Jim MacNeill © 1991, Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0-19-507126-3
192 pp./paper/$19.95 plus S&H
To order: Oxford University Press
Foreword by David Rockefeller
Introduction by Maurice Strong
I. The Growth Imperative and Sustainable Development
II. Recasting Domestic Policy
III. Global Environmental and Geopolitical Change
IV. Toward Global Action
V. Challenges and Prospects for a Sustainable Future
This report provides an analysis of the critical relationships between the global environment, the world economy, and the international order.
The authors argue that environmental degradation, resource depletion, and the need to secure access to increasingly scarce global reserves of energy and other raw materials could become the principal source of interstate conflict in the post-cold war world.
Suggesting that the interlocking of the world's economy and the earth's ecology is the issue of the 1990s, the authors argue for a "sustainable development" model for economic progress and suggest that the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro would likely be the last chance this century for leaders and decision-makers to seriously address and arrest the accelerating environmental threats to economic development, national security, and human survival.
A prominent theme in reports to the Trilateral Commission, as articulated in one of our very first reports in 1974, has been that "growing interdependence and the inadequacy of present forms of cooperation are the principal features of the contemporary international order." Growing economic interdependence is what most of us have had primarily in mind in such reports and discussions. In this report, Jim MacNeill, Pieter Winsemius, and Taizo Yakushiji ask us all to go "beyond interdependence" in this too narrow economic sense, and to recognize the "meshing of the world's economy and the earth's ecology."
In part this is a physical point. As MacNeill and his coauthors vividly demonstrate, human activities have become so huge that in many instances they are of the same scale as fundamental natural processes. Critical global thresholds are being approached, and perhaps passed. And yet this is not the old argument of Limits to Growth -- a document that the first director of the Trilateral Commission, Zbigniew Brzezinski, once termed a "pessimist manifesto." The authors instead stress the "growth of limits" through focused and urgent human efforts. Given the "growth imperative" evident in the material poverty of much of humankind, the only reasonable alternative is "sustainable development" -- a concept that Jim MacNeill did so much to advance as Secretary General of the World Commission on Environment and Development (Brundtland Commission) in its landmark 1987 report Our Common Future.
The main theme of this Trilateral report is not the physical point, however, but rather the structural and policy point. These issues are rightly moving on to the central policy agenda. The preparation of this report to the Trilateral Commission -- our first report focused so fully on these issues -- is itself a reflection of this increasingly felt need for a new synthesis as we all seek to articulate central international policy needs.
MacNeill, Winsemius, and Yakushiji make clear, as have so many reports to the Trilateral Commission, the global setting in which the principal democratic industrialized countries function. One of a number of fruitful concepts developed in this report is that of the "shadow ecologies" of Trilateral countries. Economic activities centered in the European Communities, North America, and Japan cast an "ecological shadow" that is worldwide, and we need to think in such worldwide terms when we evaluate our own environmental performance. A companion point is the argument of MacNeill and his coauthors that these issues provide "growing political leverage" for developing countries:
The active participation of developing countries is essential to the success of several....negotiations now underway, including those on climate change. As in the case of CFCs and ozone depletion, any reductions in fossil fuel emissions by industrialized nations could soon be wiped out by increases in a few developing nations. China alone, with one of the largest reserves of coal in the world, plans 200 new coal-fired power stations in the medium term future. With this kind of negative power, countries do not need to be rich and militarily strong to influence the behavior of great states. The problem, as experience with the Montreal Protocol demonstrates, is not that they can prevent an agreement being reached, but that they can refuse to sign, ratify or implement an agreement unless and until their economic and other concerns have been addressed.
On behalf not only of myself but also of Georges Berthoin, European chairman of the Trilateral Commission, and Isamu Yamashita, Japanese chairman, I commend this report to a wide range of readers in the Trilateral regions and beyond. While the views expressed in this report are put forward by the authors in a personal capacity and do not purport to represent those of the commission or of any organization with which the authors are associated, the chairmen of the commission hope that the report will contribute to informed discussion and treatment of the issues addressed. One particularly prominent event on the horizon is the "Earth Summit" -- the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development -- which will take place in Rio de Janiero in June 1992. MacNeill, Winsemius, and Yakushiji look toward the Rio meeting in the concluding chapter of their remarkable book.
David Rockefeller
North American Chairman
The Trilateral Commission
In June 1992 world leaders will meet in Rio de Janeiro for the largest summit conference ever held, the first truly Earth Summit. This book by Jim MacNeill, Pieter Winsemius, and Taizo Yakushiji provides a lucid exposition of the fundamental questions that prompted the United Nations General Assembly to convene the conference and of many of the difficult political and substantive issues that it will face.
