Report calls for era of economic growth

Press, 7 May 1987, Page 28

Report calls for era of economic growth

NZPA-Reuter London Every year more people suffer from famine, vast areas of forests and fertile land are destroyed, the ozone layer gets thinner, the gap between rich and poor widens, and more money is spent on arms, according to a report. The 340-page report, prepared during three years by the World Commission on Environment and Development, calls for a new era of economic growth to relieve poverty in the developing world as a means to improving the world’s environmental problems. It is intended to jolt Governments into cooperating before it is too late to save the environment. The commission was formed in 1983 as an independent body linked to the United Nations but outside its control. It con-

sists of representatives of 21 countries chaired by the Norwegian Prime Minister, Gro Harlem Brundtland. The report, “Our Common Future,” will be presented to the United Nations General Assembly later this year. It says the industries most reliant on environmental resources, which are also the most polluting, are growing most rapidly in the developing world where poverty is the main cause and effect of world environment problems. To break the cycle, the commission calls for the annual growth of developing countries to be boosted by 6 per cent and more money to be made available to developing countries through the World Bank and the International Development Association.

World food supplies should be spread more evenly by reducing incentives that cause surplus production in developed countries and improving incentives that encourage food production in developing countries, it says. The commission calls for more political power to be given to local governments and money to prevent disease and air, noise and water pollution. “‘Our Common Future’ is not a prediction of ever- increasing environmental decay, poverty and hardship in an ever more polluted world among ever-increasing resources,” it says. Environmentalists have criticised the recommendations as bland and safe because they do not blame specific governments. “Some commission members would not ac-

cept recommendations of family planning and nuclear energy which differed from their own countries’ policies on those issues,” a . source close to the commission said. “If the commission had told Governments what they should do, they would have been able to dismiss it as righteous. As it is not blaming anyone, they have no excuse not to seriously consider the report,” the source added. The commission noted that fertility rates fell as women’s education and employment opportunities outside the home improve and their age at marriage rose. On nuclear energy it said: “The generation of nuclear power is only justifiable if there are solid solutions to presently unsolvable problems to which it gives rise.”