely affected nearly all fresh and inshore waters around the world, as  have sewage and organic wastes released in amounts too great to be taken care of by the normal recycling processes of nature. Cities are overhung with heavy clouds of smog, and air-borne pollutants have killed trees hundreds of miles from their source.

Even more alarming are our continued reckless ventures into new technological processes and projects (e.g. the supersonic transport and the planned proliferation of nuclear power plants) without a pause to consider their possible long-term effects on the environment.

. Depletion of Natural Resources.  Although Earth and its resources are finite and in part exhaustible, industrial society  is using up many of its non-renewable resources and mismanaging potentially renewable ones, and it exploits the resources of other countries without regard for the deprivation of present populations or the needs of future generations.

The Earth is already beginning to run short of some materials of critical importance to a technological society and plans are being made to mine minerals from beneath the oceans. But such efforts not only will require vast expenditures of money and energy (and our energy-producing fuels are limited), but should not be undertaken before careful studies have been made of their probable effects on marine animal and plant life, also part of our natural resources and a source of high-protein food.

Almost all of the world’s well-watered, fertile farmland is already in use. Yet each year, especially in industrialized nations, millions of acres of this land are taken out of cultivation for use as industrial sites, roads, parking lots, etc. Deforestation, damming of rivers, one-crop farming, uncontrolled use of pesticides and defoliants, strip-mining and other short-sighted or unproductive practices have contributed to an ecological imbalance that has already had catastrophic effects in some areas and over a long term may adversely affect the productivity of large sections of the world.

Even under the best of circumstances, the Earth could not provide resources in amounts sufficient to enable all people to live at the level of consumption enjoyed by the majority in industrial societies, and the contrast between lifestyles dictated by extreme poverty and those permitted by affluence will continue to be a source of conflict and revolution.

. Population, Overcrowding and Hunger. The present population of Earth is estimated at 3,500 million people, and calculations, based on success of present population control programmes, put it at 6, 500 million by the year 2000. There have been some optimistic predictions that technological and natural resources can be developed to feed, clothe and house far larger populations than this.

The immediate fact is, however, that as many as two-thirds of the world’s present population are suffering from malnutrition and that the threat of large-scale famine is still with us despite some nutritional advances. Pollution and ecological disruption are already affecting some food sources, and frequently efforts to raise nutritional standards are themselves polluting.

Moreover, population figures are misleading, since they do not take into consideration the factor of consumption. It has been estimated that a child born in the United States today will consume during his lifetime at least twenty times as much as one born in India, and contribute about fifty times as much pollution to the environment. In terms of environmental impact, therefore, the most industrialized countries are also the most densely populated.

Man’s need for space and a degree of solitude, though difficult to state in precise terms, is real and observable. We do not live by bread alone. Even if technology could produce enough synthetic food for all, overcrowding produced by ever-rising populations is likely to have disastrous social and ecological

. War. Throughout history there has been no human activity so universally condemned and so universally practised as war, and research on ever more destructive weaponry and methods of warfare has been unremitting.

Now that we have achieved the ultimate weapon and seen its potential, we have recoiled from its further use, but our fear has not kept us from filling our arsenals with enough nuclear warheads to wipe out all life on earth several times over, or from blind and heedless experiments, both in the laboratory and in the battlefield, with biological and chemical weapons. Nor has it kept us from engaging in ‘small’ wars or aggressive actions that may lead to nuclear war.

Even if a final, major war is avoided, preparation for it uses up physical and human resources that ought to be spent in an effort to find ways of feeding and housing the world’s deprived people and of saving and improving the environment.

It is clear that it is insufficient to attribute war to the natural belligerence of mankind when men have in fact succeeded in establishing at some points stable and relatively peaceful societies in limited geographical areas. In our time it is apparent that the dangers of global war focus at two points:

• the inequity that exists between industrialized and non-industrialized parts of the world, and the determination of millions of impoverished human beings to improve their lot;

• the competition for power and economic advantage among anarchic nation states unwilling to relinquish selfish interests in order to create a more equable society.