The authors demonstrate that the world has now moved beyond economic interdependence to ecological interdependence -- and to an intermeshing of the two. They argue persuasively that this interlocking f the world's economy and the earth's ecology "is the new reality of the century, with profound implications for the shape of our institutions of governance, national and international." They provide a fresh analysis of the implications of this new reality from a vantage point that combines breadth of vision with experience in real decision-making at the highest levels of government, industry, and international organizations. I am not surprised. I know them all and I have been privileged to work closely with the principal author, Jim MacNeill, for over two decades. He was one of my advisors when I was secretary general of the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment in 1972. We were both members of the World Commission on Environment and Development and, as secretary general, he played a fundamental role in shaping and writing its landmark report, Our Common Future. He is now advising me on the road to Rio.
This book couldn't appear at a better time, with the preparations for the Earth Summit moving into high gear. No conference has ever faced the need to make such an important range of decisions, decisions that will literally determine the fate of the earth. It can build on a number of foundation stones, in particular the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment, which put environmental issues on the global agenda, and the work of the World Commission on Environment and Development. Our Common Future, which is now available in over 20 languages, has sparked a global debate on sustainable development.
Twenty years after Stockholm, world leaders will meet in Rio as a direct result of the commission's recommendations. Rio will be the largest summit conference ever held, and it will have the political capacity to produce the basic changes needed in our national and international economic agendas and in our institutions of governance to ensure a secure and sustainable future for the world community. By the year 2012, these changes must be fully integrated into our economic and political life so that the world will not be forced to confront the deepening crises that will inevitably result if we fail to make the transition to sustainability.
This book extends the World Commission's analysis of the complex relationships between the environment and the economy, the changing international politics of environment (including the growing political leverage of the South), and the issues of global change. It takes account of recent events, including the Second World Climate Conference in November 1990 and the war in the Persian Gulf in early 1991.
The Earth Summit will be asked to adopt an Agenda for the 21st Century, setting out an internationally agreed work program, including targets for national and international performance on several critical issues. This "Agenda 21" cannot escape the question of reform of policies that now rig the world marketplace against both the economy and the environment. Beyond Interdependence provides the most compelling economic as well as environmental case for such reform that I have read. The Earth Summit will be asked to address new international conventions on climate change, forestry, and biodiversity. The authors clearly present some of the key options before the negotiators, and they discuss the danger that leaders will be tempted to adopt empty framework conventions, leaving their successors with the hard choices and the problem of finding the funds to finance sustainability measures. The options are discussed in some detail together with an analysis of their probable costs based on the latest studies. The summit will be asked to provide developing countries with access to additional financial resources to cover these costs and environmentally sound technologies to enable them to implement the conventions and to integrate environment into their future development. It will also be asked to consider far-reaching reforms of the international system.
The summit's agenda may seem to be a tall order far removed from existing political realities, particularly at a time when the attention of governments and people has been preempted, at least temporarily, by pressing crises such as the conflict in the Gulf. But this is unlikely to shake the deepening concern over the state of the environment. As the authors point out, the use of environmental destruction as a weapon in the Gulf war could serve to heighten the growing conviction that environmental risks pose the greatest threat to our common security, indeed to our very survival. The case made for broadening the concept of national security to include these threats is compelling and makes the message of the book imperative at this critical time.
The Earth Summit must succeed. There is no plausible alternative. Western leaders will have to find the political resources to demonstrate enlightened leadership. They can initiate the restructuring of intemational economic and political relationships needed to reverse the tragic flow of capital from the poorer to the richer countries and to ensure that developing countries get equitable access to the technologies needed to support sustainable development. Failure in these two areas, as the authors point out, would mean the failure of the summit, and that would likely cripple prospects for a new global alliance to secure the future of our planet. Beyond Interdependence should make a solid contribution to the success of the summit.
Maurice Strong
Secretary General
United Nations Conference on Environment and Development
Authors
(titles at time of publication)
Jim MacNeill, President of MacNeill & Associates, a Senior
Fellow at the Institute for Research on Public Policy in Ottawa, and former
Secretary General and member of the World Commission on Environment and
Development.
Pieter Winsemius, Director of McKinsey & Company in Amsterdam
and the former Dutch Minister of Housing, Physical Planning, and Environment.
Taizo Yakushiji, Professor of Technology and International Relations
at the Graduate School of Policy Science at Saitama University in Japan.
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