Global Future -- Meeting the Challenge

Global Future — Meeting the Challenge

Nicholas C. Yost

Nicholas C. Yost (B.A. 1960, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University; LLB 1963, University of California-Berkeley) served in the California Department of Justice from 1965 to 1977 where he was Counsel for the California Environmental Quality Study Council (1969 to 1971), appointed by Governor Reagan and the state legislature to survey California's environmental problems and laws, and Deputy Attorney General in charge of the Environmental Unit (1971 to 1977). From 1977 to 1981, Mr. Yost was General Counsel of the Council on Environmental Quality in the Executive Office of President Carter, during which time he took a six-month leave of absence to be Director of the President's Task Force on Global Resources and Environment, which prepared the GLOBAL FUTURE REPORT. Mr. Yost is currently a Visiting Scholar at the Environmental Law Institute.

[11 ELR 50011]

In 1977, the federal government, at President Carter's direction, launched an unprecedented two-part effort, first, to determine what population, resource, and environmental problems may face the world in the year 2000 and, second, to devise a plan of action to deal with those problems.¹ The first of those studies, the GLOBAL 2000 REPORT,² was delivered to President Carter in July 1980. Its purpose was to make projections as to the state of the world's resource problems absent intervening policy changes. The report was descriptive without making recommendations. The second report, GLOBAL FUTURE: TIME TO ACT, proposed measures to deal with the problems discussed in GLOBAL 2000. This article first summarizes the findings of GLOBAL 2000 and then turns to its main theme, GLOBAL FUTURE's recommendations for solving these problems.

1. GLOBAL 2000 — What the Problems Are

GLOBAL 2000 contains projections, not predictions, of how the world in the year 2000 will appear if present trends continue.

The opening sentences of the report set its tone:

If present trends continue, the world in 2000 will be more crowded, more polluted, less stable ecologically, and more vulnerable to disruption than the world we live in now. Serious stresses involving population, resources, and environment are clearly visible ahead. Despite greater material output, the world's people will be poorer in many ways than they are today.

For hundreds of millions of the desperately poor, the outlook for food and other necessities of life will be no better. For many it will be worse. Barring revolutionary advances in technology, life for most people on earth will be more precarious in 2000 than it is now — unless the nations of the world act devisively to alter current trends.³

GLOBAL 2000 projects the world's population will grow from the current four and one-half billion to over six billion by the end of the century. Eighty percent of these people will live in the porest countries.

The report projects that with respect to income, the gap between the rich and the poor will widen. While gross national product (GNP) growth in the less developed countries is expected to be faster than in industrialized nations, since the base is so much lower in the former, the disparities will grow. There are now 800 million people who live in conditions of absolute poverty. By the year 2000 this number will grow to over one billion.

Resource supplies, both renewable and nonrenewable, will be threatened. Many reports have described the strains on our nonrenewable resources, of which oil is the most conspicuous example. GLOBAL 2000 concludes, however, that the most far-reaching problems pertain to our renewable resources, such as food and firewood. We simply are not renewing those resources at the rate we are now using them and will, given our projected population growth, continue to expand our use of them.

The report projects a 90 percent increase in food production by 2000, which works out to a per capital increase of 15 percent. However, that increase will not go where it is most needed — to the poor and undernourished. Most of the increase will go to the countries whose populations are already well fed. An additional problem with this increase in food production, modest as it is relative to need, is that it assumes increasing reliance on energy consumptive inputs, including fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, and irrigation.

GLOBAL 2000 projects an increase of 4 percent in the total acreage of cropland available. On a global basis we are currently losing an area of arable land the size of Maine to desertification each year. These losses are attributable to soil erosion, diminishing fertility, increased salinization, and lack of water. Furthermore, we lose forests covering an area half the size of California each year. Deforestation in turn impairs water supply and agriculture.

With respect to energy, global oil production is projected to level off before the year 2000. However, world energy demand is expected to increase 58 percent by 1990. For the one quarter of the people on this earth who depend on wood for fuel, the outlook is even more bleak. By 1994 fuelwood shortages are expected to total 25 percent of the projected need.

By the year 2000 the report projects an immense loss of genetic resources; 15 to 20 percent of all species of flora and fauna on earth will disappear. This will be due in part to direct use of species and their byproducts, but in even greater measure to loss of habitat critical to many species' survival.

There will be a 200 to 300 percent increase in water withdrawals. This water consumption is, of course, related to food production, energy, and deforestation.

With respect to atmospheric pollution, we are confronted with uncertainty over the effects of global CO₂ levels, which could eventually lead to the melting of the polar ice caps and a gradual rise in sea level.

