On Growth
(1974)–Willem Oltmans– Auteursrechtelijk beschermd
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30. Maurice F. StrongMaurice F. Strong was appointed secretary-general of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment (UNCHE) in November, 1970. Prior to this appointment he was president of the Canadian Development Agency and had extensive experience in the field of business and public affairs. Would you agree with Limits to Growth that the most urgent problem now is managing growth globally?
This really is at the heart of the problem that man faces at this point. In my view not only because of some of the reasons elicited in the book Limits to Growth but probably for even more profound reasons than that, reasons that man has come to an important juncture in his own development for the first time in the history of the evolution of the human race. The future of mankind is now dependent upon the actions which man himself takes.
Don't you feel that it is absolutely essential to obtain commitments from governments as to their responsibilities to the environment?
I believe that Limits to Growth is important, really, in the way in which it makes us think about these problems more than in any of the specific conclusions to which it points. Limits to Growth has made its major con- | |
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tribution by the very fact that it has made men and particularly leaders address themselves to the fundamental problem of how man is going to manage the world's first high-technology civilization and the proliferation of complex interdependencies that technology has produced. It has made us realize in very simple terms that this physical system of interdependencies upon which man depends is in fact global and that it has to be seen as global, that it has to be dealt with and managed as a global unit. And contrast this with the actual institutions through which man is attempting to manage the processes of his own development, which are clearly sectoral, clearly national, clearly inadequate to the task of global management. In larger terms, the fact that Limits to Growth has made people look at these problems is one of its major contributions. The Limits to Growth idea supports the whole concept of Stockholm,Ga naar eind1 that is, the growing need for man to acquire the economic and social and political instruments to deal with new interdependencies. The second area in which I believe Limits to Growth has made an important contribution is in the area of methodology and the fact that this study is based on the very simple premise that these newly discovered interdependencies are complicated. It's very difficult without using the latest technological tools - the computer, for example, and computer modeling techniques - to really understand how these interdependencies are operating, how the causes and effects, which are separated very often by dimensions of space and time, and go beyond our normal abilities to measure and to judge how they really do react on each other and use this to determine the course of our own future evolution. The architects of Limits to Growth themselves are the first to acknowledge how primitive the beginning they have made was.
You realize TinbergenGa naar eind2 and Professor Hans Linneman are now working with a Dutch-Swedish team on a second World Project model for the Club of Rome in the Netherlands?
Indeed. This again is an enlargement of the original model of Forrester and Dennis Meadows, a model, which I have had the pleasure of following right from the beginning. I found it most intriguing and extremely interesting and helpful. Even the people who have created this model have acknowledged that it was just a beginning.
From your experience at the 1972 Stockholm conference, would you say that the developing nations need Japan's warning: Don't do what we | |
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did, don't grow unplanned, don't have this mad, out-of-proportion explosion of technological and economic growth without planning?
I think we at Stockholm began to address ourselves with some of the very, very deep and important long-range questions that studies like Limits to Growth point out. That is, how do we create a kind of balance in our approach to global growth? How do we create a situation in which the two-thirds of the people of the world who do command a large part of the world's territory, a large part of the world's natural resources, how these people could be brought into the mainstream of the technological civilization. And in doing so, how could they acquire their fair share of the kind of higher dimensions of life that it makes possible? Clearly that is not happening today. Clearly what is happening is that the very technology which is giving man both this new power for creative growth and at the same time this new powerful potential for self-destruction, that this power is largely in the hands of the highly industrialized nations. Since this command of technology, of scientific knowledge, is the main source of power in today's world, we will have to find a much better way of using and sharing that power. We will have to find a much more rational basis for the use of the world's resources.
Do you truly believe in the redistribution of wealth and resources in a more honest way with developing nations?
I think that what we have to recognize is that this will not come about because of any world master plan or any creation of any supranational instruments. If Limits to Growth is correct about the growing scarcity of resources, then this will place in the hands of the developing countries, who command many of these natural resources, new levers which they would be able to use in their negotiations with rich countries. Oil is a very good example. The oil-producing countries have banded together through OPEC and have demonstrated the fact that the leverage which they have with the consuming countries by supplying a commodity of growing scarcity is very considerable indeed. I like to see myself as an idealist; I believe, therefore, that the world is not going to be remade through simple processes of supranationalism and the assumption that everybody is going to embrace suddenly idealistic conceptions of man's relationship with his fellow man. I believe it will happen by a realization first and foremost that the new interdependencies created by the high-technology civilization simply require us to cooper- | |
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ate, to share more, to care more about each other, to work more together than we have ever done before. This will have to be done for our mutual survival. That is the basic common denominator. Secondly, the growing scarcity of natural resources and the growing problems of the rich countries do create a new possibility of leverage for the developing world. This can be used in a creative, constructive manner to give them some of the bargaining power that will help to redress the tremendous imbalance that now exists.
