Epilogue: Forests and the human habitat: the case for building a global consensus

In the midst of the heady political changes that have marked the early years of this decade, including the end of the cold war, the reunion of the two Germany’s, and the rekindling of dormant ancient hatreds and ambitions in Yugoslavia, Rwanda-Burundi and elsewhere, the world has discovered a series of emergent global environmental problems for which there is no precedent and no cure short of a degree of global co-operation never previously sought or achieved. Success in addressing them offers the world virtually unlimited prospects for further improvement of the human enterprise; failure offers a bleak future beset by intensified tribal clashes over the bare necessities of life as the human habitat becomes progressively impoverished. In acknowledgement of this dilemma, articulated so sharply as the need for sustainable development by the Brundtland Commission, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development attempted to prepare three international conventions for adoption at the June 1992 meetings in Brazil. The topics were the atmosphere, biodiversity, and forests. As we outline below, success in addressing the atmosphere and biodiversity depends on success in addressing forests, the topic on which the least progress was made.