Unless present trends are altered, therefore, we face an extraordinarily dismal future. How to alter those trends was the focus of the GLOBAL FUTURE report.

The GLOBAL 2000 report has both limitations and strengths. The major limitation is that the U.S. government [11 ELR 50012] does not use a unified model when projecting future resource trends. Instead, there are a range of predictive models used by separate groups of experts studying distinct problems with which they are concerned. The models are not linked. For example, the Department of Energy may make ostensibly sound projections on energy availability, and the Department of Agriculture may make equally sound projections on food availability. However, they both use the same barrel of oil in their projections: the Energy Department plans to use it to run machines, but the Agriculture Department plans to use it to make fertilizer. This lack of linkage results in double counting, which biases the result on the side of optimism.

Second, the quality of the projections in GLOBAL 2000 differs from sector to sector.For instance, the water resource projections are admittedly based on inadequate data. Energy projections, made shortly after the study was initiated, were upset by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries' actions in the late 1970s, which resulted in far higher oil prices and lower consumption.

Third, the assumptions on food productivity are seen by some as unduly optimistic. The pioneering study in the area, the Club of Rome report, has been criticized for failure to assume continued technological advances in food production. GLOBAL 2000 sought to avoid similar criticism by explicitly assuming such continued technological advances. This is quite an assumption considering that recent decades have seen the "green revolution," and that in view of some, there is little reason to assure further strides.

For all its limitations, however, GLOBAL 2000 represents the most complete effort undertaken to date to project the state of the world's population, resources, and environment. There is room for improvement, but this is the best we have to go on for the time being. Further, the results of the report are substantially in line with all other studies of this genre.

It is important to emphasize what the report is — a projection, not a prediction. It is what happens if we keep on as we have been for the last decades — if we exercise no foresight and fail to adapt our actions to future needs.

2. GLOBAL FUTURE — What Must Be Done

While it was the purpose of GLOBAL 2000 to describe the problems we will face if present trends continue, the purpose of GLOBAL FUTURE was to make recommendations as to what to do about those problems. The goal of GLOBAL FUTURE is, quite simply, to make GLOBAL 2000 a self-defeating prophecy.

The two reports must be read together. Reading GLOBAL 2000 without also considering GLOBAL FUTURE is like listening to a doctor's prognosis if no medicine is administered. It sounds gloomy, but the purpose of the diagnosis is to aid in prescribing the remedy. Once the suggested remedies are at hand, whose development was the purpose of GLOBAL FUTURE, the message becomes much more one of hope, of a "can do" attitude. In the words of the preface to GLOBAL FUTURE,

The GLOBAL 2000 REPORT has been described as a reconnaissance of the future. It describes what might be, if action is not taken. It is within the power of this country, working with other countries, to alter the future. The resources exist. The solutions can be found. The will to act must be summoned.⁴

What are the solutions? GLOBAL FUTURE contains detailed recommendations in widely disparate problem areas, which will be discussed below in summary fashion. Three general themes emerge, those of (1) sustainable development, (2) institutional change, and (3) conservation and wide use of resources.

a. The Themes of GLOBAL FUTURE

i. Sustainable Development

First, in much of the world, development efforts must reverse the imbalance between resource availability and population growth. To a very large degree, this imbalance is due to problems without malefactors. Deforestation, for example, is not driven by greedy timber companies. It is caused largely by those who want to clear more land to grow food and by poor, hungry people who cut down trees to heat their homes and cook their food. In the past the forests have sustained the people who live near them. Now the population is increasing, and at a rate faster than trees grow. There is thus an increasingly insufficient wood supply to satisfy human needs. One example of the pressures created is that people now cook and heat using dried cow dung, which in the past was used to enrich the soil. As a result, the soil is less productive and is less able to support the population that depends upon it.

Many of the recommendations of GLOBAL FUTURE are aimed at interrupting this cycle — at insuring "sustainable development." Domestically, many speak, often excessively, of conflicts between development and environment. If any lesson emerges from the global studies, it is that the postulation of a conflict between development and environment lacks meaning in much of the world. In the developing world to a large degree the prospects for resource and environmental protection are linked to sensitive development. It is through such sustainable development that we can hope to meet peoples' current needs and to secure a resource and environmental base that will sustain those dependent upon it.

