CSE’s Weekly News Bulletin

March 8, 2021

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Editorial by Sunita Narain

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Sunita Narain

Editor, Down To Earth

Twitter: @sunitanar

Stockholm+50: How do we prepare for the next half century

It’s been a generation since global leaders met in Stockholm in 1972 to discuss environmental challenges. Then the concerns were for the local environment; there was no talk of climate change or even the depletion of the ozone layer. All that came later. In 1972, the discussion was on the toxification of the environment as water and air were foul.

Anil Agarwal, Centre for Science and Environment’s founder-director, was in Stockholm for this first-ever UN Conference on the Human Environment and he spoke often about how the lakes of this city were so polluted with industrial effluents that you could develop a camera film in the waters. These lakes are now pristine.

So you could argue that much has changed in the past 50 years. But not really. The toxification of the environment is still a pressing concern; countries have indeed cleaned up locally but added to the emissions in the global atmosphere. Now, we are out of time as climate change impacts are spiralling out of control.

This is why as we approach Stockholm+50, we are looking at an increasingly inequitable world; where poverty and marginalisation are growing and where climate change risks are reaching not just the homes of the poor but also of the rich. We need, therefore, to change paths; to re-configure, not just our language but also our approach to, what we can call, our common future.

This is why next year, when the world marks the 50th anniversary of the Stockholm conference, it must stand differently — not to state the problem but to show the way ahead. This is also why we need to discuss consumption and production. We cannot sidestep this anymore. This is the most inconvenient of all discussions... Continue Reading

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