The imminence of the first intergovernmental conference on the whole human environment has provided a focus for discussion of the new environmental tasks that may fall to international institutions. In fact this is now a major question for intergovernmental decision. Governments must decide in the coming months what part they want the world organization, with all its political and administrative tensions and frustrations, to play in mastering a crisis in the management of the entire human household.

The purpose of this article is to examine some aspects of the institutional structure which has been or is being developed within the United Nations to achieve, through international agreement and action and for the benefit of mankind as a whole, the most effective utilization of the earth's resources consistent with the minimum of disturbance of the environment in directions harmful to man and other living organisms.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations. By definition it is concerned with the atmosphere and atmospheric processes and, hence, with the human environment, for whatever definition of the human environment may be adopted, the atmosphere is clearly one of its essential elements. Many atmospheric processes are intimately, indeed inextricably, related to processes and phenomena the study of which falls within the compass of other geophysical disciplines — notably hydrology and oceanography. The WMO has therefore certain responsibilities in these fields also, and as a result its interest in the human environment is somewhat wider than its title may suggest.

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.

A cursory glance at a map, a university curriculum, or a government organization chart will confirm that man has a remarkable capacity for establishing arbitrary boundaries. Moreover, he has usually claimed a degree of sovereignty within those boundaries which he would energetically defend and, if possible, extend. We would continue to believe that we could reasonably afford our independent behavior except for the recent “discovery” that the human environment is not only a complex but also a finite system. Environmental problems, or, more particularly, the harmful effects of man's activities on his environment, challenge our exclusiveness and affect our existing territorial, disciplinary, and institutional boundaries simply because they transcend them. Of the many factors to be taken into account in dealing with environmental problems two have particular importance: the identification of the geographical level at which action can effectively be taken and the choice of the appropriate legal and institutional instruments to be employed.