Curtailing the growth of population, improving crops yields, planting a tree, indeed planting a tree farm — each of these are steps which can interrupt the prevailing cycles of population — resource imbalance. Transfers of skills and of money to those, primarily in the less developed countries, who most urgently face the problems we are discussing are an essential part of any answer. We say, accurately, that if you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. If you teach him how to fish, you feed him for a lifetime. Yet, as important as it is to transfer these skills, there are also fishing lines and nets to be bought, streams to be stocked, harvests to be managed on a sustainable basis. In the meantime people are hungry. Money is needed too.

ii. Institutional Change

The second major theme of GLOBAL FUTURE's recommendations concerns the adequacy of the United States [11 ELR 50013] government's institutional capacity to deal with these global resource, environmetal and population problems.Quitesimply, that capacity is inadequate. Four years ago President Carter directed task force of federal agencies to report to him within one year on global resource problems in the year 2000. The resulting GLOBAL 2000 REPORT took more than three years to prepare and still has the limitations described above and acknowledged in the report itself. The report took this time not because of any lack of dilligence but because the models and institutions to look at the world as a whole simply do not exist.

The United States lacks both an adequate predictive capacity and a long-range policy capacity — an ability to synthesize data about the future to help the President and the nation make decisions today. This capacity cannot be confined to either foreign or domestic matters, as is the case with federal agencies, but must include both spheres. There are a number of ways of meeting these institutional needs, and options are presented in the GLOBAL FUTURE REPORT for those in positions of responsibility to consider.

iii. Conservation and Wise Use

The third theme of GLOBAL FUTURE's recommendations is that of conservation and wise use of limited resources. Ensconced in the richest corner of the world, we use resources on a per capita basis strikingly disproportionate to that of most of the world. As others escape from poverty, they too will use more. How can we avoid this apparently inevitable cconfrontation? First, we must insure that supplies are as adequate as possible. Second, we must conserve and wisely use what we have, and must take the initiative in this effort, for we Americans who consume so much are poorly placed to advise others to consume less.

b. The Methodology of GLOBAL FUTURE

The President's Task Force which prepared GLOBAL FUTURE was chaired by the Chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) and also included the Secretary of State, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, the President's Assistant for Domestic Affairs, and the President's Science Adviser. Though all were helpful, Chairman Gus Speth of CEQ and Secretary of State Edmund Muskie were the two who led their agencies through a hectic period of study and preparation of the report. In the rush at the close of the Carter Administration, the report was issued over both of their signatures. Their leadership and the dedicated participation of the staffs of the agencies they headed were crucial to the success of the effort.

At the outset, in consultation with affected agencies, the Task Force members settled on 13 problem areas. They were mostly substantive issues, such as population, food and agriculture, deforestation, water supply, genetic resources, but the list also included several institutional issues, such as the government's predictive capacity and the adequacy of federal and international institutions to deal with these problems. Officials from 23 government agencies worked on task groups set up to prepare reports and recommendations in each of these problem areas.

Those involved in the study also wrote to nearly 1,000 nongovernment people representing different segments of society inviting their suggestions. In this effort, the Task Force surveyed all past United Nations (UN) Conference reports on areas such as desertification and population, as well as government and private studies.

The result of this effort was the GLOBAL FUTURE Report. It too has its limitations:

The report presents a collection of considered assessments and new ideas for actions the United States could take, in concert with other nations, for a vigorous response to urgent global problems. It does not represent an official U.S. government program or a set of final proposals by CEQ and the Department of State. The merits of the recommendations have not been compared with one another or with those of other government programs that must compete for limited budgetary resources.The goal of this report is to further public discussion of these important issues and to offer our best thinking to government leaders who will be developing U.S. policy in the years ahead.⁵

If this report never had the chance to become the policy of the Carter Administration which commissioned it, it has so far had even less opportunity to be considered by the Reagan Administration. The report remains basically the work of United States government professionals whose expertise is unmatched by any country in the world.

c. The U.S. Interest in Global Problems

Throughout the study the authors stressed the United States' interest in facing up to global problems and in joining others to solve them. The principal concerns include the following:

First, there is the moral concern for a world four-fifths poor and one-fifth rich. The disparities this country has largely addressed domestically have their parallels in the world community.

Second, we have concerns about the availability and prices of natural resources. The nation's dependence on imported oil has surely become evident over the last decade. We are even more dependent upon potentially unstable foreign sources of cobalt, chromium, and manganese, all essential to our national security. Strains on other resources will be reflected in prices. As agricultural lands are lost, water is degraded, and population grows, the prices of what we have and use will rise accordingly.

Third, we have interests in the conservation of the U.S. renewable resource base, which will be put under great stress to supply needs in the rest of the world. If forests, for instance, are cut and not replanted elsewhere, additional demands will be placed upon American forests.

Fourth, we have interests in disputes over water, remembering that 148 of the world's river basins are shared by two or more countries. For example, the war between Iraq and Iran is being fought in part over water resources.

Fifth, we have interests in energy availability. Any energy conserved or produced anywhere in the world reduces demand on the limited supply of oil on which we remain dependent.

