An Assessment: From Stockholm to Jo'burg
> BY JIM MACNEILL.
Copyright © 2002 by The Earth Times. All rights reserved

In late August, the largest United Nations conference ever assembled will convene in Jo'burg under the banner of sustainable development. Tens of thousands of people from world civil society are expected to demand that the great-and-the-good, the not-so-good and the downright-bad representing over 150 of the world's governments agree to put development on a more sustainable path. Hopefully, they will also hold them accountable for their gross failures of commission and omission since they last met in Rio 10 years ago.

Before the action starts--and we must hope there is action--it might be of interest to retrace the road as one person traveled it.

Stockholm '72: I led most of Canada's preparations for the historic Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment; I also acted as an advisor to my countryman Maurice F. Strong, the genius who in 1969 took over what seemed like certain failure and by 1972 had transformed into a global success whose momentum would propel a generation of environmental achievement.

Stockholm's political purpose was to put environment on the global agenda and it succeeded magnificently. It energized the world's media and raised a level of awareness that governments could not ignore. And, by enabling for the first time regular interaction with a parallel nongovernmental conference, it changed the character of international diplomacy.

Stockholm produced the first global action plan for the environment. Its recommendations for national and international action contained over 150 separate proposals. They were reinforced by a Declaration of Principles which provided the foundation for the development of international environmental law during the '70s and '80s. Stockholm also established the United Nations Environment Programme and induced the later creation of environmental protection agencies in over 100 countries. It led to dozens of international conventions and to the enactment of libraries of legislation.

Many of delegates to Stockholm were preoccupied with exploding urbanization and the rapidly deteriorating urban environment. Unable to do more than raise the issues, some friends and I secured the adoption of a Canadian initiative calling for a special UN conference on human settlements in 1976.

Following Stockholm, a great deal was achieved, nationally and internationally. A number of important areas, however, suffered from the failure of governments to follow through on commitments made. UNEP, for example, began with great promise in 1973 but by 1975 leading governments were starting to renege on their commitments to support the organization and its programs.

More significantly, and perhaps linked, the first decade after Stockholm saw a continuing degradation of the global environment. Richer countries were able to buy some gains in air, soil and water quality, chemicals control and protected areas. They did so largely through end-of-pipe technologies, retrofitting industries and rehabilitating sites--always after the damage was done and at great cost--costs that were beyond the reach of the developing world. In 1982, UNEP's report on "The World Environment" revealed that environmental degradation and natural capital depletion was accelerating at a deadly pace, undermining prospects for future development and even survival on a global scale. Something more fundamental was needed than after-the-fact "environmental protection." For that something, we were to wait 15 years for the report of the World Commission on Environment and Development and then another five for Rio.

Vancouver '76, Habitat I: If Stockholm and environmental protection was the first milestone on the road to Jo'burg, Vancouver, urbanization and human settlements was the second. As mentioned, Stockholm adopted a Canadian initiative calling for a special UN conference on human settlements in 1976. Shortly after returning from Stockholm, I was appointed Secretary (Deputy Minister) of Canada's Ministry of Urban Affairs and found myself responsible for a major part of Canada's preparations for the Conference. Later, in 1975, after Canada agreed to host the Conference in Vancouver, I became the Canadian Commissioner General of the event.

The conference needed a solid intellectual framework for an agenda and a process that would attract the support and participation of nations of the South as well as the North. I decided to convene a week-long seminar of high-level people to develop a framework and I asked Barbara Ward, co-author with Rene Dubos of "Only One Earth," to chair it.

The seminar was held in May 1973 and its report scoped out the major concerns of the forthcoming Conference. Written largely by Barbara and published under the title "Human Settlements: Crisis and Opportunity," it was distributed internationally and, in a short time, became the keystone for the Conference's preparations.

In June 1976, more than 2,000 experts, officials and ministers from 132 countries met in Vancouver. The weather, I'm afraid, was indicative of their achievements. Unlike Stockholm, Vancouver was cold and wet.

