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«The next few decades are crucial. The time has come to break out of past patterns. Attempts to maintain social and ecological stability through old approaches to development and environmental protection will increase instability. Security must be sought through change.» This was the basic message of the World Commission on Environment and Development chaired by Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland, published under the title «Our common future» (Oxford University Press 1987). A year after publication of the report the time seems ripe to reconsider its strategy for protecting the global environment and promoting development in the Third World.
Throughout the report the Commission emphasises the common interests of all states and peoples in solving the global environmental and development problems, because our common survival is at stake. In this way the Commission tries to use the environmental threats as a lever to promote a new start in development cooperation. Since everybody depends on the global environment, all states have an interest in eliminating poverty which is the major threat to our common environment. The echo from the report of the Brandt Commission - «North-South. A program for survival» - is unmistakable. That commission too tried to convince all states that economic growth in the Third World is in the global interest in economic, political and security terms. The results of this appeal from the early 1980s today speak for themselves, and give ample reason to ask whether the Brundtland Commission will suffer the same fate.
On the one hand the Commission openly acknowledges the weaknesses of present international institutions, admitting that «a reorientation (towards sustainable development) on a continuing basis is simply beyond the reach of present decision-making structures and institutional arrangements, both national and international» (pages 22 - 23). On the other hand the Commission is itself incapable of devising solutions which go beyond the institutional status quo. Compared with its ringing rhetoric its final appeal to the UN General Assembly to set up a UN program on sustainable development is at best disappointing.
On this background I find it appropriate to ask whether the Commission has a realistic view of the relationship between the diagnosis and the prescribed medicine. Its practical strategy can be summarized in three main points.
It seeks to: