Saving the Planet: How to Shape an Environmentally Sustainable Global Economy

November 1991
Lester R. Brown, Christopher Flavin, Sandra Postel
ISBN: 0-393-30823-5
224 pages

Print Version

$8.95

Two decades after the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm, the world faces a choice between reforming its economic and political systems or risking a future of irreversible ecological decline, according to Saving The Planet.

Two decades after the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm, the world faces a choice between reforming its economic and political systems or risking a future of irreversible ecological decline, according to Saving The Planet.

"The health of the economy and that of the natural world are now inextricably linked. Incomes are already falling in 40 countries, and in dozens more the unsustainable use of resources threatens the human prospect.

"The challenge is to go beyond responding to disasters, to shaping environmentally healthy societies," say the book's authors, Lester Brown, Christopher Flavin, and Sandra Postel, research directors of the Worldwatch Institute, a Washington-based environmental research organization.

In June 1992, heads of state gathered in Brazil for the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development—the so-called Earth Summit. Marking the twentieth anniversary of the Stockholm meeting, the conference was a unique opportunity to rethink economic goals and chart an environmentally sustainable development path.

So far, no country has an economy that is sustainable—one that can endure over the long term without consuming its natural base. But, for the first time in history, the outlines of what a sustainable economy would look like are becoming clear, according to the Worldwatch research team.

Furthermore, the technologies and know-how are already at hand to enhance the quality of life while healing the planet. Saving the Planet describes how a less polluting, solar energy-based economy would function—and how technologies that already exist can make it a reality. The book suggests new ways of using—and reusing—materials. It discusses less resource intensive means of growing food and strategies for preserving forests.

"The next step is to go beyond viewing environmental issues as discrete problems, and begin making the basic economic reforms needed to save the planet," say the authors. "The transition will not be orderly or predictable. The social and political transformations are likely to be even more challenging than the economic and technological changes," warns Saving the Planet. For instance, fair distribution of land is a cornerstone of sustainable agriculture. And population size is unlikely to stabilize without access to education and health care for women.

Tragically, the two decades since the Stockholm conference have seen only limited progress in reversing ecological decline, and in many ways the planet is in worse shape now than it was 20 years ago.

"Some regions of Eastern Europe now face virtual epidemics of environmental disease. Misuse of water resources is reducing the agricultural potential of large regions of south Asia. Soil erosion is undermining the food prospect for much of Africa. Peru's lack of clean water was highlighted when it was struck in 1991 by the world's worst cholera epidemic in decades."

At the global level, almost all the indicators are negative, say the authors of Saving the Planet. Each year, the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere reaches a new high, and the global ozone layer grows thinner. Skin cancer fatalities are projected to rise dramatically in the decades ahead. Global warming could affect crop production and the health of forests shortly thereafter.

Although atmospheric problems have been caused mainly by rich countries, the world as a whole will bear the costs. For their part, developing nations are burdened by the resource demands of unprecedented increases in human numbers.

Some 1.6 billion people have been added to world population during the past two decades—the same number of people that inhabited the planet in 1900—the bulk of these in the Third World.

"At the national level, a key challenge is to go beyond regulation as the primary approach to environmental protection. Unsustainable growth in all sectors—energy, transportation, industrial production, and agriculture—is far outpacing the ability of environmental laws to protect natural systems.

Saving the Planet urges national governments to consider major changes in their tax policies—partially shifting from taxing income to taxing energy use, pollution, and other activities that damage the environment. "Environmental taxes can make prices better reflect true costs, helping to ensure that those causing environmental harm pay for it."

Another impediment that could be addressed at the Brazil meeting, say the authors, is the mammoth United Nations system, with its six governing bodies and 16 specialized agencies. While environmental programs have been cobbled to the agendas of U.N. agencies and a small U.N. Environment Programme exists, the United Nations is still poorly equipped to deal with the task at hand.

But a strengthened U.N. role in environmental matters is only possible if governments acknowledge their own inability to protect their citizens from global environmental threats, says Saving the Planet. No nation alone, for instance, can protect its people against such phenomena as ozone depletion and rising seas from global warming.

A key test of the Rio conference will be the proposed treaty to stabilize climate. European nations have proposed an agreement committing industrial nations to cut their emissions of carbon dioxide from fossil fuels. Unfortunately, the United States, which in the seventies helped lead the world in addressing population growth and ozone depletion, now appears reluctant to consider major changes in energy policy and has tried to obstruct global warming negotiations. More forward-looking leadership from the United States is a key to progress in addressing global environmental threats.

"The effort to create a sustainable society is more like mobilizing for war than any other human experience," the book concludes. "Time itself is the scarcest resource as we begin preparing for the struggle that will unfold in this decade and beyond."