Radioactive Waste Disposal at Sea: Public Ideas ... - IMO

Interest-Based Regime Analysis 89
economic aspects of environmental protection were ignored. At that point,
the coming conference seemed more likely to produce scientific reports and
books, and probably financial support to UNESCO, than to produce concerted
governmental action.
The Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Health Organization,
both bypassed in the early planning phase, did not share UNESCO’s
intentions for the coming conference. Sverker Aström, who said in his published
recollections that “from the very beginning we emphasized the need
for rapid action” (quoted in Rowland 1973, p. 34), realized that the preparations
did not develop as he intended. Aström and a few high-level United
Nations officials persuaded U Thant, then Secretary-General of the UN, to
replace Mussard. In December of 1969, a UN resolution shifted the direction
of the coming conference “to serve as a practical means to encourage
and to provide guidelines for action by governments and international organizations”
(General Assembly Resolution 2581 (XXIV), December 15,
1969, quoted in Rowland 1973, p. 35). In the autumn of 1970, Maurice
Strong, a former businessman who had recently been appointed as head of
the Canadian International Development Agency, replaced Mussard as
Secretary-General of the conference. 1 An international policy conference
then began to take shape. The official title of the conference was changed,
as both the FAO and the WHO had hoped, to emphasize the “human
aspects” of the environment. 2 This shift implied that political and economic
aspects, as well as the proper role of science and technology in environmental
protection, should move to the fore. An action-oriented approach
to the preparations for the conference as well as for the conference itself
was also developed by the Stockholm secretariat.
The members of the secretariat (numbering about 20) were aware that a
single United Nations conference on the environment could not suddenly
bring governments to massively cooperate on environmental protection.
Many developing countries suspected that environmental protection was
simply another way for developed countries to slow down their industrial
development. At the same time, protection of their economies and sovereignty
made developed countries oppose any bold attempts at international
cooperation on these matters. The secretariat nonetheless hoped for the
beginning of environmental protection on a global scale.
The secretariat established a Preparatory Committee, consisting of 27
governments, with strong representation from the Third World, which at its