U.N. CONFERENCE ON HUMAN ENVIRONMENT: PREPARATIONS AND PROSPECTS FRIDAY, MAY 5, 1972 UNITED STATES SENATE, INTERNATIONAL ENVIRONMENT OF THE COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS, Washington, D.C. The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:05 a.m., in room 4221, New Senate Office Building, Senator Claiborne Pell (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. Present: Senators Pell, Case, and Javits. OPENING STATEMENT Senator PELL. The Subcommittee on Oceans and International Environment will come to order, as we start to conduct our third and final hearing on the preparations and prospects of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment. Today we are very lucky to have as our first witness an individual who is renowned throughout the world for her tireless efforts on behalf of the improvement of man's environment, and also a friend of mine whom I recall meeting some years ago at the Delos Symposium and with whom I have enjoyed exchanging ideas with respect and benefit. to myself. I refer to Dr. Mead, Curator of Ethnology at the Museum of Natural History of New York. Do you want Mrs. Reurs with you? Dr. MEAD. Yes, delighted. Senator PELL. Dr. Mead, if you would proceed as you will. It is a source of great pride to me as a Rhode Islander to think that you are an adjunct professor at the University of Rhode Island. I doubly welcome you on that score. STATEMENT OF DR. MARGARET MEAD, CURATOR EMERITUS, AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY; ACCOMPANIED BY HELEN REURS Dr. MEAD. Senator Pell, I am here speaking for a variety of different interests that I have been working on in the last 40 years who have a general interest in technical assistance to emerging countries and, therefore, today are very much interested in the changed climate. within which we are now reexamining some of our technical interests. I have been working with the World Council of Churches' working committee on church and society for 12 years now, which has concerned 78-444-72- -9 itself with the relations of science and society and the effect on the future survival of mankind; and I am cochairman of the U.S. Task Force on the Future of Mankind and the role of Christian churches in a world of science-based technology; president of the Scientists Institute of Public Information, and past president of the World Society for Ekistics, so that I am speaking from the standpoint of many different inputs today; and I want to take advantage of this hearing which we are delighted that you have taken the initiative in conducting. TWO POINTS TO BE EMPHASIZED There seems to me now just two things we have to put emphasis on: One is the last minute changes in U.S. policy which, as is usual, as I understand it, still in the process of formulation, and the U.S. delegation has not yet been announced; and the world situation is so exceedingly unstable at the moment that there is still a chance to change some of the emphasis on the U.S. input into the Stockholm conference. This is one point. The other point is what sort of followup and future arrangements will be provided for at Stockholm for the future participation of the United States in some kind of world organization and for a much wider educational campaign within the United States so that the people of the United States have some idea of what has happened, because I am continually lecturing all over the United States and everywhere I go I find people who should be very well informed, and who would care if they were well informed, and would have been giving political backing to our adopting a good and responsible policy in Stockholm, who have never heard of the conference. I sat this morning on the plane coming up here next to some young people who were preparing a research report on housing and yet they had never heard of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment. U.S. EDUCATIONAL JOB CULPABLE Now, I think we have been exceedingly culpable in this country in the educational job that we have done. The State Department committee under Senator Baker got going very, very late and, as a result, information about the Conference was very slow in going out. They did their best to make up for it in the end and in the last minute hearings and in getting a publication available to people on the main Secretariat report. Nevertheless, we have been exceedingly deficient and I think in any plans that we make in the future we must realize that this is not a conference that should be left only to technical people in bureaucracies, as it has been to a very great extent. The participation of Congress in all of these plans has been absolutely minimal and we have simply had no genuine participation of the people. We have had a small staff, for the most part understaffed, small group of people working without any substantial backing from the American people. Now, this has sometimes been characterized as apathy, but I think the way to describe it is-I visited an urban college the other day; there were three concerned students who met me and who said, "Our campus is characterized by raging apathy and probably there would be nobody there; there wasn't any interest in what you have to say." And there were 1,500 people there. PERSONNEL OF U.S. REPRESENTATION WILL SPEAK FOR U.S. COMMITMENT If we give the slightest opportunity for people to participate, to generally participate in things, they are very glad to do it. They have not been given the opportunity to this point. So it is important that during the Conference and during the public announcement of U.S. policy when this is finally formed, that the membership of the U.S. delegation must speak for itself now, and can speak, of course, far more dramatically than any words that are issued. The actual personnel of that U.S. representation will