Global Environment Outlook 3 (GEO 3)

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INTEGRATING ENVIRONMENT AND DEVELOPMENT: 1972–2002

Other statements in the Cocoyoc Declaration illustrate awareness of the difficulty of meeting human needs sustainably from an environment under pressure: ‘The problem today is not one primarily of absolute physical shortage but of economic and social maldistribution and usage.’ ‘The task of statesmanship is to guide the nations towards a new system more capable of meeting the inner limits of basic human needs for all the world’s people and of doing so without violating the outer limits of the planet’s resources and environment.’ ‘Human beings have basic needs: food, shelter, clothing, health, education. Any process of growth that does not lead to their fulfilment — or, even worse, disrupts them — is a travesty of the idea of development.’ ‘We are all in need of a redefinition of our goals, or new development strategies, or new lifestyles, including more modest patterns of consumption among the rich.’ ‘The road forward does not lie through the despair of doomwatching or through the easy optimism of successive technological fixes. It lies through a careful and dispassionate assessment of the ‘outer limits’, through cooperative search for ways to achieve the ‘inner limits’ of fundamental human rights, through the building of social structures to express those rights, and through all the patient work of devising techniques and styles of The Cocoyoc Declaration ends:

Landsat images of the Saloum River, Senegal, on 5 November 1972 (top) and 31 October 1992 show how much of the mangrove forest (dark red areas) has disappeared in 20 years, even in a protected area Source: Landsat 2001

development which enhance and preserve our planetary inheritance.’

This vision of the way forward was reflected in the detailed new images of the planet that appeared in the 1970s as a result of the launch by the United States in

Monsoon storms in Thailand kill 10 000 people

United Nations General Assembly

adopts the World Charter for Nature

the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS)

United Nations Convention on

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