The three issues to be discussed at the conference were
Directions: Read the passage below and answer the question that follows:
Are the forebodings about the impending global warming really producing the intended policy responses from the governments of various countries? “Not so” would be the answer, judging the fate of the recent global conference, sponsored by the Netherlands Government at Nordwijk. Here was a gathering of representatives – climatologists and Ministers of Environment – of 60 countries including the United States, United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, Japan and India. On the agenda before the conference were three crucial issues relating to stemming of the greenhouse effect or the global build up of carbon dioxide.
First, there was the question of the industrial countries agreeing upon freezing CO2 emission at current levels by 2000 AD, and achieving 20% cuts by 2005 AD, first mooted at the Toronto world conference of June 1988. Second, there was the proposal to concert a world–wide afforestation programme covering 12 million hectares per year as a method of combating the decreased carbon fixation caused by the unstoppable deforestation all over the third world. Thirdly, the conference also sought to obtain a mandate for a preparatory draft for a global convention on climate.
None of these aims, in fact, has materialised. The industrialised countries, without exception have turned down the proposition that makes it compulsory for them to adopt a time bound containment of CO2 emission through appropriate changes in the industrial systems and in the energy mix. Although the resistance to any such commitment by countries such as the United States and Britain is not difficult to understand in view of the paucity of empirical information as what the costs of industrial restructuring would be, there can hardly be any doubt that these countries are yet to overcome their allergic attitude to the very concept of moving away from the dominating fossil fuel energy deployment.
Japan’s well–known stance of having moved resolutely ahead on the path of restructuring and away from high levels of CO2 emissions was predictably reaffirmed at the conference. Although the developing countries find themselves in a hopeless predicament, they are not being able to commit themselves to time bound environmental action plans, such as stopping the usage of Chloro–Fluoro Carbons (CFCs) by the end of the century and the proposal for graduated mitigation of CO2 emission brought up at the Nordwijk conference, there is fortunately no prospect of global warming being treated as a totally extraneous issue by the consequences of the greenhouse effect. For low–lying countries, such as Egypt, Maldives, would hesitate to call for determined global preventive action.
What lessons do the vacillations registered at the Nordwijk conference hold for policymakers worldwide? One obvious conclusion is that the industrial countries should begin setting the example, rather than merely repeat the percepts about the need to contain the damage to the precious resources of the environment. There are some small things that the developed countries can do to uncomplicate the task of ensuring the developing nations stick to the advocated environment friendly measures. One of these, which says that the debt overhead that torments the developing countries can be overcome by mere “forgiveness” or resumption of private commercial, has to be put to rest by rejecting it completely.
A better alternative will be that the global community organises a massive programme of concessional financial assistance to the poor countries, to enable them to achieve transfer of industrial energy and environmental technologies which would give content and meaning to the otherwise amorphous paradigm of suitable development. It is for the developing countries to bend their energies and work for substantial improvements in the living conditions of the masses of the poor without aping the misguided and discredited anti–environment policy matrix of the North.