To help our planet survive.

• Position: United Nations report, 'Environmental Perspective to the Year 2000 and Beyond'; includes highlights of the Brundtland Commission report

To help our planet survive

FIFTEEN years after the convening of the first world conference on the environment -- in Stockholm in 1972 -- the General Assembly has adopted a major document to guide Governments in helping to achieve environmentally-sound development.

The "Environmental Perspective to the Year 2000 and Beyond" is a 27-page, 120-paragraph blueprint for action on the local, regional and international levels.

It sets out 14 "shared perceptions" by Governments of the nature of environmental issues. It details issues, outlook, goals and specific recommended actions in six major sectors -- population, food and agriculture, energy, industry, health and human settlements and international economic relations.

It discusses other major environmental issues of global concern: pollution of oceans and seas, ensuring peaceful use of outer space, preserving biological diversity through saving species, and the relationship between security and environment.

Finally, it calls for ways to act to save the environment through assessment and collection of information, planning and establishing mechanisms and procedures to facilitate unified policies and direction for integrating environmental concerns, and environmental legislation to implement standards and regulate activities of enterprises and people in the light of environmental objectives.

The "Environmental Perspective" is the result of the four years' work of a special Intergovernmental Inter-sessional Preparatory Committee of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

The Governing Council of UNEP approved it on 19 June 1987; the General Assembly approved it without a vote on 11 December, agreeing, as the Perspective's introduction states, that action must be taken to combat unabated environmental degradation, which threatens "human...