Sixth, we have interests in trade, particularly with the growing markets in developing countries. More than one-third of U.S. exports are now bought by developing [11 ELR 50014] countries, including well over one-half of our agricultural export. By end of the century, their share will be probably higher. Some 800,000 jobs in U.S. manufacturing alone depend on exports to developing countries.

Seventh, we have interests in the massive migration of people from areas of resource impoverishment. For example, in the year 2000 the largest city in the world is expected to be Mexico City, with 31.6 million people. That figure is not without its implications for this nation.

Eight, we have interests in the conservation of genetic resources — particularly for new crop varieties and medicines. Wild species and locally cultivated strains provide the potential sources for new foods, fibers, fuels, building materials, and biological controls for pests.

Ninth, we have interests in climate change and the condition of the global atmosphere.We simply do not know how massive increases of CO₂ in the atmosphere may affect us. But we do know that a substantial segment of responsible scientific opinion believes they will be calamitous.

In brief, American interests and national security are closely tied to the global resource, environment, and population issues that are the subject of the global studies.

d. The Recommendations

Those who preared the GLOBAL FUTURE report were convinced that enough had been said about generalized needs for action and calls to arms. Specific recommendations were needed now, steps that those in positions of responsibility could take which would in fact deal with the projected global problems. In some cases, particularly those involving scientific or technological proposals, specific recommendations were made. In others, where more general policy or institutional needs were addressed, alternative ways of dealing with problems were listed.

i. Population

Ninety percent of the projected almost two billion addition to the world's four and one-half billion population will take place in low income countries. The central problem discussed in the global reports is the imbalance that exists between this growing population and resource shortage. There are only three ways to address these problems: greater resource availability, wiser use and conservation of the available resources, and curtailing the population growth that places ever greater strains on the resources and diminishes each person's per capita share.

GLOBAL FUTURE proposes a doubling of the assistance available for family planning practices. Such efforts can be and have been successful. Significant fertility declines have been achieved in China, Thailand, Indonesia, Columbia, and Mexico. For the first time, government requests from developing countries for population assistance substantially exceed contributions from donor countries. Family planning services are now available to approximately one-third of all couples in developing countries and are used by a quarter. If availability and usage were doubled by the end of the decade, global population would ultimately stabilize at 8 billion versus the 12.2 billion that will result if higher fertility rates continue. This difference of 4.2 billion is almost the same as the total global population today.

In addition to direct assistance, other steps are needed. The report recommends further biomedical research on new contraceptive measures, as well as U.S. coordination with other countries. This nation needs to give attention to developing its own population policy and to stressing its importance through presidential leadership and bilateral and multilateral cooperation.

ii. Food and Agriculture

Hunger remains mankind's oldest enemy, but the continuation of present trends with respect to food and agriculture will not do much to solve the problem. However, those trends can be altered.

The poorest countries lack a sustainable foundation of food production, and the incomes of their peoples are insufficient to buy the food that exists.Further financial assistance is needed fromthe developed countries both to contribute to capital costs in the food sector and to cover some of the recurrent costs of development, such as training and technical assistance. Institutional capability for agricultural management in developing countries is particularly in need of further support.

Relatively little of the world's land is suitable for agriculture. Drought, mineral stress, poor soil quality, excess water, susceptibility to erosion, and permafrost are some of the factors which eliminate all but 11 percent of the world's land area (excluding Antarctica) from agricultural use. Some large uncultivated areas exist, such as the savannahs of Brazil, but they are far from people and infrastructures. Populous countries where food is needed, such as Bangladesh, India, and Egypt, have little potential agricultural land to bring into production.

Massive efforts are needed both domestically and abroad to sustain croplands and rangelands by limiting the conversion of scarce agricultural land to other uses. Further steps must be taken to prevent the degradation of the soil lost through water and wind erosion. Toxic salts and chemicals accumulate and impair the land. Desertification, primarily from overgrazing, is accelerating in many parts of the world. Both the United States and the international community as a whole must develop a comprehensive strategy for preserving agricultural lands, an essential part of our life support system.

There are technical measures which can help increase our food output. One such means is to preserve germ plasm for agriculture. Four-fifths of the world's food supplies come from less than two dozen plant and animals species. Increasingly, monocultures of limited strains which may increase yield but which also increase susceptibility to epidemics and pests, are used. Wild and domestic strains are needed to breed resistance to such pests and pathogens into the high-yield varieties we now use. Support for such genetic preservation is essential. Genetic engineering is another potential tool for the development of gentic diversity and for the development of new and superior varieties. Again, support is needed.

Agricultural yields will have to be sustained indefinitely. Some techniques for raising yields, such as the application of pesticides, may over the long run result in unwarranted adverse effects. Therefore, means to raise agricultural yields on a long-term, sustainable basis, such as integrated pest management involving the orchestrated use of multiple attacks on pests, must be furthered.

