Page:Brundtland Report.djvu/290

 that provide a large proportion of the world's cereal harvests and perhaps triggering mass population momements in areas where hunger is already endemic. Sea levels may rise during the first half of the next century enough to radically change the boundaries between coastal nations and to change the shapes and strategic importance of international waterways eftects both likely to increase international tensions. The climatic and sea-level changes &re also likely to disrupt the breeding grounds of economically important fish species. Slowing, or adapting to, global warming is becoming an essential task to reduce the risks of conflict.

{{c|

II. CONFLICT AS A CAUSE OF UNSUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
}} 16. Arms competition and armed conflict create major obstacles to ustainable development. They make huge claims on scarce material resources. They pre-empt human resources and wealth that could be used to combat the collapse of environmental support systems, the poverty, and the underdevelopment that in combination contribute so much to contemporary political insecurity. They may stimulate an ethos that is antagonistic towards cooperation among nations whose ecological and economic interdependence requires them to overcome national or ideological antipathies.

17. The existence- of nuclear weapons and the destructive potential inherent in the velocity and intensity of modern conventional warfare have given rise to a new understanding of the requirements for security among nations. In the nuclear age nations can no longer obtain security at each other's expense. They must seek security through cooperation, agreements, and mutual restraint; they must seek common security. Hence interdependence, which is so fundamental in the realm of environment and economics, is a fact also in the sphere of arms competition and military security. Interdependence has become a compelling fact, forcing nations to reconcile their approach to 'security' {{c|

1. Nuclear War Threat to Civllization
}} 18. The likely consequences of nuclear war make other to the environment pale into insignificance, Nuclear Weapons represent a qualitatively new step in the development of warfare. One thermo-nuclear bomb can have an explosive power greater than that of all the explosives used in wars since the invention of gunpowder. In addition to the destructive effects of blast and heat, immensely magnified by these weapons, they introduce a new lethal agent – ionizing radiation that extend lethal effects over both space and time.

19. In recent years, scientists have in addition called our attention to the prospect of 'nuclear winter'. It has been most authoritatively explored by some 300 scientists from the United States, the USSR, and more than 30 other countries working on a collaborative basis in some cases across ideological divides. SCOPE, Environmental Consequences of Nuclear War (Chichester. UK: John Wiley & Sons, 1985). Some of the other major studies on the nuclear winter scenario are R. Turco etal., 'Nuclear Winter: Global Consequences of Multiple Nuclear Explosions', Science, 23 December 1983; P. Ehrlich etal., The Cold and the Dark: The World After Nuclear War (New York: W.W. Norton. 1984); ; M.A. Hartwell and T.C. Hutchinson, Environmental Consequences of Nuclear War, Volume II: Ecological and Agricultural Effects (Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, 1985): National Research Council, The Effects on the Atmosphere of a Major Nuclear Exchange'' (Washington, PC: National Academy Press, 1985): A. Ginsberg etal.. 'Global Consequences of a Nuclear War: A Review of Recent Soviet Studies', World Armaments and Disarmament, SIPRI Yearbook 1985 (London: Taylor & Francis, 1985): A.B. Pittook et., Environmental Consequences of Nuclear War, Volume I: Physical and Atmospheric Effects (Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons. 1986); S.L. Thompson and S.H. Schneider, 'Nuclear Winter Reappraised', Foreign Affairs, Summer 1986. The effects of nuclear war are explored in Y.I. Chazor etal., The Danger of Nuclear War: Soviet Physicians' Viewpoint (Moscow: Novosti Press, 1982); S. Glasstone and P.J. Dolan (eds.), ''The Effects of Nuclear Weapons',' 3rd ed. (Washington, DC: U.S. Government. Printing Office, 1977) National Academy of Sciences, Long-term Worldwide Effects of Multiple Nuclear Weapon Detonations (Washington, PC: National Academy Press, 1975); Office of Technology Assessment, U.S. Congress, The Effects of Nclear War (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. 1980); UN, Comprehensive Study of Nuclear Weapons (A/35/392) (New York: 19S0): World Health Organization. Effects of Nuclear War on Health and Health Services (Geneva: 1984). /…