TRYING TO MEASURE WHICH NATIONS ARE SUSTAINABLE

Every year at the peak of the Alpine ski season the world's movers and
shakers, the heads of the largest corporations and wealthiest
governments, head for the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. 
This year an event occurred there that was largely unreported but
possibly historic.  The attendees were presented with a ranking of the
world's nations according to environmental sustainability.

The search for sustainability measures is hot right now.  The United
Nations has a mandate to produce them.  Many nations and states and
cities are developing their own.  Academic groups argue endlessly about
them.  The search is based on a darn good question: How long can we keep
this up?  To what extent is our frantic economic activity eating into
the planet's resource base, its waste absorption capacity, its life
support systems?

It's great that this question is being asked.  It's like the moment when
a young spendthrift who has inherited a fortune finally wonders, "Hey,
is this money going to last?"  Or like the long-ago breakthrough when
some bright accountant first realized the difference between capital and income
 .

You would think that concept, so basic to every business and household,
would have been applied long ago to national and world accounts.  But it
never has been.  We have been mesmerized by the measure called GDP or
GNP, which counts only spending.  That's about as useful as a dashboard
that tells us our speed but not how much gas is in the tank.  We have
never kept good track of our fundamental forms of capital: the natural
systems that give us vital streams of materials and energy and clean
water and air, and the social systems -- families, communities, all
kinds of organizations -- that produce, raise, educate, maintain, heal,
inspire, and fulfill human beings.

It's hard to imagine that folks who call themselves capitalists have
done such bad capital accounting for such a long time.  But we have.  As
a consequence we pride ourselves when GDP goes up, while forests, soils,
waters, families and communities go down.  Finally, like maturing
wastrels, we're beginning to notice that our wealth is shrinking and to
ask questions that can only be answered by new measures.

That we don't yet know how to do sustainability accounting is
demonstrated by the apologetic tone of the report just delivered at
Davos and by the silliness of the rankings.  "A number of serious
limitations in the available data relevant to environmental
sustainability drastically limit the ability of the world community to
monitor the most basic pollution and natural resource trends," say the
authors (mostly from Columbia and Yale) in academic report-speak.  "The
methods used are experimental and should not be construed as definitive
statements about precise levels of environmental sustainability."

In short, the numbers are dubious and the rankings are tentative.  We
can take with a grain of salt that the five "most sustainable" nations
are Norway, Iceland, Switzerland, Finland and Sweden and that the five
"least sustainable"  are Zimbabwe, Egypt, El Salvador, Philippines,
Vietnam.  And that the United States comes in 16th among the 56 nations listed.

What's most glaringly wrong with this list is that it may tell us where
these nations are relative to each other, but not where they are
relative to sustainability.  Norway -- which imports virtually all its
food, which has fished out its rich offshore cod stocks, whose income
and machines depend on oil deposits that will run out in a few decades
and that, while they last, are changing the climate -- is nowhere close
to sustainable.  Maybe no more so than Egypt, whose burgeoning
population crowds the narrow zone of polluted, depleted soil and water
along the Nile.  Switzerland, a source of toxic chemicals and nuclear
waste and luxurious consumption based almost entirely on imports, has no
call to pride itself on being more sustainable than the Philippines,
which has decimated its forests and fisheries while enriching a corrupt
upper class and impoverishing everyone else.

I wouldn't bet that any of these nations can maintain its current way of
life for the next 100 years or 50 or 30. Having spent considerable time
in Oslo and Zurich, having friends in Manila and Cairo, I wouldn't say
that any of these ways of life contains much wisdom about what life is for.

I don't want to be too hard on the Davos environmental sustainability
list.  I'm delighted that it exists and that it was delivered to people
in high places.  I hope there will be more such lists, growing in
sophistication, accuracy, and connection to what is important in the
world.  I just don't want people in high places to think that the Davos
numbers give us any idea of how quickly we are spending down
irreplaceable wealth or achieving real human development.

We can learn at least as much about sustainability by turning our eyes
away from numbers and noticing the soil washing down the streams, the
clearcuts where forests once stood, the changing climate, the smell of
city air, the places on earth too contaminated to live in or too
desperate to be safe in, and the hectic emptiness of our lives.  Some
day we may have numbers to measure these blatant signals of
unsustainability.  In the meantime we can admit that we already know.

(Donella Meadows is an adjunct professor at Dartmouth College and
director of the Sustainability Institute in Hartland, Vermont.)

Kedves Kornyesz!  

