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 34. The environmental difficulties that confront us are not new, but only recently have we begun to understand their complexity. Previously our main concerns centred on the effects of development on the environment. Today, we need to be equally concerned about the ways in which environmental degradation can dampen or reverse economic development. In one area after another, environmental degradation is eroding the potential for development. This basic connection was brought into sharp focus by the environment and development crises of the 1980s.

35. The slowdown in the momentum of economic expansion and the stagnation in world trade in the 1980s challenged all nations' abilities to react and adjust. Developing countries that rely on the export of primary products have been hit particularly hard by falling commodity prices. Between 1980 and 1984, developing countries lost about $55 billion in export earnings because of the fall in commodity prices, a blow felt most keenly in Latin America and Africa.

36. As a consequence of this period of slow growth in the world economy - together with rising debt service obligations and a decline in the inflow of finance - many developing countries have facet) severe economic crises. Over half of all developing countries actually experienced declining per capita GDP in the years 1982-85 and per capita GDP has fallen, for developing countries as a whole, by around 10 per cent in the 1980s. (See Table 1-3.)

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