Vancouver's political purpose was to put the problems of the world's exploding cities on the international agenda. It succeeded only to a degree. It energized the world's media for a brief period. More importantly, it enabled the fledging nongovernmental organizations in the human settlements field to get together for the first time in a major parallel conference called the Habitat Forum.

Vancouver also produced the first global action plan for human settlements, with 64 recommendations for national action supported by several programs for international cooperation. It established the UN Commission on Habitat and Human Settlements which located next to UNEP in Nairobi. The Vancouver Declaration of Principles, however, foundered on the shoals of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the ideology of the New International Economic Order and the political opportunism of the US State Department. On the last evening of the Conference, State ordered the U.S. delegation to break ranks with its Western allies and, contrary to prior agreement with them, surprise the plenary with a motion denying all carefully negotiated amendments and calling for an up-down vote on the entire Declaration. The stunned Conference had no time to recover its political wits. Even Canada felt compelled to vote against an unamended Declaration.

Fifteen years after Vancouver, the Habitat report prepared for Rio revealed that urban concentration and degradation in developing countries was accelerating at a frightening pace, with no early slow down in sight. Cities in most parts of the industrialized world had not escaped either. They too had experienced a dramatic decline in their social and environmental quality of life, with growing numbers of poor and homeless.

During the 70s, governments learned that the political costs of addressing the issues arising from rapid urbanization were high and they slowly abandoned their early, feeble attempts to do so. Yet, these issues are rooted in economic, social and physical realities and, sooner or later, the political costs of failing to address them will become greater than the political costs of doing so. When that happens, I am confident that nations will return to the milestone we built in Vancouver, and later polished in Istanbul, and use it as a point of departure for further progress.

OECD '84: Can Environment and Development live together?: In 1978, I joined the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris as Director of Environment. OECD's Environment Committee had been established in 1970, two years before Stockholm, and was the first intergovernmental committee to address environmental questions, albeit representing only the 24 most industrialized nations.

At OECD, I quickly learned that the economic agencies of these 24 governments shared the then dominant views of industry on the environment. As far as they were concerned, environmental protection and economic development were necessarily and always in conflict. Expenditures on environmental protection would reduce growth, cost jobs, distort trade, inhibit innovation, reduce productivity and increase inflation. A healthy economy depended on a readiness to allow the environment to be degraded. Conversely, an improvement in the environment could only be achieved at the expense of jobs and the economy. "Too bad," went the conventional wisdom, "but that's the way it is." At the first meeting of the Committee at Ministerial level following my appointment, I secured a mandate to examine the relationships between environment and the economy, testing this wisdom against the actual experience of the first decade of environmental action.

Six years later, in June 1984, OECD unveiled the results of our work at an International Conference on Environment and the Economy in Paris. The results carried the endorsation of the economic establishment within OECD and they turned conventional wisdom on its head. We found that the effects of expenditures on environmental protection had been broadly positive, even the effects on short term growth. Moreover, we demonstrated that they had had a net positive effect on jobs, a neutral effect on trade and a very small negative effect on inflation. Most surprising--and this came out of case studies with industry--we found that environmental regulations could have a strongly positive effect on innovation and productivity--depending, of course, on how they were designed, deployed and enforced.

Following five days of debate, OECD, the West's official center of economic thought, proclaimed that "the environment and the economy could be made mutually reinforcing." Of course, there were caveats. While environment and the economy "could be made" mutually reinforcing, they could also be, and throughout history usually have been, mutually destructive. If they were to be made mutually reinforcing, several things were necessary. Most importantly, they would have to be integrated at the earliest stage and at the highest level of decision-making in government, industry and the home. The results of our work sowed the seeds in my mind of what was to become the "alternative agenda" of the World Commission on Environment and Development, where I soon found myself.

