United Nations to promote sustainable development.

• Position: Includes text of opening speech by Gro Harlem Brundtland

Heads of major United Nations agencies agreed at a landmark meeting in Oslo, Norway, in July, to take practical and co-ordinated steps to promote environmentally sustainable development.

The two-day meeting-the first gathering of UN agency heads to discuss the environment-was chaired by Secretary-Gencral Javier Perez de Cuellar and Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland, who convened it as Chairman of the World Commission on Environment and Development. Another session is scheduled for 1990. The Commission, set up in 1983, in 1987 produced a comprehensive report, "Our Common Future", concluding that economic growth that destroyed the environment could not be sustained and was therefore detrimental.

The 22 UN agency leaders in Oslo committed themselves to "develop compatible policies and establish common targets as well as a common data base". A task force working under the SecretaryGeneral would co-ordinate the effort.

Among those participating were Barber B. Conable, Jr. President of the World Bank; Michel Camdessus, Chairman of the International Monetary Fund; and the heads of the United Nations Development Programme, the World Health Organization, the United Nations Children's Fund, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, the World Food Programme, the United Nations Environment Programme, the United Nations Population Fund and the five regional commissions.

End fragmentation

The need to end fragmentation of the international environmental effort was stressed by the Commission in the Brundtland report, which was reviewed in the...