Stated thus, the problem seems almost insoluble. Yet mankind has demonstrated improbable resources of adaptability and resiliency in the past and perhaps facing what may well be the ultimate challenge to its survival, it will confound our fears once again.

WHAT CAN BE DONE?

The preceding is only a partial listing of the problems that confront us and makes scarcely any attempt to describe their causes. We really do not know the full dimensions of either our problems or their solutions. We do know that Earth and all of its inhabitants are in trouble and that our problems will multiply if we do not attend to them.

In the 1940s, when it was decided to develop the atomic bomb, the United States appropriated 2,000 million dollars and brought experts from all over the world to do the job in two years. In the 1960’s, preoccupied with the race to the moon, the United States spent between 20,000 and 40,000 million dollars to win the race, and both the Soviet Union and the U.S. continue to spend thousands of millions of dollars in space exploration.

Certainly massive research into the problems that threaten the survival of mankind deserves a higher priority than atomic or space research. It should be begun at once on a similar scale and with an even greater sense of urgency. Such research should be paid for by the industrial nations, which are not only financially best able to carry that burden, but themselves are the principal users of resources and the major polluters, but it should be carried out by qualified men from all countries and various professions, unfettered by restrictive nationalistic policies.

Because the crisis is so pressing, however, we urge that the following actions be taken even while research is going on. We do not offer these as panaceas, but as holding actions to keep our situation from deteriorating past the point of no return:

• A moratorium on technological innovations the effects of which we cannot foretell and which are not essential to human survival. This would include new weapons systems, luxury transport, new and untested pesticides, the manufacture of new plastics, the establishment of vast new nuclear power projects, etc. It would also include ecologically unresearched engineering projects – the damming of great rivers, ‘reclamation’ of jungle land, underseas mining projects, etc.

• The application of existing pollution-control technology to the generation of energy and to industry generally, large-scale recycling of materials in order to slow down the exhaustion of resources, and the rapid establishment of international agreements on environmental quality, subject to review as environmental needs become more fully known.

• Intensified programmes in all regions of the world to curb population growth, with full regard for the necessity of accomplishing this without abrogation of civil rights. It is important that these programmes should be accompanied by a decrease in the level of consumption by privileged classes, and that a more equitable distribution of food and other goods among all people be developed.

•  Regardless of the difficulty of achieving agreements, nations must find a way to abolish war, to defuse their nuclear armaments, and to destroy their chemical and biological weapons. The consequences of a global war would be immediate and irreversible, and it is therefore also the responsibility of individuals and groups to refuse to participate in research or processes that might, if used, result in the extermination of the human species.

Earth, which has seemed so large, must now be seen in its smallness. We live in a closed system, absolutely dependent on Earth and on each other for our lives and those of succeeding generations. The many things that divide us are therefore of infinitely less importance than the interdependence and danger that unite us.

We believe that it is literally true that only by transcending our divisions will men be able to keep Earth as their home. Solutions to the actual problems of pollution, hunger, over-population and war may be simpler to find than the formula for the common effort through which the search for solutions must occur, but we must make a beginning.

The Menton Scientists
CONRAD A. ISTOCK, U.S.A.
Professor of Biology – University of Rochester
DONALD J. KUENEN, Netherlands
Professor of Zoology and Former Rector
University of Leiden
PIERRE LEPINE, France
Chef de Service a L’Institut Pasteur
Membre de l’Académie des Sciences
KLAUS MEYER-ABICH, Germany
Physicist, Max-Planck-Institut zur Erforschung der Lebensbedingungen der Wissenschaftlich-technischen Welt
CAO NGOC PHUONG, Vietnam (in exile)
Professor of Biology – University of Saigon and Hue
LAWRENCE SLOBODKIN,
Professor of Biology – State University of New York
at Stoney Brook