UN Voices: The Struggle for Development and Social Justice

6 The 1970s: Creativity Confronts Geopolitics

216 Hope, Creativity, and Frustration 216 6 The 1970s: Creativity Confronts Geopolitics • The Environment and Sustainability • Oil Shocks and the NIEO • Transnational Corporations • The Least Developed Countries • Basic Needs and Redistribution • Women and Gender The 1970s were a paradoxical decade: creative thinking and action on the one hand, mounting economic difficulties on the other. Creativity was evident in such fields as the environment, population policies, gender questions, employment creation, and development strategies—all themes of UN world conferences during those years.1 From the vantage point of the early twenty-first century, it might seem as if concerns about the environment, social development, the role of women, or the plight of poor countries have always been with us. In reality, the ways that we now talk and think about these issues would not be the same without the work of the United Nations during that decade. Moreover, perspectives about what now flows in the mainstream have moved substantially over time as a result of discussions in and around the UN beginning in the creative decade of the 1970s. The decade also witnessed the two oil-price hikes, in 1973 and 1979. Initially , this stimulated hopes in developing countries for a New International Economic Order, and for a while, this led to lengthy negotiations on how it might be achieved, one of the first attempts to change what came to be called in a later decade “global governance.” Transnational corporations were an important dimension of these negotiations.But the emergence of“stagflation,” mounting debt and interest rates, and economic recession at the beginning of the 1980s killed the NIEO debate and reversed the alternative economic policies developed during the 1970s. The 1970s 217 The Environment and Sustainability The issues of global warming, the depletion of nonrenewable resources and the carrying capacity of the planet and concerns that consumption patterns of the wealthy are not sustainable are widespread in contemporary analyses by scholars, policy analysts, and the media. These issues emerged after a host of UN activities beginning in the 1970s and have assumed increasing importance in the period since that time.2 Although early General Assembly resolutions expressed concerns about the conservation of nature, the contemporary debate is usually dated to a Swedish initiative in 1969 to convene what later became known as the 1972 Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment. “Sometime during the late 1960s the term ‘environment’ began to take on its contemporary meaning ,”writes Maurice Strong,the secretary-general of that conference and champion of the cause at the UN since then, “complete with its undercurrent of urgent concern, and [it] emerged as a real issue in industrialized countries.” Citing the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and the Club of Rome’s Limits to Growth,3 Strong points to the fundamental clash with developing countries because they believed that “pollution and environmental contamination were diseases of the rich.”4 Richard Gardner recalled the language originally used to frame the issue and the importance of presidential leadership: “The word ‘environment’ was not one that was used in those early days. We talked about ‘conservation.’ I was very influenced by books like Rachel Carlson’s Silent Spring and by other environmental pioneers. Indeed, I put into Kennedy’s speech that he gave in the UN General Assembly in 1963 a reference to the conservation of wildlife in danger of extinction and to the protection of the forests,seas and atmosphere. It was just one paragraph. . . . It just said that these are issues that the UN should consider. . . . Sweden put the issue of the environment before the UN General Assembly—I believe it was 1968 or 1967. Sverker Astrom, who had been the Swedish permanent representative here and I think later had a major position in the Swedish foreign ministry, was the driving force in introducing the environment to the UN’s agenda.” North-South divisions led to a new conceptualization. Developed countries were mainly preoccupied with the negative impacts of industrialization, while developing countries viewed the North’s environmentalism as a blatant threat to their development objectives.Developing countries stressed that most environmental problems resulted from past industrialization of the North. They explicitly proclaimed the right to economic and social development and said that environmental concerns could not be used to limit this right. At her 218 Hope, Creativity, and Frustration opening speech to the Stockholm conference, Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi captured...