Whole Earth Conference

There is probably not a single hotel room in Stockholm still available for the period from June 5 to 16. In fact, there are hardly any rooms still to be had within an hour's ride from the Swedish capital. Even the park benches in the Kungstraegaarden may be full. In what local officials are calling the biggest peaceable invasion in the city's 720-year history, Stockholm is expecting the arrival of 1,500 delegates and observers, 1,000 reporters, 350 U.N. officials and some 10,000 students, campers and other ecology enthusiasts.

The United Nations Conference on the Human Environment will be the first such global meeting on the subject, and the agenda ranges over a prolixity of subjects that is worthy of the U.N. One proposal would establish a worldwide network of 100 stations to monitor air pollution; another would regulate all dumping of wastes into the oceans; still another would preserve cultural monuments like Cambodia's Angkor Wat. All in all, says Canada's Maurice Strong, the meeting's secretary general, "Stockholm will point up how man is going to manage the world's first technological civilization."

Conflict. The conference grew out of a 1968 Swedish proposal that the U.N. combat international problems caused by rapid industrialization and population growth. Though the resolution was quickly approved, difficulties soon cropped up. Just selecting the basic issues has taken representatives of 27 nations, including the U.S.'s Christian A. Herter Jr. and Shirley Temple Black, two years of hard work. After one session devoted to defining the wording of propositions (what does "environment" really mean?) a delegate sighed, "It's like trying to swim in tapioca."

Even more complex was the conflict of national attitudes. Rich countries generally argued that they could best clean up pollution by themselves, without getting involved in U.N. politics. But the less developed countries felt that pollution was not even a problem. In Upper Volta, for instance, where per capita income is $50 a year and the life expectancy is 32 years, a new factory represents not the potential for environmental damage but hope for a better life. As Brazil's Planning Minister Joao Paulo Velloso remarked in approving a polluting paper mill: "Why not? We have a lot left to pollute."

Secretary General Strong proved to be a masterly diplomat in dealing with such difficulties. Traveling constantly, the self-made millionaire (he once headed the huge holding company Power Corp. of Canada) convinced the wealthy nations that "the environment is indivisible" and is not the exclusive concern of the rich. With the poor, he argued that they had different kinds of problems: overcrowded cities, polluted water, and exhausted farm lands. So far, more than 100 U.N. members--including China--have agreed to attend the conference, with about 80 of them contributing reports on their own environmental efforts.

Even so, the conference's problems were far from solved. Communist East Germany, long excluded from membership in the U.N. or any of its specialized agencies, is nonetheless a major European economic power--and polluter. To get East Germany involved, the U.N. asked it to attend as a nonvoting participant. "This is like inviting a guest to your house for dinner and then telling him he can sit at the table but not eat," complained Yakov A. Malik, Russia's chief delegate to the U.N. Unless East Germany is given formal international recognition, the Soviet Union and other East Europeans threaten to boycott the meeting.

For all its high ambition, the Stockholm conference will play down some issues that participating nations consider to be domestic policy, most notably the question of population control. But outside the official meetings, a number of environmentalist groups will hold a population forum. They will sponsor lectures on basic ecological issues--and some highly political sideshows as well. In one, the U.S. may be accused of "ecocide" in Viet Nam, through bombing and the use of defoliants.

Maurice Strong sees a different reason for Stockholm. It is, he says, "a beginning of a worldwide environmental awareness and a starting point for action. How can it be more than that?"

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