International Environmental Issues and the OECD 1950-2000: An Historical Perspective, by Bill L. Long (Development Centre Studies)

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ENVIRONMENT

International Environmental Issues and the OECD 1950-2000 AN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

Written by a former Director of Environment, this book describes the origins and evolution of the Organisation’s environmental work as well as its contributions to the resolution of major environmental issues which OECD Member nations have confronted over the second half of the Twentieth Century (e.g., acid rain, ozone depletion, chemical safety, hazardous waste management, and reconciliation of economic growth and environmental protection objectives). The author also sets out some of the key challenges that the OECD faces in maintaining a leadership role in international environmental affairs in the next millennium.

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International Environmental Issues and the OECD 1950-2000

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has long been recognised as one of the international community’s premier economic organisations. Less well known is its extensive work and achievements in the field of environment.

International Environmental Issues and the OECD 1950-2000 AN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE ENVIRONMENT

by Bill L. Long ISBN 92-64-17171-1 97 2000 01 1 P FF 150

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International Environmental Issues and the OECD 1950-2000 An Historical Perspective by Bill L. Long

ORGANISATION FOR ECONOMIC CO-OPERATION AND DEVELOPMENT

ORGANISATION FOR ECONOMIC CO-OPERATION AND DEVELOPMENT Pursuant to Article 1 of the Convention signed in Paris on 14th December 1960, and which came into force on 30th September 1961, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) shall promote policies designed: – to achieve the highest sustainable economic growth and employment and a rising standard of living in Member countries, while maintaining financial stability, and thus to contribute to the development of the world economy; – to contribute to sound economic expansion in Member as well as non-member countries in the process of economic development; and – to contribute to the expansion of world trade on a multilateral, nondiscriminatory basis in accordance with international obligations. The original Member countries of the OECD are Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States. The following countries became Members subsequently through accession at the dates indicated hereafter: Japan (28th April 1964), Finland (28th January 1969), Australia (7th June 1971), New Zealand (29th May 1973), Mexico (18th May 1994), the Czech Republic (21st December 1995), Hungary (7th May 1996), Poland (22nd November 1996) and Korea (12th December 1996). The Commission of the European Communities takes part in the work of the OECD (Article 13 of the OECD Convention).

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Foreword For four decades the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has been recognised as a premier economic forum for the world’s industrialised nations. Throughout most of that period, the OECD has also maintained a substantial programme on environmental management – a broad-spectrum effort that has continually pioneered, often led and consistently influenced the international community’s efforts to pursue concurrently the dual goals of economic growth and environmental protection. This paper describes the origins and evolution of the OECD’s environmental work. It also assesses the impact of this work on the domestic and international environmental policies and practices of OECD Member countries, and of the world community of nations more broadly. Part I of the paper presents an overview of the “Evolution of Environmental Issues and Strategies” in the second half of the Twentieth Century. Necessarily selective, it sets out the international context of conditions and events within which OECD carried out its environmental work. It also provides a frame of reference for evaluating the Organisation’s influence and achievements. In Part II, the content and evolution of OECD’s environmental work are described, as well as the structural arrangements for its conduct. The section begins with the 1950-1960 period when the forerunner of the OECD – the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation (OEEC) – was the operative institution. Special attention is devoted to the years from 1969 to 1971. It was during this period that a coherent environmental programme took shape; the focus of concern shifted from science to policy; and an Environment Committee and Environment Directorate were established to design and implement the Organisation’s environmental activities. These early years are especially significant. The vision and imagination exhibited by the “founding fathers” of OECD’s environmental work laid a foundation of concepts, ideas and project initiatives that has supported OECD’s approach to environmental issues to the present day. Many of OECD’s environmental contributions and achievements are evident in Part II: some are cited explicitly; others can be inferred. In Part III, the author describes what he believes are the Organisation’s major accomplishments – both in

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general terms, and in relation to specific major environmental issues of the last half century. This final section also draws conclusions about the past conduct of environmental work by the OECD, and also about the future. The author acknowledges one important shortcoming of the paper. The treatment of OECD’s environmental history concentrates heavily on the work and achievements of the OECD Environment Policy Committee and the Environment Directorate. Consequently, it does not do justice to the substantial contributions of other parts of the OECD “house” over four-plus decades (e.g., the Committees and Directorates for Agriculture and Fisheries, and for Development Co-operation; the International Energy Agency; and the European Conference of Ministers of Transport). During the 1990s, in particular, the environment-related work of these and other OECD components expanded substantially as the Organisation’s focus broadened beyond “environment” to address the multi-dimensional, multi-institutional concept of “sustainable development”. This deficiency notwithstanding, the author hopes that the information presented herein will be of interest and value to all those who are currently carrying out the Organisation’s environmental work, both in the OECD Secretariat and in the Member countries, as well as to those officials and technical experts who will succeed them. The roots of much of OECD’s ongoing environmental work extend well back into the past, and the original purposes, expectations, strategies and experiences over some four decades are often unknown, obscure or forgotten. Broadening and deepening the understanding of this legacy should provide both inspiration and lessons for the future. This book is published on the responsibility of the Secretary-General of the OECD.

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Biography of the Author Bill L. Long Bill L. Long served as Director for Environment at the OECD from 1988 to 1998. His association with environmental issues began in the mid-1960s as a senior staff member of the US Council on Marine Resources and Engineering Technology, followed by positions on the staff of the White House Council on Environmental Quality and as the first Environmental Co-ordinator of the US Agency for International Development. From 1979-1986, Mr. Long was employed by the US State Department’s Bureau for Oceans, Environment and International Scientific and Technological Affairs where he headed a variety of offices and programmes, including the Office of Food and Natural Resources and the US/UNESCO Man and the Biosphere Programme. During this period he served as a senior US negotiator on a range of bilateral and multilateral conventions and agreements, including US-Canada Acid Rain Accords; the Basel Convention on Transboundary Movement of Hazardous Wastes; and the Montreal Protocol on the Protection of the Stratospheric Ozone Layer. Just prior to joining the OECD (1986-1987), Mr. Long served as Associate Administrator for International Activities in the US Environmental Protection Agency with responsibility for co-ordinating the Agency’s bilateral and multilateral programmes, including participation in the OECD. Mr. Long has degrees in geology from Dartmouth College (New Hampshire) and geology/economics from Beloit College (Wisconsin); and taught geology and chemistry at the College of William and Mary (Virginia) from 1964-1967. Mr. Long retired from OECD and the US Government in 1998, and currently resides in Charlottesville, Virginia.

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Table of Contents Evolution of Environmental Issues and Strategies................................................. Environmental Awakening (1950-1969) ...................................................................... Clean-up and Repair (1970-1979)................................................................................ Anticipate and Prevent (1980-1989)............................................................................ Globalisation and Environment (1990-2000) .............................................................

9 9 11 15 18

Part II. OECD and the Environment........................................................................................ Tracing the Roots........................................................................................................... Getting the Science Right: The 1960s ......................................................................... Building Environmental Capacity: The 1970s ............................................................ Broadening the Agenda: The 1980s ............................................................................ Towards Sustainable Development: The 1990s ........................................................

27 27 29 33 60 80

Part III. Summary: Achievements and Conclusions............................................................... OECD’s Major Environmental Achievements ............................................................ General Achievements ................................................................................................. Specific Achievements .................................................................................................

117 117 118 123

Part I.

Conclusions.................................................................................................................................. 131 Annex 1. Chronology of Major International Events ............................................................ 135 Annex 2. Chronology of OECD’s Environment Programme Highlights .............................. 138 Annex 3. OECD Leadership for Environmental Affairs ........................................................ Secretaries-General.................................................................................................... Chairs of Meetings of Environment Policy Committee at Ministerial Level ....... Chairs of Regular Sessions of Environment Policy Committee............................. Directors for Environment ......................................................................................... OECD Special Representative to the UN Commission on Sustainable Development ................................................................................... OECD Co-ordination for Sustainable Development .............................................. Deputy Secretary-General Responsable for Co-ordination of OECD work on Sustainable Development ...................................................................................

140 140 140 140 140 141 141 141

Annex 4. OECD Structure for Environmental Affairs............................................................ 142 Environment Policy Committee (and antecedents)............................................... 142 Environment Directorate ........................................................................................... 145 Annex 5. Bibliography ............................................................................................................... 146 Annex 6. List of Acronyms ......................................................................................................... 151

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Part I

Evolution of Environmental Issues and Strategies Environmental Awakening (1950-1969) Expressions of concern about environmental issues clearly pre-date the second half of the Twentieth Century. Already in 1865, a Commons, Open Space and Footpaths Society was operating in the UK; and the Sierra Club traces its origin in the US to1892. At the international level, by the early 1900s multilateral conventions on the protection and conservation of boundary waters, whales and fur seals were being negotiated. An examination of pre-1950 environmental literature reveals, however, that the dominant concern was conservation of natural resources: there was only occasional treatment of pollution-related issues. This began to change in the post-war period of the 1950s and 1960s. Economic re-birth in Western Europe, and the continued rapid industrialisation of North America, created the conditions for the broad-spectrum environmental movement that became a hallmark of the 20th Century. Not only did unleashed economic growth intensify existing environmental threats, it generated entirely new ones. Concurrently, the newly-created wealth provided the motivation and the financial resources for nations and individuals to begin to pursue quality of life goals beyond basic human needs. It was within this geopolitical, economic and environmental context that OECD’s environmental work was conceived and implemented. The initial set of environmental concerns for the world’s industrialised nations of Europe, North America and Asia in mid-century largely involved pollution that could be seen, smelled or heard. The soot-filled skies of London in 1952 led to 4,000 citizen deaths, and the enactment of the UK’s first Clean Air Act four years later. The United States, Japan and a number of other Western European countries were soon struggling with similar air quality problems. And, the build-up of the byproducts of civilisation – sewage, garbage and industrial wastes – began to command attention. Much of the concern, and response, was directed at burgeoning urban areas, where growing traffic noise and vehicle emissions contributed to a rapidly expanding pollution “burden”.

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At the end of the 1950s, the scope of environmental concern broadened to involve threats that were undetectable to the human senses, expressing themselves silently at micro levels. A government-commissioned report to the Japan Ministry of Health and Welfare in 1959 concluded that deadly outbreaks of Minamata Disease in that country were likely the result of mercury contamination of fish and shellfish from industrial discharges into coastal waters. In 1962, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring raised the alarm that synthetic pesticides (including the wonder-chemical DDT) were invading water tables and threatening the entire food chain. Shortly thereafter (1966), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) were similarly indicted as a serious environmental pollutant. Chemical carcinogenicity was already on the minds of the public as the drug Thalidomide was implicated (first in 1961) as the cause of severe congenital abnormalities in new-born children. This all converged with longer-standing public concern about the “silent threat” of nuclear radiation, and generated a world-wide clamour for governments to do more to identify and evaluate environmental threats to human health and natural ecosystems ... and to address them aggressively. Against this backdrop, by the mid-1960s national delegates to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) began to bring their government’s environmental concerns into that forum. The Organisation’s work expanded to include a coherent environmental component, with a focus on the science of environmental threats and technologies for assessing and monitoring them. The initial priorities included pesticides and PCBs in water; urban air quality; transportation and noise; and watershed management. As the decade of the 1960s concluded, environmental concerns continued to broaden and remedial actions accelerated. In 1967, the first shipwreck of a supertanker, the Torrey Canyon, set off new alarms about the vulnerability of marine and coastal ecosystems to mankind’s intensifying pursuit of economic development. The transboundary reach of environmental pollution received further attention when Swedish scientists postulated (in 1968) that long-range transport of airborne sulfur compounds was acidifying lakes in that country as well as in other parts of Europe.

