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Evironmental Considerations in Development Finance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2009

James A. Lee
Affiliation:
James A. Lee is environmental adviser in the Office of the Director, Projects, of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD).
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Extract

The current concern with the human environment, which has given rise, in part, to the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in 1972, comes at a time when the energies, efforts, and resources of the developing countries are being harnessed as never before to achieve their respective development objectives. The compelling urgency of the third world's development efforts found endorsement in the proposals for the Second United Nations Development Decade (DD II). While to a large extent the concern with environmental issues has arisen out of the problems experienced by the industrially advanced countries, the developing countries are not unconcerned with or even immune from these problems. It was with this general thinking in mind that the Preparatory Committee for the Second United Nations Development Decade unanimously decided to include in the strategy for the decade the following statement which was accepted by the General Assembly: “Governments will intensify national and international efforts to arrest the deterioration of the human environment and to take measures towards its improvement and to promote activities that will help to maintain the ecological balance on which human survival depends.” The General Assembly in a recent resolution on the matter of the human environment further affirmed that environmental policies should be considered in the context of economic and social development, with account taken of the special needs of development in developing countries.

Type
Part 3. International Institutions: Their Present and Potential Roles
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 1972

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References

1 See General Assembly Resolution 2626 (XXV) of October 24, 1970.

2 See General Assembly Resolution 2657 (XXV) of December 7, 1970.

3 See General Assembly Resolutions 2398 (XXIII) of December 3, 1968, and 2581 (XXIV) of December 15, 1969.

4 Development and Environment, Report submitted by a panel of experts convened by the secretary-general of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, Founex, Switz., June 4–12, 1971. (Mimeographed.) This report was described as a “historic turning point in the development-environment dialogue” by Maurice Strong, secretary-general of the conference, in a statement to the Preparatory Committee for the Conference on the Human Environment at its third session, September 13, 1971.

5 International Bank for Reconstruction and Development and International Development Association, Annual Report 1970 (Washington, 1970), p. 5.Google Scholar

6 See UN Document E/SR. 1730.

7 Bates, Marston, “Man and Other Pests,Nation, 10 6, 1962 (Vol. 195, No. 10), p. 202.Google Scholar