A 'second Stockholm’

Press, 10 May 1982, Page 24

A 'second Stockholm’

By

ALASTAIR MATHESON

in Nairobi

The nations of the world are to be asked to rekindle the spirit of the Stockholm environment conference of 1972 which raised public awareness of international environment problems to a peak. The Stockholm delegates produced a bold. 109-point action plan and with it was bom a,new United Nations agency, the United Nations Environment Progamme (U.N.E.P.), to help Okie industrial ’ pollution. in developed countries and the “pollution (if poverty” in the Third World. To mark the anniversary the United Nations has called a “second Stockholm," opening on May 10 in Nairobi, the U.N.EP. headquarters. Delegates will be asked to reaffirm the concern expressed by the 113 Governments a decade ago and to restore the momentum of the environmental movement. ?■ / The drastic change in the economic situation of the world since 1972 has tended to push, environmental concerns into the background as nations, especially in the developing world, struggle-to make ends meet and make drastic cuts in allocations for environmental protection. With international funding drying up, U.N.EP. is looking to this conference with apprehension. It could be the

"make or break” point for the organisation as well as for the future of the environmental cause. Its delegates will have to decide: is the environment programme to be advanced or retarded; does the .world learn from the mistakes of the past, build on the gains and move forward better prepared and equipped: or must it accept the fact of economic recession, begin to run down the programmes and begin to abrogate responsibilities? . According to U.N.EP.'s Egyptian-born executive director, Dr Mostafa Tolba, these are issues which will make this “second Stockholm” so crucial, and if the world community is not prepared to put up the cash needed, he sees not only the demise of U.N.E.P., but also a retrogression that could plunge the world into a mire of pollution, and rapidly-dwind-ling natural resources which cannot be replaced. In preparation for the Nairobi conference several studies have been commissioned to find out what improvements there have been in the global environment in the decade since the delegates went home from Stockholm. These studies are a catalogue < of disappointments, .with'.pro-; gress measured in terms of

conferences, seminars and surveys rather than concrete changes for the better. Scientists disagree so much over methods of data collection and assessment that they admit their inability to judge whether there have been successes or failures, despite all the modern technologies which have been used. The one success all are agreed on is the drive to clean up the seas. Starting in the Mediterranean, the Regional Seas project has since taken in the Caribbean, the Persian Gulf and the Straits of Malacca with localised efforts in the Red Sea, the Baltic and elsewhere. One finding has been that oil spills are much less serious than was at first thought, while pollution from metals such as mercury has seriously affected the oceanic food chain. The prospects elsewhere are gloomy — little improvement, for example, in emissions of harmful gases in vehicle exhausts and industrial smoke. Scientists are still divided oh whether the chemicals reaching the upper atmosphere will cause a “global warm-up” effect, but there is a far greater awareness now of the functions of the ozone layer and the need to take the matter seriously.— Copyright, London Observer Service.