The World Commission on Environment and Development: Sustainable Development: In 1982, ten years after Stockholm, UNEP convened a Special Session of its Governing Council to mark the event. The Session could not ignore the fact that, in spite of the measures put in place in Stockholm, deterioration of the global environment continued at a terminal pace. In retrospect, it is clear that the Sessions main achievement was to recognize "the need to assist the world community in better defining long-term environmental strategies" and to recommend that the UN establish a special commission to that end. A year later, in December, 1983, the General Assembly approved the recommendation.

Two months later, in February, 1984, my office in Paris received a call from Gro Harlem Brundtland, then Leader of the Opposition in Norway. In brief, she told me that UN Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar had appointed her chairman of a new independent commission "to examine the whole environmental situation." She asked if I would be prepared to become its Secretary General to manage the enterprise, establish the secretariat, direct the work and prepare their report. I agreed to consider it. A month later, following an OECD mission to London, I retreated to a quiet West End hotel to think it through. Over a period of five days, I wrote a draft report on the key issues confronting the Commission, as I saw them, and on the strategy it should pursue.

The document, entitled "Key Issues," looks fairly tame today, but in March, 1984, it was revolutionary and, after seven years at OECD, I was in a better position than anyone to appreciate just how revolutionary. It challenged conventional wisdom. It went well beyond what the forthcoming OECD conference would say about the relationships between the environment and the economy. It characterized the standard agenda of environmental protection as necessary but inadequate. It proposed that the commission organize its work and report around an "alternative agenda" embracing the concept of sustainable development. It proposed that the commission adopt a process of work involving public hearings. And it proposed that after the Commission completed its report, it should devote several months to briefing governments, industry and NGOs on its proposals for change.

Overriding all of this, I insisted that the commission should guard its independence. Only an independent commission could take a wholly fresh look at the critical issues of environment and development and to bring in some practical recommendations for changes in the way we do business, in our institutions of governance, and in traditional forms of international co-operation.

Happily, Gro Harlem Brundtland was extremely excited by the "alternative agenda." I accepted her offer and at its first meeting in October 1984, the entire 22-member Commission adopted it as the basis for their work. It was widely distributed and formed the basis of the public hearings we conducted over the next four years in every region of the world.

The Commission's report, "Our Common Future" was released in April 1987, and presented to the General Assembly six months later. We recommended a global transition to more sustainable forms of development--a concept it defined in several ways. We recognized that most development was unsustainable. With reforms to incentive systems, to energy, agriculture, industry, trade and other policies, and national and international institutions, we argued that development could be made sustainable. And we carefully set out the directions these reforms should take.

"Our Common Future" couldn't have come out at a better time. It helped to shape a sea-change in public opinion. Before long, "sustainable development" appeared on political agendas in all major world capitals. It became a regular feature in the debates of the UN system, regional bodies like the OECD and ASEAN and the multilateral banks. It began to shape curricula in universities and graduate schools. And it became a preoccupation of many leaders of corporations listed in the Fortune 500.

Rio '92, The Earth Summit: The Commission recommended that within five years the UN should convene an international conference to agree on the measures needed to achieve a transition to more sustainable forms of development. In December 1989, the General Assembly agreed to do so.

Political pressure to act had been growing for a number of years and continued through the early preparations for the Conference. Unfortunately, however, it did not sustain itself. By June 4, 1992, when UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali opened the Summit, the economic and geo-political situation had been transformed. Instead of economic buoyancy, North America was experiencing economic recession and the highest levels of unemployment since the '30s. Environmental concerns took second and then third place to economic and social concerns. By early 1992, the recession was also lapping at the shores of both Europe and Japan.

In spite of this, and thanks largely to the superb political skills of Secretary General Maurice Strong, the event was a political success. It brought together the largest array of world leaders ever assembled in a Summit. It brought forth a new generation of leaders within industry and it marshaled the resources of the scientific and business communities in an altogether unprecedented way. It signaled the arrival of nongovernmental organizations as a new force in international diplomacy. It generated enormous publicity and raised the level of public awareness to new highs in the South and East as well the North, at least momentarily.

