defoliants; factory ships ruthlessly deplete fish stocks; prospectors extract minerals; and industries and individuals pollute everything from the air, rivers and seas to the litter and refuse dumped on public open spaces. Our species resembles the Gadarene swine, about to make a final exit over the edge of the cliff.
A Global Response
It is now accepted as a truism that environmental degradation and pollution know no frontier posts. What happens in Eastern Europe or the Amazonian Forests has potentially disastrous consequences for the whole globe. During his address to the Moscow Global Environment Forum, President Gorbachev told us that 'the right to a healthy environment is a human right'. He said that the hour had struck and that unless we were predisposed to suicide, nations would have to act together. He suggested the establishment of an international Green Cross whose remit would be to assist with ecological disasters: a move which I subsequently welcomed in an all-party House of Commons Motion. Such a global initiative would be a start and I welcomed Mr Gorbachev's promise to put Soviet know-how and science at the disposal of the Green Cross. It might also be part of any 'peace dividend' - the release of resources and men who have previously been tied up with the arms race. The World Commission on Environment and Development (the Bruntland Report, 1987) called for aid programmes to be geared 'to help restore, protect and improve the ecological basis for development'. Regrettably, commercial pressures have tended to put this on the back burner. The World Bank has expanded the number of staff allocated to environmental management programmes and claims to have 'fully integrated environmental issues in the Bank's approach to development'. They have been so well integrated that you would now have difficulty in finding them. Commercial interests have taken priority. If world priorities are to change there will be considerable social costs, especially for the poor. The World Bank has begun to recognise this and has now established a 'Social Dimensions of Adjustment' programme. Hopefully the International Monetary Fund will now work towards the Bruntland objective of marrying growth with social goals and environmental consideration. There is also much to commend the French Government's proposal in early 1990 for a special Global Environment Facility to finance programmes in developing countries to tackle specifically global environmental problems such as global warming, ozone depletion, and erosion of bio-diversity. To win the support of the developing nations it would clearly need to be additional to existing programmes. In summary, the proper environmental and ecological balance will not be found until we directly address the structural forms of poverty which exist throughout the world.