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Scientific inquiry into environmental problems had become a very popular undertaking by the end of decade. In 1969, a Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment (SCOPE) was created within the framework of the International Council of Scientific Unions; and a Group of Experts on the Scientific Aspects of the Marine Environment (GESAMP) was jointly established by the International Maritime Organisation (IMO), the World Meteorology Organisation (WMO) and the UN Education and Science Organisation (UNESCO). In addition, the Earth’s biological, chemical and physical systems and processes were being studied intensively worldwide under a strengthened and expanded International Biological Pro-

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gramme (IBP) launched by UNESCO in 1964, and through national follow-up to the International Geophysical Year (IGY) held the previous decade (1956-57). Toward the end of the 1960s, the environmental debate moved from the laboratory to the political arena. In 1968, based on a proposal by Sweden, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) agreed to convene the first global conference on the environment. Over the next three years governments scurried to establish with greater precision the nature and magnitude of domestic environmental problems; and to describe what they might contribute to, and seek from, the first of the UN “mega-conferences” of the 1970s. Numerous regional seminars and meetings were convened to prepare for that event, including what turned out to be a landmark international conference on “environment and development” in Founex, Switzerland in 1969. This was called specifically to try to bridge the “North-South divide” on whether environmental protection and economic growth were legitimate and compatible goals for countries, both rich and poor. Clean-up and Repair (1970-1979) The UN Conference on the Human Environment was convened in Stockholm, Sweden, in June 1972. It proved to be a seminal event in international environmental affairs. Attended by 113 nations, the meeting galvanised an international commitment to treat environmental protection as a vital adjunct to economic development. It also broadened the spectrum of environmental concerns, and energised and transformed the strategies and environmental work programmes of an array of national, regional and international institutions, including the OECD. In Stockholm, governments identified the economic and social factors responsible for environmental degradation, examined what was perceived to be a growing scarcity of resources and the pressures on them, and crystallised the concept of “development without destruction”. The Stockholm Declaration on the Human Environment, and an accompanying Declaration of Principles, constituted the first body of “soft law” in international environmental affairs. Principles on the assessment and control of marine pollution provided guidance for the first comprehensive framework agreement dealing with the global commons: the 1982 UN Convention on Law of the Sea. And, Principle 21 of the Stockholm Declaration established the responsibility of nation states to ensure that activities within their boundaries do not damage the environment of other states or of areas beyond the limits of national jurisdiction. In this same period, important environmental principles were emerging from other international bodies. Notably, the OECD promulgated in 1972 a set of Guiding Principles Concerning International Economic Aspects of Environment Policy. Included was the Polluter Pays Principle (PPP). Two years later, the OECD set out principles dealing with transboundary pollution which, inter alia, interpreted and extended what was agreed to in Stockholm.

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Among the numerous contributions of the Stockholm Conference, four stand out as particularly germane to the OECD. First, governments agreed that economic growth and environmental protection were not incompatible ... if proper policies were implemented and adequate financial and technological resources were available. They further agreed that the economy-environment nexus must receive indepth analysis in the years immediately ahead, particularly the implications of environmental policies and investments for developing countries and for international trade. Second, the 1972 UN Conference highlighted transboundary issues, with longrange air pollution and management of shared water resources the dominant concerns. A third major contribution was the spotlight the Conference placed on threats to human health and well-being in the urban environment, encompassing air and water quality, waste management, noise and over-crowding. And, especially significant, developing countries agreed in Stockholm to join forces with the industrialised nations in confronting environmental threats. After Stockholm, assertions by developing country representatives that “Industrial smoke looks like money to me!” were heard less and less frequently. For their part, the richer nations pledged financial and technical assistance to the poorer counterparts. This consensus, although fragile, was remarkable, coming as it did in the midst of intense and often vitriolic “North-South” debates in the United Nations and other forums on, e.g., a New International Economic Order and the Charter of Rights and Duties of States. The 1969 preparatory meeting in Founex, Switzerland played a decisive role in shaping the hard-won consensus. The content and conduct of environmental affairs throughout the remainder of the 1970s was strongly influenced by the United Nations Conference, and the efforts of governments to follow through on their commitments. For the OECD, the Conference both illuminated and strengthened the Organisation’s capacity to address economyenvironment interface issues; it raised the profile and priority of OECD’s early work on urban affairs, and on the environmental component of development assistance; and it provided impetus and direction to other mainstream OECD environmental efforts, especially on chemicals, air pollution, transportation and energy-related issues.

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Spurred by the Stockholm Conference, both by the preparatory work and the results, much of the institutional machinery for addressing environmental problems was established in the first half of the 1970s – internationally, and also at the national level in many industrialised countries. In 1970, the OECD added an Environment Committee to its structure. In 1971, the Economic Commission for Europe created a Committee of Senior Advisors to ECE Governments on Environmental Problems (ECE/SAEP), while UNESCO transformed the International Biological Programme (UNESCO/IBP) into the Man and the Biosphere Programme (UNESCO/ MAB), thus adding an important new social dimension to the environmental sci-

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ences. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), a direct outgrowth of the Stockholm event, was created in 1972; and the European Communities (EC) established a dedicated environmental programme that same year. In this early timeframe, a number of industrialised countries established national environmental focal points. Sweden created a National Environmental Protection Board (1969); the United States, a Council on Environmental Quality in the President’s Office and an Environmental Protection Agency (1970); the United Kingdom, a Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution and a Department of Environment (1970); Canada, a Department of Environment (1970); Japan, an Environment Agency (1971); and France, a Ministry for Environment and the Protection of Nature (1971). Then, following the 1972 Stockholm Conference, numerous other countries, in all regions of the world, followed suit by establishing domestic focal point institutions for environmental protection, some at the state and regional levels as well as in the central government structure. National environmental legislation expanded apace. In the period 1971-75, thirty-one major national environmental laws were passed in OECD countries. This contrasted with four laws in the 1956-60 timeframe; ten in the 1960-65 period; and eighteen from 1966-70.1 The growth of environmental interest and activity in the early 1970s was abetted by the results of first-generation computer modelling. In 1971, an early milestone in the climate warming debate was reached with the publication by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology of a computer-based Study of Man’s Impact on Climate (SMIC). Its bottom line was that carbon dioxide concentrations were increasing and that global warming would follow. The Club of Rome’s Limits to Growth report in 1972 was especially influential: it stimulated widespread public interest in environmental issues, provoked both scientific and political debate, and prompted additional modelling and supporting studies aimed at gaining a better understanding of what was actually happening to the global environment and of the potential consequences for society. One year later, Mesarovic and Pestel released the results of a regionally disaggregated global model in their report, Mankind at the Turning Point. These in turn prompted additional modelling efforts, including the OECD Interfutures Report in 1979 and the US Global 2000 Report to the President in 1980.2 1. Source: The State of the Environment in OECD Member Countries, 1979. 2. These studies cast into sharp relief the issue of population growth, particularly in developing countries, an issue that had received considerable international attention in earlier years, including at the UN Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm in 1972. Population growth is not, however, treated in this report since it has never been a major focus of OECD’s environmental work, notwithstanding the Organisation’s longstanding efforts on problems of urbanisation in OECD countries, and its economic and environmental projections which continue to be heavily influenced by population numbers and demographics.

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Other events also helped propel a rapidly expanding worldwide environmental sensitivity and international response. The OPEC-induced oil shock in 1973-74, coming on the heels of the Limits to Growth report, elevated attention not only to short-term energy security threats but also to the need for long-term strategies for energy conservation and for non-fossil fuel alternatives. One response by the industrialised nations was to create in 1975 an International Energy Agency (IEA) within the framework of the OECD. A series of well-publicised industrial accidents further contributed to a growing public demand for governmental attention to environmental protection. In 1976, an explosion at a chemical factory in the Northern Italian town of Seveso released a cloud of toxic contaminants into the surrounding area. In 1979, the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in the US re-kindled the debate on the safety of nuclear installations, as well as on corporate environmental responsibility in general. By the mid-1970s, environmental issues were beginning to move to the forefront of corporate thinking, at least in major firms. One of the first manifestations of a positive response was the 3M Corporation’s promulgation in 1975 of its “Pollution Prevention Pays” strategy. Science continued to shape the environmental policy agenda. In 1974, findings by Molina and Rowland that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) posed a threat to the Earth’s stratospheric ozone layer appeared in Nature.3 The upshot was: a rapid expansion of laboratory research and empirical measurement to understand better the behaviour of man-made chemicals in the environment; new computer modeling of atmospheric processes; and efforts by governments to use international institutional mechanisms, including the OECD, to assist in defining policy responses to stratospheric ozone depletion, as well as to other environmental threats. Science was transformed into public policy throughout the ‘70s. At the international level, a series of major conventions on wildlife and habitat were negotiated: the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands of International Importance (1971); the World Heritage Convention (1972); the CITES Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (1973); and the Bonn Convention on Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (1979). The decade also saw international agreement on the London Dumping Convention to control marine pollution by wastes in 1972. At the regional level, the Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution (LRTAP) was concluded in 1979 under the auspices of the UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE). The LRTAP Convention, signed by 34 industrialised countries of Europe and North America, completed a process which evolved from scientific findings by Swedish scientists in the late 1960s, to a call for international action 14

3. Molina, M. J. and Rowland, F. S. (1974), Stratospheric sink for chlorofluoromethanes: Chlorine atom catalyzed destruction of ozone, Nature, 249, pp. 810-814.