Fertilizers and the efficiency of their use are another promising area. The use of traditional nitrogen fertilizers, manufactured using fossil fuels, is affected by rapidly [11 ELR 50015] rising costs. More effort is needed to make their application as efficient as possible, thus reducing both human exposure, water pollution, and energy use. In addition, promising new techniques of biological fixation of nitrogen, whereby certain plants take nitrogen from the air and transform it into the amino acid needed for growth, exist to increase yields.

Finally, measures to increase food security are needed. Crop failures, regional food shortages, and the drawdown of the world's grain reserves have invited needed attention to the problem of effective management of grain reserves to provide security against food supply fluctuations. This nation must both work with the international community to assure the maintenance of such reserves and assist developing countries to create their own reserves.

iii. Renewable Energy Resources and Conservation

The 1981 UN Conference on New and Renewable Sources of Energy will provide a focus for energy concerns, particularly for those of the developing world. Indeed, much of the globe relies upon the most rudimentary forms of energy.

In many low-income countries, wood remains the principal source of fuel for household energy needs. Consumption is fast outpacing supply. Eighty percent of all wood used in developing countries is burned for heat. Current rates of planting trees must be increased by a factor of five if there is to be enough wood by the year 2000. Vigorous U.S. support is needed for a greatly expanded World Bank fuelwood program, as is direct Agency for International Development (AID) assistance for fuelwood plantations. This increase in aid must be coupled with an ecological sensitivity to insure that the increases in wood continue on a sustainable basis.

Similarly, the World Bank must accelerate lending for renewable energy programs. Efforts by AID are needed to draw attention to the need for institutions to finance renewable energy systems in less developed countries.

As well as emphasizing renewables, more encouragement is needed for conservation. A barrel of oil saved anywhere in the world decreases the demand on limited oil supplies, to the benefit of all those who rely upon those supplies. Both AID assistance for energy efficiency and World Bank lending activities related to oil conservation are necessary.

As is the case in so many of these areas, what Americans do at home has an impact on global resource problems. This nation needs an energy conservation plan, one whose aim is to provide 20 percent of our energy from renewables by the year 2000. Such a plan should identify and change regulations and programs which impede energy productivity. Existing Energy Department and Internal Revenue Service incentives, grants, and research and development programs should be evaluated, with funds directed to the programs which are found to be the most successful.

In addition, we must improve our energy data. The Department of Energy should develop a system of conservation and solar monitoring by sector and expand its collection and analysis of energy end use data.

iv. Tropical Forests

In the words of GLOBAL FUTURE, "The world's tropical forests are disappearing at alarming rates as growing numbers of people seek land to cultivate, wood to burn, and raw materials for industry." Tropical deforestation leads to enormous harm, particularly to the poorest people.This harm includes seasonal flooding, water shortages in dry seasons, erosion of croplands, siltation of rivers and coastal waters, and the loss of plant and animal species at unprecedented rates. As larger areas are cleared, the potential exists for local and regional climatic modification.

This is a global problem, and vigorous U.S. support for an international plan of action is necessary. This nation should make special contributions to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) to support an expansion of its tropical forest activities. A new focus is also needed on our own activities, including research and the training of professionals. This represents an enormous opportunity for the U.S. private sector through cooperation between the forest products industry and the government.

With respectto assistance, both AID and the Peace Corps should be expanding technical and financial support to developing countries for tropical forest management. Such efforts should be coordinated with the programs of the World Bank and the FAO.

v. Biological Diversity

GLOBAL 2000 estimated that as much as 15 to 20 percent of all the species on earth — mammals, birds, other vertebrates, plants, insects, and invertebrates — could be lost within the next two decades. About half of that loss would be a result of tropical deforestation.

The meaning of this loss is incalculable. With respect to pharmaceuticals, about half of the commercial drugs now in use were originally derived from living organisms. Wild and locally cultivated varieties of major crops are the sources of genetic traits necessary to breed resistance to disease and to pests, as well as to improve crop yields. Both these sources and wild animals may provide opportunities for new supplies of food. These wild and local strains are the raw materials for man's technological advances in breeding and creating sources to feed ourselves better in the future. The consequences of their loss would be enormous.

