1948 UNESCO supports the creation of the International Union for the Protection of Nature (IUPN) 1949 International technical conference for the protection of nature, organized in co-operation with IUPN 1951 Launching the Programme on Arid Zones 1957 Major Project on Scientific Research on Arid Lands 1967 Elaboration of a ten-year plan to introduce population questions into school curricula, Executive Board of UNESCO, Paris

ENVIRONMENT, POPULATION, DRUG ABUSE AND AIDS PREVENTION From its earliest days, environmental and population questions have been issues in which UNESCO has taken great interest. But, it was really towards the end of the 1960s that a whole series of problems for society emerged, all of them characterized by their global scope and by their immediate and long-term repercussions on every community, indeed, on humanity as a whole. Degradation of the environment and of its elements – water, earth, air, flora and fauna – the population explosion, the abuse of drugs and, since the last decade, the AIDS pandemic, each one a threat to the future of our societies. World summits organized to find solutions to problems which can no longer be confined within national frontiers have appealed for help to the United Nations System which, in response, has created specialized agencies and programmes to mobilize resources: there is the fund for population activities (UNFPA), (1) the environmental programme (UNEP), another fund to fight against the abuse of drugs (UNFDAC) (2) and, the newest member of the family, the Joint Programme on Aids (UNAIDS). UNESCO has contributed to these efforts by assisting Member States to rise to these new challenges, through programmes in the fields of research and communication, education at school and university, as well as in education out-of-school. How these activities have been implemented has greatly depended upon the socio-political and economic conditions at local and world levels in respect of each issue on the one hand, and on the recommendations and solutions advocated by different international, regional or national bodies on the other. In the field of education, activities are based upon a socio-pedagogical approach to problems, leading to the elaboration of interdisciplinary contents, and upon the search for relevance to local situations now, and to planetary situations in the years to come. Distinct, or even concurrent at the outset, since the 1992 Rio de Janeiro World Summit, these new forms of education have tended to merge into a single, unifying concept, that of education for sustainable development.

1949 A DOUBLE CRISIS by Aldous Huxley The human race is passing through a time of crisis, and that crisis exists, so to speak, on two levels – an upper level of political and economic crisis and a lower level crisis in population and world resources. That which is discussed at international conferences and in the newspapers is the upper level crisis – the crisis whose immediate causes are the economic breakdown due to the War and the struggle for power between groups possessing, or about to possess, the means of mass extermination. Of the low-level crisis, the crisis in population and world resources, hardly anything is heard in the press, on the radio or at the more important international conferences. Yet, the low-level crisis is at least as serious as the crisis in the political and economic field. If it is ignored, the low-level crisis is bound to sharpen the crisis on the political and economic levels. More people, less food How soon will the wasting assets of the world be exhausted? All we know for certain is that the supplies of many hitherto essential commodities are limited and that, in many places, very rich and easily available deposits of those commodities have been or are in process of being, worked out. An unfavourable relationship between population and natural resources creates a permanent menace to peace and a permanent menace to political and personal liberty. A world population policy? In the most favourable circumstances we can reasonably imagine, world population is bound to rise to at least three billions before it starts to decline. This means that, whatever happens, the next half-century will be a time of the gravest political and economic danger. If a world population policy should be agreed upon and implemented in the near future, this danger may be expected to grow less acute after about the year 2000. If no such policy is adopted the crisis is likely, unless something startlingly good or something startlingly bad should happen in the interval, to persist for many years thereafter. Meanwhile, every day brings its quota of some fifty-five thousand new human beings to a planet which, in the same period of time, has lost through erosion almost the same number of acres of productive land and goodness knows how many tons of irreplaceable minerals. Whatever may be happening to the superficial crisis, to the crisis on the political, or industrial or financial levels, that which underlies it persists and deepens. The current almost explosive growth in world population began about two centuries ago and will continue, in all probability for at least another hundred years. So far as we know, nothing quite like it has ever happened before. We are faced by a problem that has no earlier precedent. To discover and, having discovered, to apply the remedial measures is going to be exceedingly difficult. And the longer we delay, the greater the difficulty will be. The UNESCO Courier, April 1949.

Ronald E. Walker (Australia) Chairman of the UNESCO Executive Board from 1947 to 1948 Progress has been made during 1948 in relation to the protection of nature. The constituent conference of the new International Union for the Protection of Nature, held at Fontainebleau, seems to have developed a practical basis for action in this field. Presentation of the Report of the Director-General, Third Session of the General Conference of UNESCO, Beirut, November 1948 M. G. Candau (Brazil) Director-General of the World Health Organization from 1953 to 1973 Predictions [...] of some six billion people in the year 2000 raise fears of ‘standing room only’. One might choose the fatalistic road laid out many years ago by Malthus and take refuge in despair. We have not disposed of the problem, however, by choosing that debilitating route, because it leaves unsettled what we shall do with the billions of people already alive. Address to the Intergovernmental Conference of Experts on the Scientific Basis for Rational Use and Conservation of the Resources of the Biosphere, Paris, September 1968 Malcolm S. Adiseshiah (India) Deputy Director-General of UNESCO from 1963 to 1970 In recent years there has been, throughout the world, an increasing awareness of the threat to the very future of our species constituted by the combined effects of an unprecedented increase in population and the often irreparable damage inflicted by man on natural resources and on his environment. Address to the Intergovernmental Conference of Experts on the Scientific Basis for Rational Use and Conservation of the Resources of the Biosphere, Paris, September 1968

                               

FOOTNOTES:

(1) Which became the United Nations Population Fund in 1977.

(2) Which became the United Nations International Drug Control Programme (UNIDCP) in 1993.