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by the 1972 Stockholm Conference, to analytical and monitoring work by the OECD from 1973 to 1978, and finally to negotiation of political commitments in the UNECE, the appropriate body given the Europe-wide scope of the problem. Regarding the future agenda for international collaboration on environmental issues, a series of post-Stockholm UN conferences contributed ideas and generated new priorities and commitments. Notable among them were the UN Conference on Human Settlements in Vancouver in 1976; the UNESCO/UNEP Intergovernmental Conference on Environmental Education in Tblisi, USSR, the UN Water Conference in Mar del Plata, Argentina, and the UN Conference on Desertification in Nairobi, Kenya, all three in 1977; and the first World Climate Conference in Geneva in 1979. Each had a significant developing country dimension, reflecting both the growth of interest in the poorer nations in addressing environmental threats and the desire of the industrialised nations to engage the developing world in confronting immediate and long-term environmental management challenges. Dominant characteristics of environmental management in the 1970s included: an “identify, clean up and repair” approach; a focus on local and regional-scale environmental threats; single-source management strategies; and confrontation among public officials, industrial leaders and environmental groups, as well as among neighbouring nations and groups of nations, about environmental responsibility and financing. By the advent of the 1980s, the trend was increasingly toward “anticipate and prevent” and “multiple-source management strategies”; attention to global scale threats; concern about the economic costs and efficiency of environmental policies; and partnerships among interest groups and nations. Anticipate and Prevent (1980-1989) The 1980s was the time when “green parties” entered the political arena in Europe (e.g., West Germany and Belgium in 1984); the G-7 Heads of State began to place environmental concerns on their agendas (beginning with the Summit of the Arch in Paris in 1989); and the Berlin Wall was torn down (1989). The collapse of Communism transformed the political and economic landscapes in Europe and beyond, and ushered in a new era of East-West co-operation on environmental problems. This new era also had important North-South ramifications. Public interest in environmental issues remained high throughout the decade, stimulated by highly-publicised pollution incidents and new scientific findings. Major industrial accidents – at Union Carbide’s plant at Bhopal, India in 1984, and a warehouse spill of fertilisers into the Rhine River at Basel, Switzerland, two years later – increased pressures on both industry and governments for better environmental safeguards and contingency planning. In 1984 came the alarming report of a hole in the stratospheric ozone layer above Antarctica. In 1986, the Chernobyl nuclear radiation accident captured front-page attention worldwide. Then, in the

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final year of the decade, the “Exxon Valdez” oil spill occurred, and the image of dead birds and sea otters and miles of tar-smeared beaches in Alaska’s Prince William Sound graphically illustrated mankind’s capacity to foul its environment. In the face of these events, and the resultant pressures on industry from citizens and legislatures for behavioural changes, leaders in the business community organised in 1984 (with UNEP co-operation) a World Industry Conference on Environmental Management in Versailles, France. This began what was referred to as a “new partnership” between government and industry, replacing the hostility and lack of confidence that characterised the relationship from the time of the UN Stockholm Conference. The number and influence of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in the field of environment expanded considerably during the ‘80s. There was also a discernible broadening of the agendas of many of them to include international issues. Multilateral institutions, particularly the World Bank and other development institutions, became targets of a coalition of western-based NGOs that demanded: “greening” of investment policies (with tropical forests and wetlands major concerns), increased funding by the banks for environmental investments, and NGO and public participation in the selection and monitoring of development projects. A major test of the ability of the private sector and governments to co-operate in confronting environmental threats at the global level was successfully passed with the negotiation of the Montreal Protocol in 1987, which implemented the Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer signed in 1985. The rapid pace of negotiations, and entry into force of the Protocol, just two years after its signature, were the result of convincing (albeit incomplete) science, the willingness of developing countries to join forces with industrialised nations in taking out a relatively low-cost insurance policy against potentially catastrophic long-term consequences for mankind, and general support by industry (or, at least no strong, co-ordinated opposition). In the euphoric post-negotiation period, this experience was widely proclaimed by governments and environmental organisations (although not by the business community) as a possible model for addressing other global-scale issues at the international level.

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Among such “other” global scale issues, climate change emerged by the mid1980s as a major concern. In the second half of the decade, the international community stepped up its efforts to establish concretely whether carbon dioxide and other gases being released by human activities were changing the temperature of the Earth’s atmosphere. Scientific findings were brought before the international community at major conferences in 1985 (Villach, Austria) and 1988 (Toronto, Canada). In 1989, WMO and UNEP established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), with three working groups: on likely climate change and its causes; on possible impacts; and on policy responses.

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Managing hazardous wastes was another dominant environmental issue of the ‘80s; in particular, its transport across international boundaries for recycling or disposal. Building on the first comprehensive inventories of waste types and volumes, along with principles and guidelines for waste management, developed by OECD in the 1970s, UNEP started to “globalise” the effort in 1982. This led directly to the Cairo Guidelines and Principles for Environmentally Sound Management of Hazardous Wastes in 1987, and then the adoption in 1989 of the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movement of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal. Natural resource management issues, including forest and wetlands management, wildlife protection, and conservation of agricultural soils, were also high on the international environmental agenda in the 1980s. In 1980, the World Conservation Union (IUCN), UNEP and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) jointly published the World Conservation Strategy; and, in 1982, the UN General Assembly adopted the World Charter for Nature, elevating species conservation, and preservation of biological diversity, considerably higher on political agendas. Further, resource conservation principles and requirements were written into the Law of the Sea Convention of 1982. Environmental management in the 1980s saw a rebirth of concern about environmental economics. In the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, government policymakers and business leaders began asking ... “How much does it cost to protect the environment?”, and arguing about “Who should pay?” By the 1980s, the key questions had become: “How can I afford to protect the environment?” – a matter raised by industry in the face of rising costs, by developing countries in the face of poverty, and by OECD governments confronted by economic downturns – and, “What are the most cost-effective ways to achieve environmental objectives”? This latter concern about economic efficiency generated extensive studies by public and private institutions on, e.g., new ways to calculate national wealth, including “green GDPs”, the role of cost-benefit analysis, and the scope for environmental taxes. It also stimulated a number of OECD governments to experiment with new strategies and tools for improving environmental cost-effectiveness, including energy taxes, tradable emission rights, and regulatory reform. The second half of the 1980s tested the “staying power” of environmental commitment in a number of OECD countries as the economic situation worsened, with inflation, interest rates and unemployment rising rapidly. This was especially evident in the United States. A new Administration that had attained power with promises of economic growth and a smaller Federal presence, and tried to move quickly to eliminate or roll back major environmental legislation enacted in the previous two decades, and to erect barriers to new environmental initiatives. The public outcry and backlash that this engendered, reinforced in the US Congress, was a testament to the strong bedrock of environmental awareness, laws and institutions that

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had been created in the US, as well as across the OECD region, in just some 15 years. The 1987 report of the World Commission on Environment and Development, Our Common Future (popularly, the “Brundtland Commission” report), set the tone and policy framework for the conduct of international environmental affairs through the 1990s. Its contributions were many. The debate about the report, and the programmatic follow-up, established sustainable development as a useful and legitimate goal for the world community (notwithstanding continuing scepticism from some quarters); it helped close the still-wide chasm between developed and developing countries about environmental priorities and responsibilities; it embedded environmental policy in a broader matrix of economic, social and political concerns of government; and the Commission’s report highlighted the necessity of policy integration, partnership and accountability as prerequisites for progress toward an environmentally sound and sustainable future. Globalisation and Environment (1990-2000) Geopolitics and economics were key influences on the conduct of international environmental affairs in the 1990s. The rupture of the Soviet Union opened new avenues of co-operation between East and West. Unfortunately, the well-publicised Peace Dividend, expected to release substantial financial and technological resources for a variety of civilian purposes, including environmental management, failed to materialise. In Asia, China began to open up and reach out to OECD countries; while South Korea, India, Malaysia and other Asian Developing Nations were increasingly drawn into world affairs by virtue of their striking economic growth propelled by a new reliance on market mechanisms. In the last third of the decade, however, economic recession in Russia, Asia and Latin America caused a dramatic retrenchment, which impacted adversely on a broad range of public and private expenditures, for environment as well as other social purposes. Cheap energy was also a factor. Defying predictions of a decade earlier, the 1990s saw the price of oil continue to fall. While this was great for economic growth, it retarded investments in energy conservation and in the development of new energy sources. And, the expanded use of fossil fuels increased pollution levels, just at the moment when OECD countries were beginning to reap the benefits of two decades of work to reduce emissions in the energy sector.

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Globalisation entered the vocabulary in the early 1990s, conceptualising a world community of sovereign nations bound tightly by the cords of free-market economics and technology. The accelerated movement of goods, services and investment across international boundaries was both striking in its magnitude and controversial with respect to its long-term implications for employment, flight-ofindustry and environmental management.

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Paradoxically, the increasingly “globalised” world was concurrently being regionalised. Western European nations drew together economically and politically within the framework of the European Union (EU); Canada, Mexico and the United States negotiated the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA); the Asian-Pacific Economic Co-operation Forum (APEC) was established; and several new multi-country consultative and co-operation bodies were formed in Latin America. While each of these co-operative mechanisms had a predominant economic origin and orientation, environmental matters also found their place, albeit at different rates and with different degrees of commitment and value. To harness and better direct the forces of globalisation for the promotion of economic growth, governments searched out the constraints on the efficient working of the market. Two culprits were broadly indicted: government regulations and government subsidies. Subsequent efforts to modify or eliminate them posed a new set of challenges for environmental managers and political leaders. The environmental dimensions of national security became a subject of growing interest and analysis during the ‘90s. The Brandt Commission had addressed aspects of this subject in its 1980 report, North-South: A Program for Survival. One concern was the prospect of the international migration of populations from lands made unproductive from overgrazing, excessive cultivation or deforestation-inducted flooding. Another involved “environmental warfare”, an old concern re-raised by the deliberate destruction of oil wells during Persian Gulf crisis in 1990-91. The scope and reach of environmental issues in the 1990s was highlighted by a speech given in 1996 to the World Affairs Council by the Head of the US Central Intelligence Agency (a most unlikely source), in which he said: “Environmental trends, both natural and man-made, are among the major underlying forces that affect a nation’s economy, its social stability, its behaviour in world markets and its attitudes towards its neighbours”. As in preceding decades, environmental priorities, strategies and programmes in the 1990s were heavily influenced by international environmental conferences. At the very outset of the decade (May 1990), a meeting at Ministerial level was convened in Bergen, Norway by the Government of Norway (with the assistance of the Economic Commission for Europe), to prepare for the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) scheduled for 1992. The Bergen Conference will be enshrined in environmental history for three reasons. First, unlike previous international meetings of governments, it was opened up to a wide array of other “stakeholders” – industry, labour, environmental groups, and the science and religious communities – in the preparatory phase as well as during the meeting itself. This Spirit of Bergen carried over to other international environmental meetings, and was used elsewhere by private sector groups to press an intensified demand

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that international organisations [e.g. development institutions, World Trade Organisation, and OECD] provide for greater openness and public participation. The Bergen Ministerial Conference also raised the matter of government accountability on environmental issues. Ministers agreed that more must be done to enable policymakers and citizens to keep track of, and judge, whether goals were being met; and also to assess whether governments were keeping their promises on environmental issues made domestically and in international arenas. One of the mechanisms they endorsed was improved indicators of performance. Accountability concerns also led Ministers to call for the OECD, in co-operation with the UNECE, to begin a programme of periodic environmental reviews of their Member countries. And, similar concerns were expressed at G-7 Summits of Heads of State and Government in Paris (1989), Houston (1990) and London (1991). The third legacy of Bergen was the Precautionary Principle, which calls for governments, private sector institutions and citizens to err on the side of caution in decision-making on matters with potentially adverse impacts on the environment in the face of incomplete knowledge and uncertainty about the consequences. A high-water mark in environmental affairs was reached in 1992 with the convening in Rio de Janeiro of the UNCED. Billed as the “Earth Summit”, the conference was attended by 175 nations, with over one hundred Heads of State and Government present, along with representatives of 1500 officially-credited nongovernmental organisations and 7 000 journalists. Conferees reviewed progress since the Stockholm Conference two decades earlier, and produced a number of products which captured the attention of governments and private sector organisations throughout the ‘90s. One was a Declaration on Environment and Development, containing 27 “Rio Principles” that built on the Stockholm Declaration. Many of these norms for state and interstate behaviour had never been universally accepted before. In presenting the Declaration to delegates, Conference SecretaryGeneral Maurice Strong referred to it as “a major step forward in establishing the basic principles which must govern the conduct of nations and peoples toward each other and the Earth to ensure a secure and sustainable future”. Second, a massive 600-page tome called “Agenda 21” was adopted as a guideline for future national and international action in the field of environment and development. This action plan was based, in part, on a series of specialised contributions from governments and international bodies, including Caring for the Earth: A Strategy for Sustainable Living, prepared by the IUCN, UNEP and WWF in 1991.

