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toxic chemicals have subsequently
risen ugly heads from thousands
of improperly used dumps and
landfills around the world. Chem–
icals are leaching into water sup–
plies and oceans or evaporating
into the air. Experts tell us there
is no quick technological bailout
on the horizon to do anythi ng
about it.
Now with governments every–
where stretched to the limits to
handle immediately pressing social
and economic problems, many
fear that the Environmental
Decade of the 1970s may be the
last environmental decade.
1t
is these developments that
have produced the gloomy United
Nations Environmental Prog ram
(UNEP) report on the past
decade's overall achievements.
Speaking for UNEP, executive
director Mostafa Tolba told more
than 100 delegates meeting in
Nairobi, Kenya last May that in
the Jast decade, "on almost every
front, there has been a marked
deter iorat ion in the quality of ou r
shared e nvironment." Man, he
indicated, is not even holding his
own against pollution, but is being
overwhelmed.
Mr. Tolba warned that govern–
ments had this choice: " T ake
action now or face disaster." Lack
of such action now, he said, would
bring "by the turn of the cen–
tury"- less than two d ecades
away- "environmen tal catastro–
phe which will witness devastation
as complete, as irreversible as any
nuclear holocaust."
UNEP's gloomy report con–
cluded: "The concepts for ecolog–
ically sound manageme nt have
been imperfectly or too slowly
applied. In sorne cases they have
(Continued on page 30)
/NTERNATIONAL PLAGUE-Knowing no
boundaries or p/aying no favorites, cur·
rents of polluted waters sweep from
nation to nation wreaking havoc. Top, a
Spanish coastal area befouled with
human garbage and various ffotsam; mid·
die, a broken oí/ tanker off the Brittany
coast befou/s ocean waters with oí/
waste; an oil·smeared victim of such
waste in another far·ffung area of the
world, a Magellanic penguin on the
Va/des Península, Argentina; and bottom,
a reminder of pollution's ultimate ugly
consequences.
Fe bruary 1983