Volume 9, Issue 1 April - June 1997
(return to "In Greece, NGOs ... ")
Speech of Arthur Dahl, United Nations Environment
Programme, at Pre-Earth Summit Forest Gathering, 30 May 1997,
Old Parliament Building, Athens, Greece
FOREST CONSERVATION FOR NATIONAL AND GLOBAL SUSTAINABILITY
On behalf of the Executive Director of UNEP, we are pleased to encourage this WWF initiative for forest conservation, which is so essential for sustainable development.
What is sustainability? Fundamentally, it means achieving a balance over time with nature, and equity globally across this generation and with future generations. Sustainability is not static, but dynamic in time and space, just like life itself. The human body is alive and sustainable only as long as all of its component organs are reasonably intact. In cases of illness or injury, a doctor can remove parts of some organs, but you cannot remove all of an essential organ such as the lungs, heart or liver and expect life to continue.
Forests are equally essential to the ecological balance of natural systems. They are the most mature of terrestrial ecosystems and were the original vegetation of most habitable areas. They are one of our most important renewable resources, helping to maintain the atmospheric balance and weather patterns, creating soil, maintaining water catchments and biodiversity, producing fuel, wood, paper and other forest products, and meeting recreational, aesthetic and spiritual needs.
The problem of forests is that they are on a different time scale from the human perspective. Most trees grow slowly, so there are time lags before human impacts become obvious, and they do not fit with short-term economic calculations. We must change the way we think about forests, and recognize that forest conservation is essential to long-term sustainability both within each country, and at the global scale where our development is now hitting global limits. The principle of justice requires that we show this respect for future generations.
Our present civilization is out of control, damaging the very basis of life on this planet. We need moderation in material civilization to achieve a better balance with natural processes, but this will require fundamental changes in our values. The stony ground and poor soil of so many countries around the Mediterranean remind us that the great civilizations of the past fell in part because they did not care for their renewable resources.
With the progress being made in science in such areas as biotechnology, and the limitations of fossil fuels and other non-renewable resources, it is clear that future civilization will be more biological. This does not mean a return to nature but new ways of living within nature, domesticating it to our multiple requirements. We may even turn the concrete jungles of our cities into beautiful and productive urban forests.
If we do not want to lose the potential to do this, we must today preserve viable samples of our forest heritage, both nationally and globally. We must learn how to manage a global forest resource that is now linked and threatened by the world trade in forest products. Forest conservation is an ethical and scientific imperative, as well as an economic and social imperative, for a sustainable society. It will require partnerships and cooperation within and between governments, international organizations, non-governmental organizations and civil society, all of which complement each other. UNEP's new Global Environment Outlook Report has shown that, despite the progress made in many areas since the Rio Earth Summit five years ago, the global environment is still declining rapidly. It states that much more effort is required to reverse present trends. We must all commit ourselves to work for the much more fundamental change that is needed in all our societies if we are to avoid environmental disaster and achieve a sustainable future.
(return to "In Greece, NGOs organize a diplomatic event to protect forests")