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And, third, two major international conventions – on Climate Change and on Biological Diversity – were opened for signature in Rio and signed, rather remarkably, by over one hundred and fifty nations. Governments also agreed to negotiate a world deserts convention.

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Climate change emerged as the dominant environmental issue of the decade. Its causes and effects appeared to touch every economic sector; and the projected high economic costs of remedial action, especially in the face of incomplete science, attracted attention and raised emotions in parliaments, industry boardrooms and treasuries around the world. Work on the science and socio-economic implications of climate change, launched in the late 1980s by the IPCC, prepared the ground for a Second World Climate Conference in Geneva in November 1990. Drawing heavily on the IPCC report, the product of an intensive investigation of the best science and analysis available worldwide, the Geneva Conference provided governments with sufficient evidence of a likely climate change threat that it became possible to conclude the signing of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) at the Earth Summit in 1992. Efforts turned then to developing an implementing protocol to the Convention, a difficult, protracted process. The protocol was eventually signed in Kyoto, Japan in December 1998. The quest for effective partnerships for the conduct of environmental affairs – among governments and between government and private sector institutions – suffered as the debate on climate change progressed during a time of worldwide economic problems and intensifying international economic competition. Some industrial firms used these difficult economic conditions as an opportunity to challenge national environmental laws and regulations, prompting cries of betrayal from non-governmental organisations that had formed environmental alliances with industry in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. Promising developed-developing country relationships were also set back. The industrialised nations were unable to extract meaningful commitments from the poorer countries to control greenhouse gas emissions; and developing nations complained that long-promised financial and technical support for the environment from the “North” was not materialising. Funding for the environment proved to be a divisive issue in New York in 1997 when the UN General Assembly met in Special Session (UNGASS) to review progress made in fulfilling the commitments made by governments at the Rio “Earth Summit” in 1992. The conferees at this “Rio Plus 5” event generally agreed that little meaningful work had been done in furthering Agenda 21, or in implementing the international conventions signed in 1992. One new international financial mechanism had, in fact, been established. This was “pre-Rio”, however. In 1990, the Global Environment Facility (GEF) was created by the World Bank, in co-operation with UNEP and UN Development Programme (UNDP). Its role was to mobilise financial assistance for developing nations to use in addressing four sets of issues: stratospheric ozone depletion; greenhouse gas emissions and energy efficiency; international marine and fisheries resources; and conservation of biodiversity. The World Bank also committed itself in mid-decade

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to expand substantially its financial support for environmental projects, and for the promotion of sustainable development more broadly. In Europe, the development of an Environment for Europe Programme – and an associated Environmental Action Plan for Eastern and Central Europe (EAP) – was one of the notable environmental achievements of the 1990s. This emerged from a meeting of Environment Ministers from Europe and North America at Dobris Castle, in the former Czechoslovakia, in 1991, and it was reinforced and modified through a succession of subsequent Ministerial meetings. The EAP, and the international Task Force established to promote it (with OECD providing the secretariat), brought together representatives from governments of Western and Eastern Europe and the United States, multilateral and regional banks, industry and environmental NGOs to raise awareness, mobilise funding and plan co-operative projects. As the decade progressed, the reach and focus of the programme moved increasingly eastward in an effort to provide greater support for the poorer countries of Central Europe. As mentioned earlier, sustainable development was a dominant issue of the 1990s. Governments wrestled with the concept nationally and at a multitude of regional and international meetings, including the 1992 Earth Summit. Agreement was reached in Rio to establish a UN Commission on Sustainable Development (UNCSD) with a mandate to oversee and help the international community advance Agenda 21 and the pursuit of sustainable development. Some observers complained that this was much too weak a response when environmental conditions, and the perceived inadequate state of institutional capacity and arrangements at the international level, cried out for more dramatic and far-reaching institutional change. As it turned out, the Commission encountered difficulty in attracting participation in its annual high-level meetings from government Ministers beyond those of Environment and Development Assistance. This remains a continuing reminder of the difficulty in achieving one of the major requirements of sustainable development as spelled out by the Brundtland Commission: the full integration of economic, social and environmental policies. On the other hand, the 1990s did see a number of specialised events that brought Environment and Development Assistance Ministers together with their counterparts from various economic ministries. Further, environmental issues increasingly appeared on the agenda of the “regular” meetings of Ministers of Transport, of Energy and of Agriculture in OECD Member countries. This was invariably due to climate change issues.

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For the environmental community, globalisation became an important concern, given the uncertainty over its net impact on environmental quality when the “pluses” and “minuses” were added up. One component, trade liberalisation and its effects on the environment, became a major source of analysis, debate and negotiation; and the

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WTO responded by resuscitating a Trade and Environment Committee which had never met since being created in the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT) in the early 1980s. Foreign investment also caught the attention of the environmental community for the first time. Optimists pointed to multiple benefits accruing to the environment from foreign direct investment in Central and Eastern Europe, and in developing countries, by environmentally-conscious multinational companies importing and employing state-of-the-art clean technologies. Pessimists, however, voiced fears that the rules of the road being proposed (in the OECD and elsewhere) to remove barriers to international investment would trigger a “race to the bottom” on the environment, as governments and firms reduced environmental expenditures, and lowered environmental standards, as they struggled for economic advantage in an increasingly competitive globalised marketplace. The 1990s saw a continuation of work and experimentation on environmental management tools in an intensifying quest for reduced costs and greater efficiency in meeting environmental targets. Responding to climate change was a major forcing function. Carbon taxes were studied intensively, and introduced in five Western European countries. Tradeable emissions and permits also attracted attention as a possible lower-cost way to deal with greenhouse gases, and also for managing lower-level atmospheric pollutants as well as fish stocks. The removal of environmentally-damaging subsidies became a “cause celebre” in the environmental community, and it also gained advocates among some OECD Energy Ministers who urged that reduction of government subsidies in the energy sector should be pursued first, as a mechanism for responding to climate change, before governments embraced more “exotic” measures, such as, carbon taxes and emission trading schemes. Regarding environmental taxes, considerable interest emerged in OECD countries, especially in Europe, in wholesale overhauls of national tax systems. The objective was to achieve revenue neutrality by increasing taxes on “bad-for-theenvironment” products and services, and offsetting these by reducing or eliminating taxes on “environmentally-friendly” commodities and activities. Several Western European countries set up “green tax commissions” to pursue such reform, as well as to consider whether and how environmental regulations might be replaced by market-based environmental measures. One of the striking conclusions of the analyses was that “command-and-control” regulation continued to offer the most effective and efficient way for countries to achieve a good number of their basic environmental goals, notwithstanding opportunities for cost-effective substitution of market instruments for regulatory measures in other situations. Overall, regulation continued to form the bedrock of environmental management in the OECD nations and beyond at the end of the 1990s. Industry’s posture and image continued to evolve over the decade. While backsliding on environmental commitments was sometimes evident, along with displays of opportunism when governments began to consider regulatory reform

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and climate change policies, the business community overall demonstrated a growing willingness to co-operate with government and environmental NGOs, and to assume increased environmental responsibility. In part, this reflected accumulating evidence that it was possible for firms to be both “green” and profitable, and in part the need for firms to compete for market shares with competitors that were employing cleaner processes and turning out “environmentally-friendly” products. In mid-1990, Stephan Schmidheiny, a Swiss industrialist, was invited by Maurice Strong, Secretary-General of the forthcoming UN Conference on Environment and Development, to develop a business community contribution for the Conference. The fifty corporate leaders that Schmidheiny assembled to take on that task became the Business Council for Sustainable Development (BCSD). In 1991, the Second World Industry Conference on Environmental Management was held in Rotterdam. This event provided a further stimulus for governmentindustry co-operation as well as improved environmental performance by the business community. At this event, the International Chamber of Commerce launched the Business Charter for Sustainable Development under which (by early 1992) six hundred firms worldwide had committed themselves to “improving their environmental performance in accordance with [the Charter’s] 16 principles, to having in place management practices to effect such improvement, to measuring their progress, and to reporting this progress as appropriate internally and externally”. Following the Second World Industry Conference, the BCSD expanded its membership, transformed itself into the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), mounted a forward-looking international work programme, and has since served as a constructive spokesman for world industry in a variety of major international environmental forums. The concept of eco-efficiency, promoted by the WBCSD, attracted considerable attention in both the business community and governments. To help ensure a level playing field in international competition, and to seize opportunities for self-regulation rather than be subject to government dictates, a growing number of firms subscribed to environmental management systems such as the European Union’s Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS) and the ISO 14000 series developed by the International Organisation for Standardisation.

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“Classical” environmental issues (air, water, wastes) continued to command attention as the new millennium approached. Chemical safety remained a priority of governments, at both the national and international levels. After an initial focus in the 1970s and 1980s on the development of screening and testing methods, guidelines and management strategies to cope with new chemicals, the focus shifted to the daunting task of examining the environmental behaviour of the hundreds of thousands of existing chemicals being traded internationally. In 1995, based on a recommendation from the UNCED, an Inter-organisation Programme for the Sound Management of Chemicals

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(IOMC) was established to promote close co-ordination and joint programming among the key institutions active on chemical management, i.e., OECD, Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), World Health Organisation (WHO), International Labour Organisation (ILO), UNEP, UN Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO), plus the UN Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) which joined in 1997. And, as the ‘90s drew to a close, two global conventions aimed at strengthening management systems for hazardous chemicals were being negotiated. The Convention on the Prior Informed Consent Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade (PIC) was signed in 1998 in Rotterdam; and efforts were continuing on a multilateral agreement to phase out certain Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs). Hazardous waste management also remained high on the agenda, with international efforts focused on clarifying definitions and establishing technical specifications for various categories of wastes, in an effort to strengthen the Basel Convention and attract more signatories. In 1995, the Conference of Parties to the Basel Convention began to discuss a controversial proposal to ban all shipments of hazardous wastes to developing countries; and, in 1998 the proposal was adopted at the fourth Conference of the Parties (COP4). Elaboration of the Convention on Biological Diversity was also pursued, with ownership of genetic materials, and compensation for their collection and use, among the key issues. Finally, management of marine resources re-emerged as a major environmental concern, after having slipped down the international agenda of the 1980s, a decade preoccupied with problems of the upper atmosphere, the urban environment and land degradation. Depletion of commercial fishery stocks, and attempts by governments to regulate catches and/or to introduce bans, triggered a spate of international disputes over fishing rights as well as domestic arguments between the fishing industry and government regulators. As the second half of the 20th Century began, the advanced industrialised countries set about to build pollution-oriented environmental strategies on a base of intermittent earlier environmental concern about the conservation of natural resources. Now, at the threshold of a new Millennium, globalisation and threats to strategic natural resources and the “global commons” have shifted the international environmental agenda from traditional pollution concerns toward problems of climate change, loss of bio-diversity, depletion of access to fresh water, and sustainable management of fisheries, forests and agricultural lands. Given the increasing political and economic interdependence among nations, and the international scope of modern-day environmental threats, the need for strong, effective international accords, international collaboration and international organisations – attuned to the challenges of a new Century – is imperative.4 4. Annex 1 provides a chronology of the major international events cited in this section.

