Posted on 8-1-2002

Polluter Pains
by Mick Hamer*

A secret group of developed nations conspired to limit the effectiveness of
the UN's first conference on the environment, held in Stockholm in 1972.
The existence of this cabal, known as the Brussels group, is revealed in
30-year-old British government records that were kept secret until this week.

The Stockholm conference was set up in response to rising concern about
damage to the environment. It ended with a ringing declaration of the need
to protect the natural world, and the UN Environment Programme was set up
as a result. But the ambitious aims of the conference organisers, who
included Maurice Strong, the first director-general of UNEP, were held in
check by the activities of the Brussels group, which included Britain, the
US, Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and France.

The group was "an unofficial policy-making body to concert the views of the
principal governments concerned", according to a note of one of the group's
first meetings written by a civil servant in the British Foreign and
Commonwealth Office. "It will have to remain informal and confidential."
This meeting took place in July 1971, nearly a year before the Stockholm
conference opened.

Familiar arguments

Many of the arguments the group employed would sound familiar to today's
anti-globalisation protesters. The group was concerned that environmental
regulations would restrict trade and also wanted to stop UNEP having a
large budget to spend as it saw fit. Foreign Office papers say the group
"made real progress on this difficult problem", though without specifying
how this was done. The group seemed unconcerned about what its stance would
mean for poorer countries. Its chief aim in the diplomatic jockeying during
the run-up to Stockholm was for developed countries to get what they wanted
"and perhaps be less worried about making it a success for developing
countries".

This unalloyed self-interest won it few friends, and the notes record that
Strong had already been grumbling about the group's activities. "We may get
some criticism from the Swedes and others [and] we must be careful when
expanding the group not to include awkward bedfellows," the note adds.

Sonic booms

A more concrete idea of the group's aims can be gleaned from a note laying
out Britain's position prior to a secret meeting in Geneva in December
1971, one of a number of such meetings in the run-up to Stockholm. Written
by an official in what was then the Department of the Environment, it says
that Britain wanted to restrict the scope of the Stockholm conference and
reduce the number of proposals for action. In an indirect reference to what
would later become UNEP, the paper says a "new and expensive international
organisation must be avoided, but a small effective central coordinating
mechanism ... would not be welcome but is probably
inevitable". It then goes on to detail the subjects that Britain wanted
left out of the Stockholm action plans. At the top of the list were
controls on sonic booms from aircraft and pollution in the upper
atmosphere. These measures would have seriously damaged the economics of
the Anglo-French supersonic airliner, Concorde.

Moral pressure

At the time, Concorde was already in deep trouble, with only the British
and French national airlines likely to buy it, and earlier in the year the
British Cabinet had discussed axing the plane. Arguments raged about
whether the noisy plane would be allowed to land in New York. Controls on
sonic booms could have sounded its death knell. The British government was
also firmly opposed to any international standards regulating environmental
quality or polluting emissions. It feared that any international agreement
might force it to clean up its act. "Universal guidelines ... could cause
moral pressure for compliance with philosophies of doubtful validity or
benefit," say the papers.

Despite the efforts of the Brussels group, the Stockholm conference is
widely recognised to have been a watershed. Though the group's lobbying
ensured the conference focused on only a limited number of subjects, such
as transboundary pollution, UNEP later tackled a wider range of topics such
as the problems of deforestation and urbanisation.


* New Scientist, 19:00 02 January 02.
www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991734