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

92 Chapter 6
secretariat’s proposal to identify and list pollutants of ”broad international
significance,” the Brazilian delegate to the Stockholm conference observed
that “the great polluters are the highly industrialized countries. Starting
from radionuclides (practically 100 percent of whose production and dissemination
is imputable to a few highly developed countries) and going
right on down the list of all the other major pollutants, the overwhelming
discharge of effluents is the consequence of the developed countries’ recent
technologies and of their high levels of industrial as well as primary production.
. . . The contribution to this type of pollution by underdeveloped
countries is, in absolute terms, extremely small and in relative terms practically
nil.” (de Almeida 1972, p. 48) 7 A 1971 report from the Indian
National Science Academy likewise did not count ocean pollution among
existing global environmental problems. 8 Despite these clear indications of
opposition to global environmental standards and modest interest in marine
pollution control, the U.S. delegation was surprised, as was mentioned in
chapter 4, when it learned that developing countries preferred not to establish
a global regime controlling ocean dumping.
But the Stockholm secretariat was not the least surprised by the developing
countries’ opposition to global environmental standards. At meetings
arranged by the secretariat, representatives of developing countries had
made it clear that they were opposed to such standards. 9 However, Maurice
Strong assured in his round-the-world lobbying to organize the conference
that land use, drastic erosion, spreading deserts, and loss of wetlands and
watersheds—all topics most relevant to developing countries—would be
on the Stockholm agenda. 10 In addition, conference organizers kept family
planning—a politically sensitive issue—off the agenda in Stockholm, hoping
not to alienate developing countries. 11 As the journal Science pointed
out, this was “part of the price paid for persuading underdeveloped countries
to come to a conference they have no heart for” (Hawkes 1972a, p.
737). A United Nations conference on population was instead planned for
1974.
The Stockholm Secretariat and Ocean Dumping
As has already been mentioned, the Stockholm secretariat took the initiative
to establish the Preparatory Committee and later the IWGMP. As early
as November of 1970, the secretariat singled out ocean dumping as a strong