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Part II

OECD and the Environment The major trends and events in environmental affairs in the second half of the 20th Century were presented in Part I. Part II describes the environmental efforts of the OECD during that period, including broad policy directions, institutional structure and programme activities. Tracing the Roots The story of the OECD begins in 1947. On June 5 of that year, US Secretary of State George C. Marshall spoke at Harvard University about the need for a massive reconstruction effort in Europe. This laid the groundwork for a post-war European Aid Programme commonly known as the “Marshall Plan”. One month later, on July 12, 1947, representatives from 16 European countries met in Paris to discuss how an assistance programme would be managed (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and the United Kingdom). They agreed to establish an ad hoc Committee of European Economic Co-operation to allocate and oversee the assistance package. At the urging of the US, in April 1948 the Committee was transformed into a permanent body, the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation (OEEC). Robert Marjolin (FRA) was chosen to head the new body, and he served in that position until replaced in 1954 by Rene Sergent (FRA) who served until 1961. In the face of rapid economic growth in Western Europe through the 1950s, and changing East-West and North-South geo-political relationships, three Heads of State – Charles de Gaulle, Konrad Adenauer and Dwight Eisenhower – proposed in 1959 that the OEEC be reformed and strengthened. On 14 December 1960, the Member states of the OEEC signed a Convention on the creation of an Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Upon the seventeenth ratification of the Convention, on 30 September 1961, the OEEC went out of business, replaced by the OECD. The United States and

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Canada became founding Members, joining the original 16 countries of the OEEC plus Spain and Germany which had enlisted several years earlier. Three years later, Japan became OECD’s twenty-first Member, followed by Finland (1969), Australia (1971), New Zealand (1973), Mexico (1994), Czech Republic (1995), and Hungary, Poland and Korea (1996). Pursuant to Article I of the OECD Convention, the Organisation was mandated to: – achieve the highest sustainable economic growth5 and employment and a rising standard of living in Member countries, while maintaining financial stability, and thus to contribute to the development of the world economy; – contribute to sound economic expansion in Member as well as non-member countries in the process of economic development; – contribute to the expansion of world trade on a multilateral, non-discriminatory basis in accordance with international obligations. Thorkil Kristensen (DEN), who had been serving as the Secretary-General of the OEEC in 1961, stayed on to head the OECD. He remained until 1969 when he was replaced by Emile van Lennep (NET). During the ‘50s, as the European Continent and Britain struggled to overcome the destruction and deprivation of five years of savage warfare, the OEEC understandably concentrated on macro-economic policy co-ordination and sector productivity. In 1953, the Organisation established the European Productivity Agency (EPA) as a policy think tank and operational arm of the institution. The EPA sponsored a broad-based programme of institution building, training, education and research – covering the areas of business management; trade unions; human factors; applied research; agriculture; development regions; and national activities, including information. “Environment” was not part of its early agenda. This situation began to change when the EPA, which operated through a committee structure of government representatives, established a Committee for Applied Research in 1957. Although throughout the lifetime of the OEEC (i.e., 1948-61) there was no environmental programme, the Applied Research Committee initiated several small studies of air and water pollution from industrial operations in the period 1958-60. Environment work of a more substantial nature was carried out in the late 1950s by the European Nuclear Energy Agency (ENEA) – later to be integrated

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5. The Convention drafters could not have foreseen the attention their then-innocuous reference to “sustainable economic growth” would receive in light of debate in the late 1980’s and beyond on the Organisation’s responsibility for promoting sustainable development.

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into the OECD. Established in 1957, the mandate of the ENEA required it to address nuclear waste disposal and the implications of nuclear radiation for man and the environment. Getting the Science Right: The 1960s When the OEEC was transformed into the OECD in 1960, “environment” was absent from the work programme of the new institution. Records of the early meetings of the OECD Governing Council fail to disclose any references to environmental issues, nor was the subject broached in speeches by senior Secretariat officials (apart from references to rehabilitating agricultural lands and fisheries). For example, Secretary-General Kristensen’s 1962 Annual Report to the OECD Council [C(62)180 of 10 November 1962] was silent on environmental matters. And, in his Introduction to the Report, the Secretary-General observed that, “Concerning the future, the tasks of the OECD will depend on the problems coming up in the economics field”. In fact, the scope of the 1962 report was, quite broad, covering economic policy, development assistance, trade and payments, agriculture, industry, manpower and science. Economic growth and increased productivity shaped the agenda, however: even the science component was cast strictly in terms of the potential contributions science could make to economic productivity. Soon thereafter, this began to change. In fact, even in 1962, evidence of environmental interests appeared in the OECD’s work programme and budget. That year an experts group study of Thermal Insulation for Buildings, sponsored by the OECD’s then Directorate for Scientific Affairs, considered how insulation could help abate air pollution as well as save energy and investment. The next year, the European Nuclear Energy Agency produced a Study of Problems Related to Radioactive Waste Disposal into the North Sea. In 1964, reports were issued by the Scientific Affairs Directorate on water pollution by detergents, methods for measuring air pollution and aircraft noise. In 1966, a seminal event in the history of OECD’s involvement in environmental affairs took place in Jouy-en-Josas, France, in the form of an ad hoc meeting on “Research on the Unintended Occurrence of Chemicals in the Environment”. Organised by the Directorate for Scientific Affairs, it attracted senior officials from 18 countries and a variety of international organisations, including FAO and WHO. The meeting recommendations provided the point of departure for OECD’s programme of chemical safety which has now spanned three-plus decades. Through the remainder of the1960s, OECD’s environmental work continued to broaden and deepen, building on the tested and proven working methods the Organisation had inherited from the OEEC era, including the collection of comprehensive, reliable and comparable data from every Member country. Previously, in

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the field of environment – as well as in economics and other fields – the availability of such data had been rare, and their accessibility to other countries even rarer. As revealed in the literature,6 OECD’s earliest work on environmental issues focused heavily on scientific and technological aspects. The Organisation encouraged research on environmental problems and promoted the development of scientific and technological resources in Member countries. This reflected the state of environmental management in the 1960s, both nationally and internationally. While governments were beginning to construct and pursue policy responses, their preoccupation was with identifying the sources and magnitudes of existing and potential problems, and establishing tools and systems to measure and monitor threats to human health and natural ecosystems. It was thus entirely logical that the Organisation’s initial focal points for environmental work were the Committee for Research Co-operation7 established in 1966 [C(66)35/Final]; and its supporting Directorate for Scientific Affairs. The Directorate managed a Research Co-operation Programme jointly conducted by two parallel units: a Science Policy Division and an Environmental Research Division. Assisting the Committee were a number of advisory and study groups whose names reveal the environmental priorities of the time: – Advisory Group on Water Research. – Research Group on Detergents. – Air Pollution Study Group on Auto Exhaust and Sulfur Products. – Study Group on Pesticides in the Environment. – Project Group on Water Basin Studies. – Study Group on Innovation in Urban Management. Technical and financial support for the Environmental Research Division’s work programme was quite modest. In 1967, it consisted of 6.5 man-years of professional staff support and a budget of 450 000 French Francs. Two years later, the Division’s professional staff complement had tripled 19 man-years, and the budget increased five-fold to FF 2.25 million. During the second half of the 1960s, Committee for Research Co-operation re-structured its subsidiary body apparatus for addressing environmental issues.

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6. Document ENV(70)14 provides a Bibliography of OECD Documents and Reports on the Environment that covers the entire decade of the ‘60s. 7. The committee sequence for addressing environmental concerns was actually from the Committee for Applied Research of the European Productivity Agency to a Committee for Scientific Research in the OECD in June 1961 to the Committee for Research Co-operation in 1966.

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This reflected the growing interest of OECD governments in the subject, the rapidly shifting environmental priorities in the Member countries, and the need to continually sharpen and strengthen the OECD approach. At the end of the decade, the Research Co-operation Committee was being supported by a number of more firmly-established, newly-named and betterresourced advisory bodies and study groups: – Advisory Group on Air Management Research. – Advisory Group on Water Management Research. – Consultative Group on Transportation Research. – Advisory Group on Urban Research. It is noteworthy that a number of the Environmental Research Division’s initial efforts were carried out jointly with other OECD directorates, principally the Directorate for Industry and Energy and the Directorate for Agriculture and Fisheries. Furthermore, the latter two directorates began to initiate their own specialised environmental studies in the latter half of the1960s. Environmental concerns were also evident elsewhere in the OECD “house”. For example, a report by the Energy Directorate in 1966, Energy Policy – Problems and Objectives, which reviewed the energy situation in OECD countries, addressed the “growing problem of safeguarding the environment while meeting overall energy needs”. In 1969, events converged to change dramatically the face of environmental affairs in the OECD. By the close of the decade, the concerns of OECD Member countries shifted from coping with scarcities and stimulating economic growth, which had dominated their thinking for two decades, to matters of how to manage surpluses (e.g., food) and how to transform economic increases into welfare benefits. When the OECD Council met at Ministerial level in February 1969, Ministers discussed the rapidly changing challenges their governments were facing, and called upon the Organisation to explore the “problems of modern society”. These were defined as: “the problems which arise in acute form in developed industrialised societies as the result of rapid growth in production and diversification of consumption, the continuous emergence of new technologies, and the acceleration of the process of urbanisation”. In response, the OECD Secretariat prepared what was to become a landmark study, Problems of Modern Society, which the Secretary-General (now Emile van

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Lennep) submitted to the Council in September 1969 [C(69)123]. Environmental issues were treated extensively as one of five sets of interrelated challenges for the future. For the first time, “environment” received prominent attention within the Organisation. The Council agreed that the theme “Problems of Modern Society” should be carried into its next meeting at Ministerial level, scheduled for May 1970. In preparation for the 1970 meeting of the Ministerial Council, Secretary-General van Lennep submitted another paper to the Council (in December 1969) entitled, Problems of Modern Society: Economic Growth, Environment and Welfare [C(69)168]. Its purpose was to “define the orientation” of the Organisation’s work in this area, and to begin to identify programme priorities. After first observing that “it would be generally agreed that OECD should concentrate on those problems of modern society that lie within the field of economic co-operation”, the SecretaryGeneral stressed that it was his “... strong conviction that the Organisation should interpret the challenge facing Modern Society in such a way that in defining the growth for the next decade emphasis is placed on the qualitative as opposed to the quantitative aspects of growth. That is, for the 1970s, we should put more emphasis on welfare, and less on growth for its own sake”.8 Then, most significantly, the Secretary-General stated that, “Within the framework of a policy placing relatively more emphasis on the qualitative aspects of economic growth, there is one important problem that appears not to have its proper place in our thinking – what may be called the ‘Environment Problem’. I suggest therefore that we need to define our activities particularly in respect of this problem when we ask the Ministerial Council in 1970 to set a growth target for the next decade with special emphasis on its qualitative aspects.” The Secretary-General’s report in December 1969 went on to elaborate on problems of pollution and resource degradation; and it pointed to the need for OECD to address them in relation to, inter alia, “external diseconomies”, “social economic product”, “long-term demand patterns” and the “international economic and trade implications of environmental policies”.

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8. From the point of view of the Organisation’s expanding environment programme, Emile van Lennep was the right man at the right time. He quickly embraced the Problems of Modern Society theme for the Organisation, in particular its quality-of-life orientation with sound environmental management one of the centrepieces. Van Lennep’s deep and abiding interest in the environmental dimension of economic growth was evident throughout his fifteen years at the Organisation’s helm, and long afterward. He often referred to himself as the “Father of Environment” in the OECD. In the early 1990s, van Lennep served as an advisor to Maurice Strong, Secretary-General of the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development, on international financing mechanisms for environmental protection in developing countries. And, following the conference, he worked for a newly-created Earth Council, investigating subsidies and other environmental disincentives, in a labour-of-love that was terminated only by his sudden death in 1997.

