• Group Reading UNEP Pamphlet

 

(Brundtland Report) Our Common Future, Chapter 11: Peace, Security, Development, and the Environment


Publisher: United Nations

Author(s): World Commission on Environment and Development

Date: 1987

Topics: Conflict Prevention, Monitoring and Evaluation, Weapons, Waste, and Pollution

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1. Among the dangers facing the environment, the possibility of nuclear war, or military conflict of a lesser scale involving weapons of mass destruction, is undoubtedly the gravest. Certain aspects of the issues of peace and security bear directly upon the concept of sustainable development. Indeed, they are central to it.

2. Environmental stress is both a cause and an effect of political tension and military conflict./1 Nations have often fought to assert or resist control over raw materials, energy supplies, land, river basins, sea passages, and other key environmental resources. Such conflicts are likely to increase as these resources become scarcer and competition for them increases.