The First Initiatives – The Stockholm Conference. The Damaged Environment – How Long Will It Last? Ethics And the Environment (Тексты для перевода)

VARIANT 1

1.  Read the text and translate the italised extract in written form.

The First Initiatives – The Stockholm Conference

The origins of present day interantional cooperation on environment and sustainable development go back to the late 1960s, when Sweden took the initiative to palve the issue of environment on the agenda of the Unitied Nations.  The background was an increasign awareness in the scientific community about the serious nature of the negative environmental side-effects of the technological and scientific advances after the Second World War. The initiative also reflected a realisation that environmental problems did not stop at national borders, nor did regional cooperation suffice to draw with them. Sweden thus proposed that a global United Nations Conference bo convened to increase awareness about the implications of this situation among governments and the public at large and to identify those problems which could only, or best, be solved through international cooperation.

            The United Nations Conference on the Human environment convened on 5 June 1972 in Stockholm. This day in June is now yearly celebrated as the World Environment Day. The motto of the Conference was “Only One Earth”, a revolutionary concept for its time. The conference was attended by 113 countries at ministerial level and representatives of many internatyional organisations. There were also world leaders present, who set the stage for the next thirty years’ international deliberations by emphasizing the close interrelation between mass poverty and the environment.

            The Stockholm Conference adopted a Declaration and an Action Plan, which established the basis for a new era of international cooperation on environmental issues. As a direct result of the Conference, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) was established by the General Assembly of the United Nations with location in Nairobi, Kenia.

            The Declaration and the Action Plan with 109 recommendations for international action provided the basis for the rapid development of international environmental law in the 1970s and the 1980s. In this connection, priniciple 21 of the Deckarationa has secial significance. It states that “States have... the sovereign right to exploit their  own resources pursuant to their own environmental policies, and the responsibility to ensure that activities within their jurisdiction or control do not cause damage to the environment of the other States or of areas beyond the limits of National jurisdiction’.

            From few in the 1960s,today more than 200 global conventions are in place. These are legally binding instruments, containing commitments by States. They have to be ratified by the legislative organs of each signatory State. Each convention is governed by a Cinference of the Parties (COP) and is serviced by a secretariat. UNEP has a special role in most cases to provide administrative and other kinds of support. The undertakings in the conventions are often amplified by special protocls that contain more detailed and, at times, time bound commitments. An example of one of the early convetions is the Convention on Wetlands, which was adopted in Iran in 1971.

            As the globalisation process accelarated in the last 25 years of the 20^th century, the Stockholm Conference was used as a model for a series of semelar