Most leaders went home feeling that they had gained more in short-term domestic support than they had lost. Even President Bush the First. Under fire from the US media for gutting the climate convention and for refusing to sign the biodiversity convention, he was reported to have felt that in protecting the "American Way of Life" (which, he insisted, was not up for negotiation), he had come out on top with the key domestic constituencies on which he depended to win the forthcoming election. The Republican Convention in July, 1992, with its virulent anti-environment rhetoric, gave him every reason to believe that this assessment was correct. Like father, like son.

The Summit's political success, unfortunately, was not reflected in substantive results. The Summiteers were able to agree on broad goals. And they were able to agree on new processes to continue talking. But when it came to hard commitments to reverse the dismal trends that had brought them to Rio, they failed totally. They received waves of applause for their global display of good intentions and then failed to follow with any hard decisions to act. They left nothing unsaid and everything undone.

The Summit did produce five major agreements: the Rio Declaration; an Agenda 21, with 40 chapters; a Statement of Principles on forests; and two conventions, one on climate change and one on biodiversity. In the Rio Declaration, Agenda 21 and the Forest Principles, leaders adopted some new and potentially more sustainable directions for change. In the conventions, they adopted two broad frameworks for future negotiations. Throughout all the documents, they promised repeatedly to increase monitoring, to undertake more research and to submit reports on national performance on a voluntary basis. Leaders also agreed to establish a new UN Commission on Sustainable Development and various other processes to continue talking and negotiating. All of this offered the promise of some action in the future, if not in 1992. As Barbara Ward used to say, "We have a duty to hope."

I can't resist one further observation. It comes from more than three decades as a key advisor to governments at bilateral, regional and global meetings on the environment. Over the years, I have been struck repeatedly by the fact that leaders always find it easy to embrace environmental platitudes in the guise of principles and then support continuing processes of conferences, studies and negotiations in the guise of action. As a political strategy, it's a proven success. As a strategy for environmental protection or sustainable development, it's a proven failure. Still, leaders almost always get away with it. It seems to appeal to their dominant majorities who seek the nourishment of "feel good environmentalism" that does not threaten their own little cocoons.

At the end of the Summit, Secretary General Maurice Strong observed that the Road from Rio will be longer and more challenging than the Road to Rio. Clearly, it has been. Just about everything that needs to be done remains to be agreed and implemented.

Jo'burg Plus 30?: In Jo'burg, we can in good conscience celebrate the 30th anniversary of Stockholm, and the 15th anniversary of "Our Common Future." But can we celebrate the 10th anniversary of Rio? With one or two unfinished exceptions like Kyoto, the last 10 years represent a lost decade for the environment. Leaders went home from Rio and promptly forgot the commitments they made. Worse, many of them began actively to roll back the gains their predecessors had made during the '70s and '80s. Some of the most anti-environment leaders, like Canada's Prime Minister Jean Cretien and US President Bush the Second, if they dare come to Rio, must be held to account--and they have a great deal to account for.

If leaders gather again in 2012 to mark the 40th anniversary of Stockholm, will civil society want to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Jo'burg? How will it assess what this conference has done and not done? Will they find less or more poverty and hunger, less or more environmental pollution and degradation, and less or more economic and social justice within and among nations? Will they represent countries, and a one-and-only hyperpower, still truculently stuck in obsolete notions of national sovereignty or countries that have embraced their common interests and dedicated themselves to work together to give renewed meaning to "We the peoples of the United Nations?" Will they lead nations that have found pathways to sustainable development or countries still locked in a downward spiral of ecological and economic decline? The answers to these questions will be determined largely by what happens or fails to happen over the next two weeks, and whether leaders follow through on any commitments they might make.

(Editor's Note: Jim MacNeill was Chairman of the World Bank's Independent Inspection Panel (1998-2002), and Chairman Emeritus of the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD). He is a member of the boards of the Woods Hole Research Center, the Wuppertal Institute and the Earth Council. He served for seven years in Paris as Director of Environment for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Later, he was Secretary General of the World Commission on Environment and Development (the Brundtland Commission). Earlier, he was a Deputy Minister (Secretary) in the Canadian Government.)