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The Secretary-General stated that the full array of Modern Society problems would be further examined by an existing Intra-Secretariat Group, with a view to presenting the next Ministerial Council with more precise ideas about problem priorities and how the OECD might organise itself to deal with them. Regarding organisation, the Secretary-General observed that, “The best way of handling discussions of these questions within the Organisation is, however, by no means clear cut, and will require more extensive consideration. A good deal depends on the extent of the technical knowledge now existing or which could fairly immediately be made available”. He noted that the decisions of the Ministers on this matter “could then be reflected in the 1971 Programme of Work of the Organisation”.

Building Environmental Capacity: The 1970s 1970-1975 In response to the OECD Council’s initial debate on Problems of Modern Society, Secretary-General van Lennep proposed in late 1969 the establishment of an ad hoc Preparatory Committee on the activities of the Organisation on environmental problems related to economic growth. The Council agreed in February 1970. The ad hoc Preparatory Committee, comprised of senior representatives of Member country governments, met twice that year, in March and April, drawing on an “orientations” paper [C(70)12] prepared by the SecretaryGeneral. The Committee’s final report recommended both programme and organisational changes. It was transmitted to the annual meeting of the OECD Council at Ministerial Level in May – appended to a Note by the SecretaryGeneral entitled, Economic Policies and the Problems of the Environment [C(70)70]. The Note and the ad hoc Preparatory Committee report were considered by the Ministers under an agenda topic on Economic Policies and Prospects in the OECD Area. The report of the ad hoc Preparatory Committee recommended a broad range of studies and work areas for the Organisation, related to the priority needs of national governments. The Committee urged, inter alia, that the OECD prepare “an inventory and intercomparison of national policies, regulations and financial and tax incentives for pollution abatement, including identification of those policies and practices having significance for international trade”. Regarding organisational questions, the ad hoc Preparatory Committee advanced five proposals that were to have a major impact on how and where environmental work would be carried out in the OECD in the years ahead:

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1. The sector groups presently attached to OECD’s Committee for Research Co-operation, dealing with questions of water, air, pesticides, transport and urban development, should be maintained and adapted so as to stress the multidisciplinary character of their work and the desire to contribute towards the formulation of recommendations with economic implications. 2. The creation of new sector groups could be contemplated so as to cover especially important fields which have not so far been fully explored by the Organisation, such as, the management of solid waste disposal, land use policy and noise abatement. 3. A central unit should be established within the Organisation to study the various sector problems in an integrated fashion with respect to analysis and evaluation as well as in terms of the solutions brought to them. 4. A Committee for Environmental Policy should be created, consisting of high level qualified members. The ad hoc Committee’s report noted that “Two Delegations explicitly indicated that they were unable to associate themselves with this proposal at the present stage”. 5. If an environment committee were established, it would no longer be necessary to retain two scientific committees, i.e., the existing Science Policy Committee and the Research Co-operation Committee, since most of the responsibilities of the latter would be transferred to the new environment body.

In his Note to the Council transmitting the ad hoc Preparatory Committee’s report, the Secretary-General endorsed most of the ideas advanced by the Committee, while adding some of his own philosophy and suggestions. He gave examples of “priority issues of an urgent nature that would lend themselves to study by the OECD through ad hoc working groups”:9 – air pollution from fuel combustion; – water pollution by detergents and fertilizers; – pesticides as related to growth in agricultural and industrial production and to public health; – water pollution by pulp and paper factories; – nuisances created by motor cars such as, air pollution, noise, solid waste, lack of safety, and urban congestion. Regarding the Preparatory Committee’s proposals for changes in the Organisation’s internal structure, the Secretary-General’s Note merely said that he would put “detailed proposals before the Council” following the next Council Ministerial meeting. In May 1970, the Ministerial Council gave a strong endorsement to the broad lines of the Secretary-General’s recommendations for strengthening the Organisa-

34

9. This list is of interest because the items subsequently found their way into the Organisation’s work programmes on pollution and on the urban environment in the first half of the1970s.

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tion’s environmental capacity and programme; and the Ministers supported his proposal to “shortly put forward proposals to the Council for adapting the Organisation’s structure to ensure proper co-ordination of environmental activities”. One month later, Mr. van Lennep presented his structural proposals to the Council in a Note of 24th June 1970 [C(70)110]. Annexed to the Note was a Draft Resolution of the Council (approved on 24 June) terminating the mandate of the Committee for Research Co-operation and creating an Environment Committee.10 Regarding a possible restructuring of the Secretariat to strengthen its capacity to support Member countries in the field of environment, the Secretary-General stated11 that “the arguments in favour of modifying the Committee structure apply with equal force to the Secretariat”. Elaborating, Mr. van Lennep observed that:

“Environmental problems must necessarily be looked at in all their different aspects. Scientific and technical investigations are necessary to assess the true nature of these problems, their past and future magnitude and the solutions which modern technology can offer them. But public decisions cannot rest on this basis alone, regardless of the administrative and legal difficulties and the economic consequences inherent in all action in this sphere. The organisation of work within the Secretariat must in any event be guided by the multi-disciplinary principle. It cannot be centered exclusively either on the Directorate for Scientific Affairs or the Department of Economics and Statistics. No doubt the economic aspects of environmental problems merit particularly attentive study in an Organisation devoted to economic co-operation and development. But the type of work needed in the initial stage is a matter for decision optimisation techniques, which are more akin to microeconomics than to macroeconomics and the use of which is still largely unfamiliar to this Organisation. The new functions, which the Organisation intends to assume in the particularly complex field of the environment, call for the creation of a new unit inside the Secretariat. It is indeed desirable, both for reasons of principle, such as, the need to integrate all elements which can throw light on environmental problems, and for the practical reasons of efficient management, that there should be a focal point from which environmental work will initiate and which will service the new Committee. It is for this reason that the Secretary-General deems it necessary to create a new Directorate stemming from the Division of the Directorate of Scientific Affairs at present responsible for handling environmental problems. This proposal will be reflected in the programme of work for 1971, which will shortly be submitted to the Council. It is on the basis of this new Directorate, manned by specialists in different disciplines, that an integrated approach to environmental problems, calling on the contribution of a certain number of other Directorates can effectively be made.”

10. Note that the term “Policy” used in the ad hoc Preparatory Committee’s recommendation of a Committee for Environmental Policy had, for some reason, disappeared. 11. Statement can be found in the OECD document C(70)110.

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Thus, the next step in the process was for the Secretary-General to lay out the specifics of his proposal to establish a new Directorate to spearhead the Secretariat’s expanded effort on environmental issues. This he did in the 1971 Programme of Work for the OECD.12 Chapter IV of the Programme of Work was, in fact, dedicated to the “Environment”. In the Introduction to the document, Mr. van Lennep re-stated his call for a major strengthening of the Organisation’s environmental work:

“The Council meeting at Ministerial level last May (1970) recognised that governmental interest in maintaining or promoting an acceptable human environment must now be developed in the framework of economic growth. The Ministers agreed that the Organisation should pursue its work on environment by putting greater emphasis on economic and trade implications, relating this to qualitative objectives of growth policies and proposing concerted solutions to problems having substantial international implications. The proposed programme of work based on the conclusions of the ad hoc Preparatory Committee (ENV(70)11) is in part designed to develop the economic context of environmental problems, and in part constitutes a direct continuation of previous work of the Organisation dealing with management of environmental resources. The work will be under the direct supervision of the proposed new Environment Committee which will be free, within its terms of reference, to refine further its approach towards the development of environmental activities in the Organisation.” The Secretary-General went on to state that: “The study of environmental problems, notably those associated with water, air, pesticides, transportation, noise and urban development, has been a feature of the Organisation’s programme of work for many years. Initiated by the Committee for Research Co-operation, and concentrating at the outset on the technological aspects of the problems, the responsible Sector Groups have gradually developed a policy confrontation and integrated management approach to the problems of special significance to Member countries. These studies will now be extended to embrace economic factors in environmental policy formulation.”

Commenting on the content and conduct of future OECD environmental work, van Lennep emphasised the need for a “dynamic and multidisciplinary approach ... since a purely sectoral approach ends up in a dispersion of efforts and a lack of homogeneity”. He also called for “basing policy conclusions on firm scientific and technical data”.

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12. Presented by the Secretary-General to the Council in October 1970 as C(70)125.

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The Secretary-General then laid out the details of his plans for strengthening the Secretariat’s capacity to carry out a much-expanded work programme on environmental issues, principally through the creation of an Environment Directorate:

“The Environment Directorate will consist of a Central Analysis and Evaluation Unit and two Divisions. The Central Unit, representing the major integrating element in the structure of the Directorate and the operating Divisions, will be responsible for development of analytical methods and will foster an integrated approach to environmental problems and policies. The Division of Natural Resources and Pollution Control will be responsible for the water management and pollution control work, the air pollution control work, and the work on pesticides and related chemicals. Finally, the Division of Urban Environment and Land Use Planning will be responsible for work in urban transportation and management and in urban growth and renewal.”

To support this new effort, the Secretary-General included in his 1971 Programme of Work presentation to the Council a call for a major expansion of resources to be devoted to the environment. At the time of the Programme submission, OECD’s Scientific Affairs Directorate had 19 staff assigned to environmental activities (and an environment budget of FF 2.25 million). The Secretary-General proposed that all 19 positions should be transferred to the new Environment Directorate, along with 3 other posts that existed elsewhere in the Secretariat ... and, that this should be augmented by the creation of 15 new positions. As it turned out, following the Council’s approval of a programme and budget for 1971, the Environment Directorate began its work that year with a staff of 35 and a budget of FF 4.4 million. Secretary-General’s Staffing Proposals for New Environment Directorate Direction and Control Central Analysis Unit Natural Resources Division Urban Div. Total

1A7

1A7

1A6

1A6

1A5 1A5 1A5 3A5

2A4 4A4 2A4 8A4

4A2/3 3A2/3 7A2/3

3B 2B 7B 5B 17B

In his Programme of Work presentation, van Lennep also addressed the matter of the existing environmental Sector Groups (on water, air and transportation) that had been operating under the Committee for Research Co-operation. He said that

