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Economic commission for Africa seminar on human environment Addis Ababa, 23-28 august 1971
(Fosbrooke, 1971) Fosbrooke, H. A
The dawn of man’s emergence as the dominant species on our planet. It is indeed inseparable from the story of man’s own development. But it is only recently that ’’environment” has become a public issue on a global scale. It first arose in the highly industrialized societies in which concern centered on the adverse consequences of many of the varied practices and technologies which have produced their unprecedented affluence of those societies. In this context, it is not surprising that many people in the developing countries questioned the relevance of this new concern for environment to their own compellingly urgent development priorities. They asked if it was really a disease of wealthy societies - why they should be concerned with it at all, especially at this preliminary stage of their own development. Indeed, some suggested that if more industry meant more pollution they would welcome more pollution. But at the same time they asked how the actions taken by the more industrialized countries would affect their own interests, what was likely to be the availability of the technical assistance, and what would happen to the markets they require for their own development. They asked what attention was to be given to the kind of environmental problems which directly affected them.