There are many causes of the loss of biological diversity, and a comprehensive U.S. strategy is needed to cope with them. GLOBAL FUTURE recommended that the existing Interagency Task Force on Conservation of Biological Diversity develop such a plan of action and make suggestions to the President periodically. Existing efforts should be reviewed and determinations made as to levels of support. Prime candidates include UNESCO's Biosphere Resources Program, international efforts to inventory the world's plant and animal species, and assistance to developing countries in protecting reserves and ecosystems. Further, the Task Force should (1) study the need for species and germ plasm collection, (2) work with AID to make habitat conservation an integral aspect of programs, (3) establish a budget for the U.S. Man and the Biosphere Program, and (4) review and make recommendations on existing conservation treaty implementation.

In coordination with other countries and international organizations, the U.S. should assist in training wildlife and conservation professionals in developing countries [11 ELR 50016] and should help improve conservation institutions in selected nations. We might further assist by loaning U.S. professionals to such nations.

vi. Coastal and Marine Resources

The waters of the oceans and seas cover 71 percent of the earth's surface. With proper care they can help supply human needs ranging from food to minerals. Oceans are a shared resource, and their protection requires international cooperation.

Prolonged harvest of the oceans' food resources depends on sustainable fisheries management. Domestically, we must decide how best to promote optimum yields. For developing countries both multilateral and bilateral support is required. Further research is needed on (1) an ecosystem approach to fisheries management in the Anttarctic, (2) minimizing the impacts of incidental take of unwanted species during commercial fishing, and (3) the efficient use of protein obtained incidentally.

Sustained productivity of coastal ecosystems is necessary to maximize ocean productivity. Between 60 and 80 percent of commercially valuable marine fish species use estuaries, salt marshes, mangrove savannahs, or other nearshore oceanic areas for habitat at some point in their life cycles. Thus, coastal areas must be managed to assure their continued health. The United States has begun to inventory is coastal resources. This effort must be completed so we can best determine how to manage those resources. Similarly, we should initiate exchanges with other countries on coastal protection issues, including the problem of shore-based pollution which affects the ocean.

Other areas needing further attention include the establishment of marine sanctuaries, particularly the habitats of migratory species, where international action is needed. U.S. support for a moratorium on commercial whaling should be continued. With respect to Antarctica, the U.S. should ratify the Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources and should continue to lead in directing attention to environmental protection as oil and gas drilling in the Antarctica is considered.

vii. Water Resources

The quantity and quality of the world's water resources is one of the areas about which we know least. We do know, however, that human needs for water for agriculture, industry, drinking water and household use, and sewage disposal will increase greatly over the next two decades.

The United States, particularly through the Geological Survey, has developed expertise on hydrological conditions in many parts of the world. This country should begin by cooperating with other nations to develop better data and methods of monitoring water resource needs and availability worldwide. We should particularly share our expertise on the environmental assessment of water resource development projects, environmentally sound nonstructural alternatives to such projects, and water conservation techniques. Other areas in which American know-how can be applied include training in water supply and management, particularly irrigation water management.

Further research is needed in some areas, including the relationship between crop yield and water, water and crop management to reduce the amount of irrigation water needed, and development of high yield crops which use less water or poorer quality water.

The decade of the 1980s has been designated by the United Nations as the International Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation Decade. The United States must participate both in these multinational efforts and in bilateral programs to assure safe drinking water.

Water is of international importance for quite a different reason as well. Conflicts among nations over shared water resources exist today and are projected to become more acute. The need will increase for farsighted action to forestall such conflicts and to concentrate instead on mutually beneficial shared use.

viii. Global Pollution

The earth's life support systems are threatened by the detrimental byproducts of beneficial activities.Contamination from hazardous substances or man-induced climate modification could have enormously harmful effects.

With respect to hazardous substances, international agreement is vital. The United States must support and extend the work of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in developing international guidelines for testing chemicals and for the use of data. Controls are needed on the U.S. export of hazardous substances and waste. Common criteria for transportation, storage, disposal, labeling, and notification and disclosure to receiving nations are needed.

Nuclear waste poses a different set of problems. While encouraging nonnuclear energy alternatives, this nation should promote the establishment of international facilities for the storage and disposal of such waste. In the meantime, we should continue to accept spent reactor fuel from selected developing countries and should exercise leadership in protecting the ocean commons from radioactive contamination.

The potential for increasing amounts of carbon dioxide to affect the world's climate poses one of the most disturbing policy constraints on decisionmakers. Fossil fuels, such as coal, provide a ready alternative to nuclear energy, but the cumulative effects of the release of vastly increased amounts of carbon dioxide simply are not known. Special efforts must be made to determine the prudent upper bounds of global CO₂ concentration, which in turn should lead to international cooperation and consensus as to the appropriate steps to take.

While apparently less of a worldwide threat, ozone depletion requires further research, as does the issue of acid precipitation, a major regional problem in both eastern North America and northern Europe.