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they would hereafter fall under the direction of the Environment Committee. He added that the existing Groups would not “exhaust the full range of environmental policy responsibilities”. As an example, he called attention to the fact that “A policy study of pesticides and related chemicals will be completed before the end of 1970, and that the Environment Committee will be called upon to decide on the desirability of establishing a Management Sector Group in this sector”. The Secretary-General further indicated that it was likely that an Urban Growth and Renewal Sector Group would be proposed to the new Committee in 1971, as an outgrowth of the present work of the Organisation on innovation in urban management. In September 1970, the Committee for Research Co-operation held its final meeting, with delegates acknowledging that “ the creation of an Environment Committee in OECD was the logical and even inevitable conclusion of its present work”. They also noted “the timeliness of, and need for, a broader approach to its environmental activities which now would encompass economic, legislative and administrative aspects which the Committee had begun to touch on in the more recent years”.13 Further, the Research Co-operation Committee “urged the Environment Committee not to lose sight of the underlying scientific and technological research required for solving environmental problems”; and delegates identified a number of reports that they felt deserved special attention by the new committee. These included a report from an OECD Conference on Sonic Boom Research plus several others recently completed by the Research Co-operation Committee’s groups on Urban Traffic Noise and Air Management. In addition, Research Co-operation Committee delegates recommended that a new study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Critical Environmental Problems be reviewed by the Environment Committee in the near future. A New Programme is Launched: the OECD Environment Committee was formally established by act of the Council on 22 July, 1970. Three months earlier, the Environmental Research Division of the Directorate for Scientific Affairs had turned its attention to the transition to a new environmental structure in the Organisation, and had initiated preparations for the new Committee’s first meeting – since the Environment Directorate did not officially come into being until 1 January 1971. The Secretariat’s preparatory efforts were led by Hilliard Roderick, a Deputy Director in the Directorate for Scientific Affairs (which was headed by Alexander King). The Environment Committee held its inaugural session on 24-25 November, 1970. Christian A. Herter, Jr., from the United States, was elected Chairman and held the position until he was replaced by Hiroto Ota of Japan in 1973. In an opening statement, Secretary-General van Lennep set out his views on the role and func38

13. Text located in OECD document ENV(70)16.

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tioning of the Committee as well as of its subsidiary bodies; and also identified a series of issues which he felt deserved the Committee’s early attention.14 The Secretary-General told the Committee that, given the urgency of the environmental threats, the Member countries no longer seemed content to have the OECD play a passive role or maintain a piecemeal approach toward the problems. He advised that there should not be “paralysis by analysis” in the work programme; and that studies should be “translated into positive advice and recommendations within a fairly short time”. Mr. van Lennep also urged the Committee “to promote and pursue a multidisciplinary approach which integrates science, economics, legal and administrative considerations”, and “to avoid a concentration on immediacy to the exclusion of potential threats only now dimly perceived”. Further, the “legitimate concern” about addressing problems with broad geographical impact should not be at the expense of work on problems of cities (reflecting the high priority given by OECD to urban problems in the early years). Regarding “the kinds of questions that your Committee will need to consider”, the Secretary-General cited:

– Who shall pay, and how, for reducing pollution and improving the environment, while retaining the values of the market economy? – In order to secure compliance with environmental measures, should reliance be placed on incentives, prohibitions or penalties, or some combination of all three? What are the respective roles and responsibilities of business and government in restoring environmental amenities? – Where there appears to be no immediate harm for human health or the environment, and where the longer-term effects are only speculative, what criteria shall govern public action? – In the case of environmental hazards which may have global implications, who shall have the power to act, and who shall enforce compliance? – What institutional innovations and reforms in private and public organisations will be necessary to make them more sensitive and responsive to the new public demands and rising expectations for a better environment? – How shall the price differentials that may result from the uneven internalisation of the costs of environmental control be dealt with in the international market place?

14. See OECD document ENV/M(70)1 Annex 1.

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Judging from the environmental work programme the OECD undertook in the 1970s, the Secretary-General was extremely prescient, or influential, or both in his formulation of the key issues for the Organisation. At this first meeting of the Environment Committee,15 delegates concentrated on debating the scope of their mandate, the desired working relationships with other OECD committees, which subsidiary bodies (i.e., “Sector Groups”) they wished to establish, and which “ad hoc” studies to initiate in the near term. Their discussions on these issues carried over into the Committee’s second meeting (24-26 March 1971), which also included on the agenda consideration of OECD’s responses to invitations to participate in the UN Conference on the Human Environment scheduled for 1972, and in the ECE-sponsored regional preparatory conference to be held in Prague 2-15 May, 1971.16 By the end of the Environment Committee’s second session in March 1971, the shape of its subsidiary body structure and work programme was apparent ... and these would remain intact to guide the Organisation’s environmental efforts through most of the decade of the 1970s. The principal subsidiary bodies were the following: • Sector Group on Air Management. • Sector Group on Water Management. • Sector Group on the Urban Policy. • Sector Group on the Unintended Occurrence of Chemicals in the Environment. • Sub-Committee of Economic Experts. • A Sector Group on Waste Management was under consideration within the Environment Committee. By Spring 1971, the Committee had also agreed that small experts groups would carry out the following ad hoc studies: – The Impact of the Motor Vehicle on the Environment. – Pollution from the Pulp and Paper Industry. – Pollution from Central Power Plants.

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15. One of the background documents for the first meeting of the Committee was a comprehensive Bibliography of OECD Documents on the Environment, extending back to the mid-1960s [ENV(70)14.] 16. See OECD document ENV(70)12.

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The Committee further decided that: – other ad hoc studies which were being proposed by some Member countries – specifically on solid waste and pesticides in agriculture – should be carried out by the appropriate Sector Group, rather than by establishing additional ad hoc study groups; – a small Sub-Committee of National Economic Experts17 with representation from Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom should be established “for a 1-year experimental period” to a) advise on and review the work of the Central Analysis and Evaluation Unit of the Environment Directorate, and b) report to the Committee on economic matters, including trade and other selected issues related to major environmental problems, with particular reference to the multi-disciplinary aspects of these problems. By the end of its second year of existence, the OECD’s Environment Committee – with its focus on integrating economics and environment – was clearly the “place to be” for senior environmental policy makers in the Member countries. It was also an attractive forum for an array of other prominent public figures with environmental interests. As one example, at the Committee’s 5th session, in June 1972, Her Majesty Queen Juliana and the Prince of The Netherlands attended a special discussion of Long-Term Environmental Problems and Their Possible Impact on Economic Growth. Finding Partners: one of the Environment Committee’s early preoccupations was trying to improve the quality and content of its work, and to extend its influence, through co-operation with other components of the OECD as well as with other international organisations and institutions in non-Member countries. Delegates thus decided at their second meeting to invite representatives from other Directorates, and Chairs of other OECD Committees (particularly the Chairs of the Industry, Agriculture and Energy Committees, and of Working Party 2 of the Economic Policy Committee) to attend Environment Committee meetings. However, efforts to attract Chairmen (or even other Bureau members) from other committees proved unproductive; and the especially-desired engagement of the Economic Policy Committee in programme collaboration never materialised in a meaningful way. This early disappointment with the pursuit of internal-OECD policy integration on environmental issues was to re-surface at different times and in different ways over the next three decades. Despite the failure to obtain other-committee participation in Environment Committee meetings, inter-committee environmental work began to appear in 17. This small Sub-Committee was the forerunner of the Committee’s Group on Economic and Environment Policy Integration.

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the Organisation’s work programme in the early ‘70s. In June 1972, the Environment Committee approved a joint policy study with the Industry Committee on the recycling of wastes and the disposal of waste concentrates. This was the forerunner of the Environment Committee’s comprehensive work programme on waste management. Attracting Secretariat officials from other Directorates to Environment Committee meetings proved more successful. Representatives of the Directorates of Scientific Affairs, Agriculture, Industry and NEA began to regularly attend Environment Committee sessions, as did officials from the IEA after its creation in 1975. This reflected an expansion of work on environmental issues across the OECD “house”. In a 1972 report by the Environment Directorate on the Organisation’s environmental activities [ENV(72)20], designed as an OECD contribution to the UN Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm, relevant projects were identified in the work programmes of the Committee for Science and Technology; Committee for Manpower and Social Affairs; Development Assistance Committee; Development Centre; Working Party 2 of the Economic Policy Committee; Trade Committee; Committee for Agriculture and Fisheries; Industry Committee; Energy Committee; and the Steering Committee for Reactor Safety of the Nuclear Energy Agency. Longstanding work by the Committee on Manpower and Social Affairs on social indicators was of special interest to the Environment Committee and Environment Directorate. In 1972, Belgium, Germany and The Netherlands requested that the Environment Committee launch a project on environmental indicators. The result was that the two committees joined forces, and a component on the environment, developed by the Environment Committee, was included in the OECD’s social indicators database and publications. This was the beginning of what to evolve into a major, independent Environment Committee work programme on environmental data and indicators that continued through the ‘80s and ‘90s. In 1974 and 1975, the Environment Directorate’s Urban Affairs Division worked on urban environmental indicators and published a book on this subject in 1975. Also notable was OECD’s first engagement on environmental education in the form of a workshop with that title convened in 1971 by the Organisation’s Centre for Education Research and Innovation (CERI). By the third meeting of the Environment Committee (September 1971), delegates were requesting greater interaction with the private sector, and especially with industry. Calls for meetings with representatives of the Business and Industry Advisory Committee to OECD (BIAC) were extended to include requests for sessions with the Trade Union Advisory Committee (TUAC).18 By mid-decade, BIAC had 42

18. There is no record in the 1970s of suggestions of meetings with environmental NGOs.

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established its own Environment Committee, and discussions with members of the Bureau of the Environment Committee were held on an ad hoc basis. The Environment Committee and the Environment Directorate rapidly began to interact with other international bodies. The Council of Europe (CoE) and UNECE became formal observers at Committee meetings in 1971; and the UNEP was accorded observer status in 1974. Technical exchanges were held with these three organisations in the course of the Committee’s work, and also with the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the GATT, as OECD’s environmental work on policy guidelines and data collection began to have important implications for countries beyond the OECD region. Technical co-operation also began with the Commission of the European Communities (CEC), which had official status in the OECD Council and all its subsidiary bodies, including the Environment Committee. Programme Priorities: during the first half of the 1970s, OECD’s environmental priorities were: to complete certain work underway when the transition was made from the Committee on Research Co-operation to the Environment Committee; to add an economic and social dimension to other ongoing work that the new Committee wished to extend; and to launch new activities designed to clarify economicenvironment linkages, as well as to develop policy guidelines and options for national decision-makers on a range of pollution and natural resources management issues. Concern about economic-environment relationships dominated the discussions and work programme of the Environment Committee and Directorate, this in response to priorities established by the OECD Council and the Secretary-General. The Committee kept reminding its Sector Groups to “consider economics at the very outset of all project design efforts, and to maintain this dimension in project implementation”. The Sub-Committee of National Economic Experts, and the Directorate’s Central Analysis and Evaluation Unit, were expected to ensure that the economics work “produced practical results; that there was strong integration of economics and technical work in the various Sector Groups; and that the Environment Committee’s studies were embedded in the Organisation’s overall economicand productivity-oriented programmes”. A major influence on OECD’s early environmental work was an extended Seminar on the Problems of Environment Economics held during the period April through June 1971. Organised by the newly-created Central Analysis and Evaluation Unit, it was conceived to supply the Environment Directorate with a maximum of knowledge in a minimum of time on environment-economy relationships, to be used as background for helping the Environment Committee define key policy issues and programme initiatives. Some 25 participants, representing the most advanced researchers and practical authorities, took part in the Seminar. They formulated programme recommendations covering: problems and instruments of