Ezennel szeretettel meghivunk a Kozep-Europai Egyetemen rendezett konferenciara
, ami a Tiszai cian-szennyezessel kapcsolatos.  Tobbek kozott, az ENSZ Munkacso
portja ezen a konferencian fogja eloszor nyilvanossagra hozni vizsgalatai eredm
enyeit.  A konferencia vednoke es hozzaszoloja Goncz Arpad Koztarsasagi Elnok.

A konferencia programja a kovetkezo (a munkanyelv angol):

RIVERS OF LIFE OR RIVERS OF DEATH? TRANSBOUNDARY ENVIRONMENTAL INCIDENTS IN CEN
TRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE

AGENDA

3.  April 2000 

Morning Session
(chair: Prof. Ruben Mnatsakanian, CEU EnvSci)

900 -910	Welcome to the conference by CEU (Academic Pro-Rector, Stefan Messmann
)
910- 920	Opening remarks (President of the Republic of Hungary t.b.a.)
920-1000	The chronology of the Aurul-Esmeralda cyanide and heavy metal spill (G
eoff Evans, MPI Australia; Lucian Constantinescu, RW Romania; Peter Literathy,V
ITUKI, Hungary; Nikola Dutina,  Hydro-meteorological Institute, Yugoslavia)
1000-1010	Questions and answers
1010-1100	Release of the preliminary findings of the ROE/UNEP Task Force on the
 Aurul-Esmeralda cyanide and heavy metal spill (Dr Frits Schlingemann, Director
 and Regional Representative UN Environmental Programme/Regional Office for Eur
ope)
1100-1130 	Coffee break
1130-1145	Possible strategy of the European Union in response to the cyanide an
d heavy metal spill  - a statement of the EU Task Force (Dr. Philip Weller, EU 
Task Force) 
1145-1230	Risk Assesment, Accidental Prevention Planning and Improvement of the
 Operational Warning System by the International Commission for the Protection 
of the Danube River (Dr Joachim Bendow, Executive Secretary of ICPDR) 
1230-1300	Press Conference
1300-1430	Lunch

Afternoon Session
(Chair: Prof. Zoltan Illes, CEU, EnvSci)

Break-up into three working groups 

1.  Legal aspects of transboundary and trans-national pollution (Raporteur: Pro
f. Alberto Costi, CEU, (Legal Studies)
2.  Ecological consequences of accidental spills with emphasis on present and p
revious cases (Raporteur: Prof. Laszlo Galle, University of Szeged)
3.  Economic considerations: compensation, valuation of damages and mitigation 
costs and environmental aspects of direct foreign investment (Raporteur: Prof. 
Diana Urge Vorsatz, CEU (EnvSci))

1430-1630	Group discussions (chairs: Prof. Zoltan Illes CEU (EnvSci), Dr. Steph
en Stec, REC, Prof. Ruben Mnatsakanian CEU (EnvSci))
1630-1700	Coffee break
1700-1800	Group report and discussion (chair and round-up presentation: Prof. Z
oltan Illes, CEU (EnvSci))
1800-1900	Evening reception


4  April 2000

Discussion on the way ahead
(Presentations and round-table discussion;
chairs: Prof. Diana Urge Vorsatz)

900-930	Environmental monitoring systems in Europe (Dr. Janos Feher, European E
nvironmental Agency)
930-1000	Overview of international conventions and agreements related to transb
oundary pollution (Dr. Tibor Farago, WWF Hungary)
1000-1030	Environmental issues in mergers & acquisition in CEE countries (Rober
t Reininger, Deloitte & Touche)
1030-1045	Coffee break 
1045-1245 	Assessment of international media response of the Aurul-Esmeralda cy
anide and heavy metal spill (Prof. Miklos Sukosd CEU, (PolSci), Geoff Evans MPI
, Armanca Brindusa, University of Timisoara)
1245-1315	The role of NGOs in response to transboundary pollution (Ms Jasmine B
achmann, WWF International, National NGOs of Romania and Hungary)
1315-1330	Round- up presentation and discussion (Prof. Diana Urge Vorsatz, CEU,
 (EnvSci))

1330-1500	Lunch and farewell

Sziasztok!

>Felado :  [Hungary]
>Mi a velemenyetek a Kyoto-i egyezmenyrol? 

Kicsit 'ciki', hogy Magyarorszag _elfelejtette alairni_ 
(valahogy elkallodott a sok illetekes tarca es miniszter kozott...)

>A kovetkezo csoport a "Economies in Transition":
>Bulgaria, Csehorszag stb.: -8%
>Magyarorszag, Lengyelorszag: -7%

Errol az MTVSZ altan nemreg kiadott "Forro levego" c. kiadvanyt ajanlom mindenk
inek. Kerheto: az 
 cimen (lesz webes valtozat is, talan meg aprilisban az is hozz
aferheto lesz).

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Sziasztok!

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