196. It is recommended that the Secretary General take steps to:

(a) Ensure proper collection, measurement and analysis of data relating to the environmental effects of energy use and production within appropriate monitoring systems.

The design and operation of such networks should include, in particular, monitoring the effects of emissions of carbon dioxide, sulphur dioxide, heat, and particulates, as well as the effects of releases of oil and radioactivity;

In each case the objective is to learn more about the effects on weather, human health, plant and animal life, and amenity values.

(b) Give special attention to providing a mechanism for the exchange of information.

Clearly, to rationalize and integrate resource management for energy will require a solid understanding of the complexity of the problem and the multiplicity of alternative solutions.

Access to the large body of existing information should be facilitated;

data on the environmental consequences of different energy systems should be provided through an exchange of national experiences, studies, seminars, and other appropriate meetings

a continually updated register of research involving both entire systems and each of its stages should be maintained.

(c) Ensure that a study be undertaken on available energy sources and consumption trends in order to plan for and forecast the environmental effects of future use.

Response: 196 (a)–(c).—The Advisory Committee concurs.

3. Pollutants

Identification and Control of Pollutants and Nuisances of Broad International Significance

INTRODUCTION

The establishment of a reliable worldwide system of environmental monitoring would be one of the most important, substantive achievements of the Conference on the Human Environment. And we believe that it merits the highest priority of the American delegation to the Conference on the Human Environment. The workings of the Earth's oceans and atmosphere are mysterious, and the effects of the substances man puts into them are poorly understood; baseline data are lacking in nearly all areas of present concern, and where such data are available the significance of known changes is in dispute.

Our ignorance has a paralyzing effect on the development of environmental policy. The most confidently documented predictions of apocalypse are likely to go unheeded when equally confident, but wholly inconsistent, predictions are available-the world cannot at once end in the melting of the ice caps and the beginning of a new ice age. Even in the most industrialized nations, where concern for enviromental quality is greatest, public support for measures which will have real and often substantial costs is unlikely to be sufficient for their adoption until the public and officials who make decisions on its behalf, have a clearer idea than is presently possible of the nature of the problems it faces and why the proposed measures are necessary. More and better information will not, of course, guarantee more effective environmental policies. Increased knowledge rarely sweeps doubt and uncertainty aside; more often it simply sharpens them.

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Even when facts speak unequivocally, policy dilemmas remainwitness the continuing dispute over the use of DDT in less developed and tropical regions. But more reliable information is obviously necessary even if not it does not solve the dilemmas. DDT is both the best understood global pollutant and the one for which policy is most advanced. Other matters which may be even more critical to our globe's long-run prospects than DDT, such as the effects of pollution in the upper atmosphere and oil on the surface of the seas, are so little understood that productive policy debate itself is difficult.

The Committee has conducted extensive public hearings as well as individual interviews with members of the scientific community, and we are satisfied that the current United Nations proposals for agenda item III (The Identification and Control of Pollutants of International Significance) promise an excellent start toward the needed global monitoring system. While we feel that our specific recommendations are important, in truth they represent only marginal additions to the ambitious United Nations proposals.

A few preliminary notes of caution are in order. First, funding must be sufficient not only in amount but in duration. Gathering baseline data on the global dispersion of pollutants, studying the interlocking processes (atmospheric, oceanic, terrestrial) that both transport and, in turn, are transformed by these pollutants, and developing a predictive capability by the use of computer modelling are long-range ventures that will not yield immediate results. Particularly in regard to climatic change several decades of concerted scientific effort will be required. Expenditures in these areas should be considered as insurance by the human race against the possibility of rendering the planet unfit for life, rather than as an investment promising rapid, largescale returns.