In addition to individual problems which may affect climate, U.S. efforts are needed to deal with climatic and atmospheric problems in general. Internationally we should be working to improve the World Climate Program, while domestically we must strengthen the National Climate Program in the Department of Commerce.

ix. Sustainable Development

One of the dominant themes of GLOBAL FUTURE is that of "sustainable development." GLOBAL 2000 had made clear the critical importance of the interrelationship between economic growth, population, natural resources, [11 ELR 50017] and environment. The underlying thesis of the global reports is the imbalance between growing population and scarce resources. In order to meet the needs of a growing population, and, indeed, in order to provide a better life for stable populations, an adequate resource base must be made available and efficiently used. Many of the most important of those resources, such as food and fuelwood, are "renewable" — that is to say the supplies are not finite but can be replenished. But, and here is the most startling of the findings of GLOBAL 2000, the so-called renewable resources are not being renewed at a rate commensurate with their use. If no seed is planted, no crop will grow. If insufficient seed is planted, insufficient crops will grow. Resources must be developed and replenished at a rate and in a manner which will insure their availability on a scale which will meet people's needs. As the two global reports emphasize throughout, such availability requires a sensitivity to the environment so that the use today will not diminish the opportunities for use tomorrow. This entire process of economic development in ways that will enhance and not impair the environment so as to assure continued resource availability in the future is called "sustainable development."

The money for such development, an investment in a more stable, less distressed world, must come in part from the industrialized countries. Over the past decade, the U.S. contribution to development assistance has declined, both in absolute terms and relative to GNP. This must be reversed. This nation must make up its arrearages to the World Bank and other development banks.We must also contribute our share to the International Development Association and to the general capital increase of the World Bank. Simultaneously, and using the leverage partially afforded by our contributions, the United States must press the development banks to integrate resource and environmental considerations into their planning.

On our own, the U.S. should provide for a major expansion in bilateral aid with emphasis on food, energy, population, and health. This effort must be made in light of natural resource and environmental considerations to insure that development does in fact take place on a sustainable basis.

x. Institutional Changes: Improving Our National Capacity to Respond

This nation has inadequately dealt with the global problems that are the subject of these reports, in part because we lack the organizational capacity. The United States lacks the capacity to make accurate projections about the mix of global resources, population, and environment issues. Even with the existing projections, it lacks the capacity to relate them to today's policy choices that the President and Congress must make.

The government's predictive capacity is not adequate to the need. The U.S. should have a single center within its government to coordinate date and monitoring capability. It should identify long-range problems, promote the development of analytical tools and data, assess the state of global modeling and data collection, and make long-term projections. The center's responsibilities should include authority to name lead agencies in subject areas so as to make use of existing capability, eliminate duplication, and fill gaps. The center should coordinate the modeling activities of all agencies to insure linkage, feedback, and compatibility.This organization would also be the appropriate focus for U.S. encouragement of international cooperation in the area.

The nation also lacks a policymaking entity capable of developing policy on long-term global (domestic and foreign) issues. Such a federal coordinating unit, preferably within the Executive Office of the President, is needed. It is hard to overestimate the importance of this unit. Such an entity is needed to insure continued attention to all the issues discussed in the global reports. The projections of the center should form the data to support the policy analysis and options to be presented by it. Ideally the two functions should be performed by one agency.

There are a whole series of "action-forcing" devices among which policy makers can select to insure priority attention to these global issues. Such efforts could start with a presidential message highlighting the importance of these concerns. Among the possibilities designed to attract continuing attention to them are creation of a commission modeled on the Civil Rights Commission, composed of distinguished Americans outside the government to oversee the government's attention to global issues; or, alternatively, formation of a blue ribbon commission within the government, perhaps chaired by the Vice President, watching and guiding the government's efforts. Within each federal agency, a coordinating and policy office would help to relate the activities of that agency to global problems.

The annual budget review process should be used to insure that agencies are adequately addressing long-term global problems. Means of reviewing programs in terms of how they affect global resource, environment, and population issues can readily be built into the budget process. Each agency might, for instance, be required to report annually on its progress in complying with the recommendations of the federal unit charged with coordinating global strategy.

Congress too has an important role to play. As it did so successfully with respect to the environment in enacting the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969,⁶ Congress can both formulate national policy goals and create mechanisms to insure that executive branch attention is paid to those goals. There is also a role for Congress in mobilizing its long-range analytical capability and insuring that the implications for global resource, environment, and population problems are realized as bills move through the legislative process.