None of the rich nations have even reached one percent yet in assistance to the developing nations.
We have to recognize that some of the traditional approaches to foreign aid have got to be substantially modified. If we look at our own national societies, charity has never been a durable basis for the relationship between rich and poor. In our national societies we quickly replaced original programs based on pure give-away or even tied give-away programs with a much more objective and impersonal system for the redistribution of wealth. The equalization of opportunity and foreign-aid programs represents only the primitive beginning of the extension of this process into international life. As such, we are going to have to move into a system in international life that corresponds to the kind of systems many nations have created internally, where there are more impersonal and objective mechanisms for the redistribution of wealth and the equalization of opportunity. We have to look upon aid programs as the beginning of that evolution. This is why I believe so strongly that the political and economic leverage which the developing world can muster is one of the keys to a more balanced development pattern around the world, one of the keys to their achieving a fair share of the world's opportunities and resources. I don't mean this leads necessarily to open conflict. But remember again, back in our national societies, it was only when the poor acquired through the vote and through other means, through social and political action - only when they acquired the knowledge of their own power and learned how to use it - that they really gained any permanent improvement in their lot in society. This is true for all societies. Only when the poor nations acquire a better understanding of their own intrinsic possibilities, potentials, their own understanding not only of their own power but their own responsibilities as well, will they be able to come to the bargaining table with the industrialized countries and maximize those | |
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advantages across that bargaining table. It's only through these processes that we are going to get a better distribution of the world's opportunities and resources.
How is Earth Watch working after Stockholm? That's your baby.
Yes. Earth Watch is just in its beginning stages. Earth Watch will knit together a large number of institutions that exist around the world today. These are institutions and centers of expertise that will help throw up the kind of data, the kind of information, the kind of evaluations that will permit not only the world decision-makers but also the people who are affected by these decisions to understand the important consequences for mankind about the decisions that are going to be taken. Stockholm gives us the mandate to create Earth Watch. The 1972-73 General Assembly of the United Nations provided us with the resources that will make the work possible.
You said minutes ago, ‘I am an idealist.’ You ran away at the age of thirteen, worked for a while as a trapper and climbed very rapidly to president of one of the biggest corporations in Canada, and now you are doing this work, purely humanitarian, in the interest of all mankind. What motivated you to throw away your powerful position in the financial world and work for mankind?
First of all, I would have to say that I am doing what I am now doing for the most selfish of reasons, because I happen to enjoy it. I get satisfaction out of dealing with issues that I think are important issues. I made an analysis when I was in the business world. I looked around and came to the conclusion that purely success in material terms, purely success in economic terms, is not satisfying for society as a whole, is not satisfying except for certain individuals. The job of helping so many subtotal societies is more challenging work, is a more thrilling job. In the final analysis, perhaps, this is even a more useful job than the job of managing one little segment of society which happens to be devoted solely to the pursuit of material gain. I have to say that I am doing what I am doing because I like it, and probably that is as selfish a thing as I could say.
Let's hope you also set an example for some of the other tycoons around the world to follow your example by enlarging material gains to social | |
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gains, to gains for the benefit of all mankind. I wish more industrialists would follow your example.
Thank you. Really, I have been influenced very strongly by the example of others. I can say that there are many people I know in the business world who feel the same way and who envy me because I have had an opportunity to express these interests, an opportunity that really is denied to other people. I am very lucky in this sense. But, you know, look at it very simplistically: I have five children. At some point in one's life one looks at the future and says, What can you really leave for your children that is useful and durable? If you think of it only in terms of big bank accounts or big trust funds, it's really building your house on sand. If this is what you leave them, at the same time you hand them over to a society in which material things are simply going to be gradually or maybe even quickly enveloped in a great morass of social decay and degeneration. We cannot any longer assume that we are taking care of our families by simply leaving them fat bank accounts. We have got to leave future generations a more vital, a more dynamic society. |