Our second concern stems from the many functions that have been suggested as the subject matter of this network. Beyond studying man's impact on the environment, many scientists would like to collect a staggering amount of data for a variety of basic research projects. Others would like the monitoring network to collect data for resource management, give early warnings of natural disasters, and provide day-to-day information on weather and ocean conditions for sailors, pilots, farmers, and sportsmen. Much of this information can be easily gathered at the same location with compatible instrumentation. But there will be times when these uses will prove incompatible as to location and instrumentation. It is essential that when choices, forced by budgetary constraints, must be made between competing uses, the highest priority should be given to those uses that are concerned with the impact of man's activities on the quality of the environment. The

spectre of man irrevocably degrading the planet is the prime motive for the Conference on the Human Environment, and the need to fully assess the validity of this fear should take precedence in the implementation of a global monitoring network.

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Man's profound ignorance of basic ecological phenomena is likely to persist far into the future. Yet decisions with important environmental consequences do not wait for scientific consensus. Since calls for "more research" are often interpreted as means of postponing substantive action, we hope that the nations assembled at Stockholm will go yond the United Nations recommendations, which call upon participants to be "especially mindful" of the possible environmental harm from planned projects and to use the "best practicable means" for minimizing that harm. Instead, we urge explicit acknowledgement of this principle: that when faced with decisions regarding the development of new technologies with uncertain but potentially damaging environmental consequences, uncertainies ought to be resolved in favor of caution and postponement. Where large scale, irreversible damage threatens, as in the discharge of new or exotic materials into the oceans and upper atmosphere, the importance of this principle is especially great.

RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE ADVISORY COMMITTEE

1. A strong, high-level executive for environmental affairs, with broad terms of reference, should be established in the office of the Secretary-General of the United Nations.1

A. Terrestrial monitoring should be given a high priority, and plans to establish terrestrial baseline stations should be initiated.

B. The data collected by the International Decade of Ocean Exploration (IDOE) under its global sampling program should be utilized to initiate plans for ocean baseline stations.

C. Programs for the study of the crucial Ocean-Atmosphere and Atmosphere-Land interfaces should be begun.

D. Land-use surveys, utilizing satellites and airplanes with remote sensing devices should be initiated.

E. Studies of rainfall for critical pollutants should be initiated. F. Standards for monitoring techniques and for reporting information and data to the International Information Systems should be established to ensure coordination, compatibility, and completeness. Industrial data needed for assessment, review, and predictive studies should be considered an integral part of these reporting requirements.

1 See Chapter VI, Advisory Committee Recommendation 1.

G. A clearing house for computer programs (software) should be established.

H. A standard-setting capability in the United Nations environmental office should be established.

2. Interdisciplinary scientific advice should be institutionalized.2 3. Periodic reporting requirements for both the United Nations and advisory bodies should be established.

4. Discussions, designed to ensure that all nations are free to conduct oceanic research, the results of which would be available to the international scientific community, should be initiated.

5. Adoption of the Ocean Dumping Convention, in its present form, should have a low priority at the Conference on the Human Environment in June 1972.3

DISCUSSION OF THE RECOMMENDATIONS

1. Creation of a Strong, High Ranking Environmental Executive Office in the United Nations

Existing monitoring programs are scattered throughout specialized national and international agencies. Although these existing programs will continue to serve as the field components of a global monitoring program, there is a need for a central focal point to provide leadership and coordination, initiating new research programs where needed and eliminating redundant ones. Sounding the clarion call for new research and monitoring programs is something easily done, but extremely difficult to implement. Special care must be taken not only to weld the components into an integrated network at the outset, but to insure that the various components grow in concert. A point of central cognizance is essential to minimize such problems as the proliferation of indigestible data, computers that refuse to "talk" to each other, and the bureaucratic in-fighting which have characterized past monitoring efforts.

A. Upgrading Terrestrial Monitoring and Establishing Terrestrial Baseline Stations

The one area where the Advisory Committee found consistent dissatisfaction among scientists was in the area of terrestrial monitoring. Although UNESCO's Man and the Biosphere (MAB) research program has been tabbed by United Nations proposals as the vehicle for terrestrial monitoring, its current prospects are in jeopardy because

2 See Chapter VI, Advisory Committee Recommendation 6. 3 See Chapter II, Advisory Committee Recommendation 7.