Improved means are needed for federal funding for technical assistance to other countries. In many areas this nation has an enormous expertise, such as in agriculture, energy, and environment, which could benefit those in other lands and ultimately the entire globe. The usual means for assisting other countries, the foreign aid budget, has its limits. New and innovative means can and should be devised to authorize the agencies with expertise to share that expertise with appropriate countries without being funneled through an aid budget designed for other purposes. If the Environmental Protection Agency or the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, for instance, can share knowledge on how to limit pollution [11 ELR 50018] of the oceans, all of us benefit — American, recipients of exported technology, and everybody else.In order to be effective, budget allocations could be established by program areas, and the proposal of the various agencies would then compete against each other for the budget.For instance, a budget could be established to control deforestation. Agencies such as the Forest Service and the Park Service could vie for approval of effective proposals. In this way the inadequacies of the foreign aid budget would be avoided, as would the inevitable losses to domestic constituencies that would result if "foreign" programs were forced to compete for funds with "domestic" programs in domestic agencies.

Since 1979 the United States has had a mechanism for assessing the impacts abroad of major actions taken by U.S. agencies. Executive Order No. 12114 makes provision for protection of natural resources of global importance.⁷ The President should proceed to designate tropical forests, prime croplands, and coastal wetland-estuarine and reef ecosystems as such resources.

America's private sector has much to contribute in resolving global issues. Measures to involve both public and private expertise and resources so that the best the nation has to offer can be channeled into dealing with the global problems discussed must be found. One such means is to create a hybrid public-private "Population, Resources, and Environment Analysis Institute." Such an institute could enlist private sector talents in the solution of global problems, such as by supplementing the government's capabilities to make meaningful projections, by providing a forum for discussion and criticism of various models, and by stimulating independent analysis of long-term global problems.

Though the two global reports were written by and for the United States government, this inno way means that the solution of these problems is solely or even primarily the responsibility of the United States. However, leadership is both an opportunity and an obligation. There are steps the United States should take to mobilize the world community to deal with the global problems we all share.

For instance, we can and should encourage each nation to prepare its own global reports. In that way each nation will be led to think about global issues in its own way and about its role in dealing with them. The State Department is the nation's window on the world. It should persistently emphasize global population, resource, and environmental issues at every appropriate opportunity, inviting the attention of other countries and of international organizations to the problems and pressing for action to deal with them. The U.S. government should also review its bilateral agreements with other countries to develop recommendations as to how to use them to deal with global problems.

We should encourage and work with international organizations so that they may assume much of the brunt of dealing with these international issues. The United Nations as a whole might play a key role in addressing global population, resource, and environment issues. The United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) is the specialized organization most particularly suited to take the lead. UNEP's three main functions — assessment of global problems, development of means to manage and control them, and sharing of information — must all be strengthened. U.S. financial support for UNEP must be increased, and we should press UNEP to devote its 1982 conference to global population, resource, and environmental issues.

Much of the world's work is done on a regional basis. Encouragement and assistance to the global resource, population, and environment programs of the European Community, the Organization of American States, the Association of Southeast Asian States, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the Organization for African Unity, and the Arab Development Bank are all needed.

The international nongovernmental organizations, the foreign policy analogue of public interest groups, have much to offer. Their talents should be systematically drawn into efforts at solving global resource, population, and environmental problems.

Further, the government should call upon transnational corporations for their assistance in developing and implementing measures to solve these problems. Indeed, the contributions of American business in general to dealing with global issues can be immense. Business leaders should establish an advisory committee to make proposals for dealing with global resources, environmental, and population issues.

Finally, the public, both American and global, must be made aware of these problems so that they may support initiatives to deal with them. In 1908 President Theodore Roosevelt convened the first National Governor's Conference to deal with the problems of this country's natural resources. Surely the time is now ripe for the President to convene a comparable conference to deal with the problems that face us now — those of the globe's resources, environment, and population.

Conclusion

We all have a tendency to allow absorption with the immediate to preclude attention to long-term problems that may ultimately be more important.Global population, resource, and environmental problems are long-term.They are also important — to all of us. It is up to us to muster the foresight, the energy, and, perhaps above all, the will to deal with them.

1. THE ENVIRONMENT, The President's Message to the Congress, May 23, 1977.

2. COUNCIL ON ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY AND DEPARTMENT OF STATE, THE GLOBAL 2000 REPORT TO THE PRESIDENT, U.S. Government Printing Office (1980).

3. Id., vol. 1 at 1.

4. COUNCIL ON ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY AND DEPARTMENT OF STATE, GLOBAL FUTURE: TIME TO ACT, REPORT TO THE PRESIDENT ON RESOURCES, ENVIRONMENT, AND POPULATION, U.S. Government Printing Office (1981).

5. Id. at iv.

6. 42 U.S.C. § 4321 et seq., ELR STAT. & REG. 41009.

7. Exec. Order No. 12291, 44 Fed. Reg. 1957, ELR STAT. & REG. 45031.