Global Environment Outlook 3 (GEO 3)

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INTEGRATING ENVIRONMENT AND DEVELOPMENT: 1972–2002

By 1990, at least 900 million people in urban areas in Africa, Asia and Latin America were living in poverty

Source: UNEP, Topham Picturepoint

The World Conservation Strategy The events referred to above confirmed that

range of catastrophic events that left a permanent mark both on the environment and on the understanding of its connection to human health. In 1984, a leak from a Union Carbide plant left 3 000 people dead and 20 000 injured in Bhopal, India (Diamond 1985). The same year, up to 1 million people starved to death in Ethiopia. In 1986, the world’s worst nuclear accident happened as a reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded in the Ukrainian Republic of the Soviet Union. The 1989 spill of 50 million litres of oil from the Exxon Valdez supertanker into Alaska’s Prince William Sound demonstrated that no area, however remote and ‘pristine’, is safe from the impact of human activities.

environmental issues are systemic and addressing them requires long-term strategies, integrated action and the participation of all countries and all members of society. This was reflected in the World Conservation Strategy (WCS), one of the seminal documents which served to redefine environmentalism post-Stockholm. Launched in 1980 by IUCN, the strategy recognized that addressing environmental problems calls for long-term effort and the integration of environmental and development objectives. The WCS envisaged governments in different parts of the world undertaking their own national

Our Common Future (the Brundtland report) publicizes the idea of sustainable development

UNEP Governing Council calls for working group to investigate a biodiversity convention

that Deplete the Ozone Layer adopted

Montreal Protocol on Substances

International Whaling Commission imposes a moratorium on commercial whaling

Fire in Basel, Switzerland, releases toxic chemicals into the Rhine, killing fish as far north as the Netherlands

World’s worst nuclear disaster occurs at Chernobyl, Soviet Union, spreading radioactive fall-out over large areas of Europe

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