speak for the U.S. commitment. First, if there is no one representing the United States in the field. of health, education, and welfare, it will mean a third of the content of the Conference and the most human part of the Conference is being ignored, because a third of its concern goes to human settlements and, as is demonstrated very nicely in the volume, "Only One Earth,' that has just been published, by Barbara Ward and Rene DuBois. This is the human issue about which people care the most and it must. not be ignored; and it is also important to have the type of delegation to show the United States taking top responsibility for the success of this Conference. There is every danger this may not happen because of the maneuvering around the participation of East Germany where several great powers are preferring to make a football out of the Conference for their political issues, which is very dangerous. We should not let U.S. participation in any way suffer, however the issue of the participation of East Germany in the World Health Organization comes out. It will be absolutely unforgivable if we lower our participation in the Conference in some petty, political retaliation for what may be going on in European political maneuvering, because this is a case of the survival of this planet and it is a case of where we may have very dangerous rifts between the emerging countries and the highly industrialized countries, because the emerging countries already suspect us of either merely wanting to clean up the pollution in our cities and make life a little more comfortable for ourselves or of attempting to cut off aid to the other countries in their very much needed process of very early types of industrialization, such as electrification. Unless we can demonstrate and demonstrate vividly by the personnel that go to Stockholm, by their behavior in Stockholm, by our declaration in Stockholm, that we are taking a responsible part, then the chances of this Conference succeeding and taking the first step to preserve the planet are very, very poor. AMOUNT OF PROPOSED WORLD ENVIRONMENTAL FUND QUESTIONED Now, Mr. Senator, I would like to point out to you that when the President of the United States proposed a $100 million World Environmental Fund, as usual $100 million bedazzled the people who heard it; we were being generous. Do you know what that amounts to? To begin with, it is not for a year; it is for 5 years. The U.S. section or share of it will be 40 percent. That is $40 million for 5 years or $8 million a year, to save the planet. while we are spending something like $40 million a day ($20 billion a year) destroying a piece of it in Vietnam. Now, what is our credibility going to be worth? What is $8 million a year for monitoring the state of this planet, for trying to protect the atmosphere that envelops the entire planet, for taking the responsibility for the damage and danger that technology has wrought, and the responsibility for developing the technology to repair the damage that is being done? We, in good faith, and I am not imputing our original good faith, have exported to the whole world a kind of biomedical revolution which meant a population explosion and a technical revolution that has changed agriculture-we hoped to feed people; this has changed many other things like the use of electricity which we hoped would lighten people's burden but, at the same time, is part of the technological changes that are destroying this planet. WHAT U.S. DELEGATION SHOULD BE So, it is vitally important that this U.S. delegation stop being either a high level diplomatic football or a low level bureaucratic football; and it looks from time to time as if it was going to be one, and then you look at it again and then it looks as if it was going to be the other; and it shouldn't be either. It should be something that represents the United States, the whole of the United States including the Congress of the United States. Our participation is going to be scrutinized all over the world. We at present are the target of tremendous criticism all over the world. Our credibility is at an all-time low. This is an opportunity to regain it. It is an opportunity to take the lead; it is an opportunity to say to the whole world, and especially to the developing nations, "We accept our responsibility in this technological revolution that has occurred; we take responsibility for the benefits it has brought mankind and for the dangers and we intend to continue paying attention to both." But there isn't very much sign that we are proposing to do that. There is still time, Mr. Senator. The U.S. delegation has not been named yet. We have been fed rumors for months, some of them so bad that we would be relieved with anything we got, and then some of them so good our hopes were put up and then dashed again, which is, of course, a very familiar technique at present in political circles, as no doubt you have experienced yourself. But there is still time, as nearly as I can tell, to be sure of our participation at the highest possible level. APPORTIONING BURDEN ON BASIS OF ENERGY CONSUMPTION I would like to mention one suggestion that was made by Mr. Robert Anderson in the hearings held by the Baker committee, which was that the funds allotted for the world care of the environment, which means a worldwide monitoring system to begin with, and the beginning of treaties to protect the oceans and the air, should be apportioned on the basis of energy consumption, which would mean automatically that the most industrialized countries would bear the heaviest burden, not in a paternalistic sense and not in an imperialistic sense, but because by their uses of energy they were using up irreplaceable resources and putting the greatest stress and strain on the environment. This would mean that Northern Europe, |