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environmental cost allocation; methods of analysis and environmental indicators; and international problems, including trade-environment policy relationships, standards, and the economics of international transmission of pollution. Beyond providing the conceptual framework and basic directions for the Environment Committee’s pioneering work on environmental economics – including the Polluter Pays Principle, trade-environment linkages and transfrontier pollution – the seminar led to the publication Problems in Environmental Economics (OECD, 1972), prepared in part as an OECD contribution to the UN Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm. Trade-environment relationships, a priority OECD concern in the 1990s, first received attention from the Organisation in the early 1970s. In March 1971, the Environment Committee requested its Sub-Committee of National Economic Experts, assisted by the Central Analysis and Evaluation Unit, “to examine foreign trade issues in relation to environmental policies”. The following September, the Environment Secretariat responded to this call with a paper on the International Aspects of Environmental Policies.19 It set out the state of knowledge in this field, and included two Annexes covering: The Impact of Environmental Measures on International Trade in Some Policy Areas; and The Role of Uniform Standards in International Environmental Management. In the conduct of the analysis, the Sub-Committee of National Experts and the Central Analysis and Evaluation Unit drew on a consultant report on the use of economic instruments for implementing environmental policies, and on trade and associated economic problems which might arise out of the impact of environmental policies.20 Undoubtedly the most important product of the Organisation’s early work on environment-economy relationships was the OECD Guiding Principles Concerning the International Economic Aspects of Environmental Policies. Adopted by the Council on 26 May 1972, the Principles included the famous Polluter Pays Principle, a non-subsidisation approach to assigning the costs of pollution control. The other “Guiding Principles”, while less well-remembered, were equally powerful concepts, subsuming: a) the harmonisation of environmental standards to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of environmental policies while preventing trade distortions; b) national treatment and non-discrimination to ensure conformity of environmental policies with GATT rules; c) procedures to promote conformity of product standards; and, d) compensatory import levies and export rebates. These “Guiding Principles” had a strong influence on the content of OECD environmental work through the remainder of the 1970s and beyond. Follow-up 44

19. See OECD document ENV(71)22. 20. Survey of Environmental Protection Policies [ENV(71)4].

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efforts to elaborate and apply the Principles, and to monitor Member country responses thereto, generated a stream of new concepts and studies (e.g., OECD’s first country environmental review was initiated in 1973 with a study of Sweden’s performance in relation to the Principles). In addition to the Environment Directorate and Environment Committee, the OECD Economics Department and Working Party 2 of the Economics Policy Committee became active in this field in the early 1970s. A project on the Macroeconomic Implications of Environmental Policy, initiated in 1971, was, in fact, the first significant foray by the Economics Department into the field of environment, as well as the OECD’s initial examination of environment-employment relationships. This was part of a broader, intensive effort by the OECD to examine a key question of the time: “How much does it cost nations to protect the environment?” ... as industry began to complain vigorously about the financial impact of environmental regulations, and government officials worried about national trade and competitiveness impacts. These same concerns persisted over the subsequent three decades, with the levels of intensity being in inverse relationship to the health of national economies. OECD’s contribution was to help its Member country governments counter industry’s assertions that environmental regulations were bad for the country and for the economy. The Organisation’s Environment Programme first looked at the macro picture, including an examination of the economic implications of standard setting, and then turned to the micro situation through studies of emission control costs in the textile, aluminum, iron and steel and fertiliser industries. Chemical safety emerged as another early OECD environmental priority. At the Environment Committee’s first meeting (November 1970), the United States proposed the creation of “a consultative process whereby Member countries would notify and consult each other through OECD about any intended or current national measures taken as regards bioactive substances such as, pesticides, therapeutic drugs, food additives, chemical pollutants, which would affect the interests of other countries” [ENV/M(70)1 Annex III]. The Committee agreed the following year to undertake a two-year pilot project on an “early warning system”, formally the OECD Notification and Consultation Procedure on Measures for Control of Substances Affecting Man and his Environment. However, the project was abandoned after three years due to lack of government use of the procedure, and the fact that Member country governments were reporting only after-the-fact control measures rather than those being proposed. Nonetheless, this concept of prior consultation among nations on current and proposed actions was subsequently extended within the OECD to other (non-

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chemical) areas; and it was later embraced by other international bodies and nations in the form of “Prior Informed Consent” requirements. In 1970, the Environment Committee received the final report of the Study Group on Unintended Occurrence of Pesticides in the Environment that had been established by the Directorate for Scientific Affairs as a principal follow-up to the Jouy-en-Josas conference in 1966. The Study Group argued that a balance must be struck between the beneficial use of specific chemicals in agriculture and industry and limiting the use of these chemicals. Achieving this would require a better understanding of the costs and benefits of chemical production and use, both economic and environmental, including the public health and ecological consequences. The report called upon OECD to obtain and analyse information from all sources on designated chemicals, and to assess the potential economic and environmental consequences of national legislation aimed regulating the use of pesticides and pesticide residues. Based on the Study Group’s recommendations, the Environment Committee decided to extend the work programme on chemicals, beginning with an ad hoc experts meeting in January 1971 on the trade effects and other implications of present and proposed legislation to control pesticides and other related chemicals. In March 1971, the Committee agreed to establish a Sector Group on Unintended Occurrence of Chemicals in the Environment. This broadened the scope of the work programme beyond pesticides, and shifted the focus from scientific inquiry to preventative and curative action. In 1975, this Sector Group evolved into the OECD Chemicals Group. Early 1970 Environment Committee initiatives also included successful work within the Organisation to gain Member country agreement on measures to reduce levels of mercury and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in the environment. This led directly to the structuring of a comprehensive approach to assessing, monitoring and controlling man-made chemicals, and also to a methodology for chemicals management, involving close government-industry collaboration to share costs and accelerate testing. These became central elements of an OECD programme on chemicals management that was to evolve into one of the hallmarks of the Organisation’s environmental efforts overall.

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In the field of air pollution, in 1971 the Environment Committee’s Air Management Sector Group advanced a proposal for a Co-operative Technical Project to Measure the Long-Range Transport of Air Pollutants (LTRAP), a measurement project that would involve co-operation among national measuring stations in OECD Member countries. The goal was to establish whether existing standards for air pollution emissions, and methods being used to disperse such emissions were, in fact, inadvertently contributing to air pollution being carried long distances into other countries. Eleven Member countries participated in the project.

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Six years later, the Co-operative Technical Project ended, after having produced extensive data on long-range transport and its impact on the environment, and having demonstrated convincingly that transboundary pollution and acid rain deposition were Europe-wide problems. This was the first time that a multi-dimensional environmental problem had been defined and analysed successfully at the international level. In 1978, the UNECE, in association with the WMO and the UNEP, launched a Co-operative Programme for Monitoring and Evaluation of Long-Range Transportation of Air Pollutants in Europe (EMEP). This was built on the OECD work, and drew the countries of Eastern Europe into an expanded effort. In 1979, the Framework Convention on LRTAP was negotiated within the UNECE and signed by 34 nations of Europe and North America. OECD’s Co-operative Technical Project, together with concurrent air pollution studies by the Environment Committee’s Sub-Committee of National Economic Experts, propelled the OECD to the forefront of emerging international efforts to address the economic, legal and administrative aspects of transfrontier pollution. The Sub-Committee examined the Economic Theory of Transfrontier Theory, with emphasis on air pollution and on pollution of the Rhine River; and explored a possible Mutual Compensation Principle, involving side payments to provide an equitable sharing of costs. It also began to elaborate a variety of “legal principles”, with the Sub-Committee turning itself into a de facto Legal Group. The work on legal aspects came to a halt in mid-decade, however, as Member country governments began to express concern that the emerging international principles could conflict with national sovereignty. Early 1970’s environmental priorities for OECD also included noise pollution. One of the Organisation’s first ventures involved the sponsorship of a Sonic Boom Conference in 1970, organised by the Committee for Research Co-operation. The focus quickly shifted from airplanes to vehicular and other noises in cities, with the work spearheaded by the Environment Committee’s Sector Group on Urban Policy. Based on the Sector Group’s analyses and recommendations, OECD Environment Ministers approved a Council Recommendation on Noise Prevention and Abatement in 1974.21 This led to an expansion of work on noise, including the creation of ad hoc Group on Noise Pollution in 1975; and to a second Council Recommendation, in 1978, on Noise Abatement Policies,22 which urged Member country governments to introduce compensation procedures to deal with situations when preventative measures proved inadequate. The work programme activities were pulled together, evaluated and presented at an International Conference on Noise convened by the OECD in 1980. 21. See OECD document C(74)217. 22. See OECD document C(78)73.

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OECD Environment Ministers Meet: a highlight of the 1970-75 period was the convening of the first meeting of the Environment Ministers of the (then) twenty-four OECD countries, from 13-14 November 1974. This was technically the initial meeting of the OECD Environment Committee at Ministerial Level.23 The Chair was Mrs. Gro Harlem Brundtland, then Norway’s Environment Minister, who later became sequentially the country’s Prime Minister, chair of the World Commission on Environment and Development, and head of the World Health Organisation. The theme of the Ministerial was “Environmental Policies Looking Ahead to the 1980s: The Responsibilities of Industrialised Societies and the Role of the OECD”. A point of departure for the discussions were the conclusions of the UN Conference on the Human Environment held in Stockholm two years earlier, particularly the responsibilities of OECD Member countries which emanated from it. Ministers agreed that environmental policymaking was moving into a second phase, one in which greater emphasis would have to be placed on policy integration, and on international cooperation (East-West and North-South) to deal with transboundary problems. Three background documents prepared by the Environment Directorate were submitted to the Ministers: a brief review of the Environment Committee’s Achievements from 1970-74;24 a report on Policy Implications of the Environmental Impacts of Energy Policy and Use;25 and, OECD and the Environment: A Bibliography.26 The products of the Ministerial included ten “Action Proposals”27 that subsequently took the form of OECD Council Recommendations. Ministers also issued a Declaration of Environmental Policy entitled, The World Environment 1972-1992: Two Decades of Challenge, a document that was characterised in a major review of international environmental progress, as the “first coherent statement of environmental policy by the industrialised nations”. The Ministerial Declaration begins by avowing that “the protection and progressive improvement of the quality of the environment is a major objective of the OECD Member countries”. It is a succinct policy statement, barely over one page; consequently, it does not address the specifics of OECD’s future work programme. The Environment Ministers did, however, discuss the Organisation’s past and future environmental work in the general debate. Regarding achievements, Ministers singled out the OECD “Guiding Principles” [especially the Polluter Pays Principle (PPP)]; transboundary pollution work; the Notification and Consultation

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23. 24. 25. 26. 27.

The summary report of the Ministerial is presented in ENV/M(74)4. See OECD document ENV(74)25. See OECD document ENV(74)26. OECD, 1974. They are included in the listing of Council Acts at the end of this section.

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Procedure; work on toxic chemicals; and the control measures taken on mercury and PCBs. The opening remarks by OECD Secretary-General van Lennep28 appear to have been influential in shaping the Ministerial debate on future challenges for OECD nations; and also in helping Ministers to define the Environment Committee’s priorities for the second half of the 1970s. His statement emphasised four sets of major challenges: the energy-environment problem; long-term environmental hazards; international aspects of environmental policies; and transfrontier pollution. Ministerial Follow-Up: the year following the Environment Ministerial, 1975, was a key one in the history of OECD’s environmental work. Drawing on insights gained from the just-completed country review of Sweden, the Environment Committee selected four “environmental management options” for governments which were to be the subject of special attention in the work programme: – subsidies and financial incentives; – use of best available technologies; – use of charges; – handling of products containing chemicals. In addition, based on what was broadly judged to have been a very useful review of Sweden, there was enthusiasm in the Committee for conducting similar reviews of other OECD Members. A number of countries expressed a willingness to be candidates for review; and the Committee agreed to study Japan next. The 1974 Environment Ministerial gave impetus to another major environmental theme for the OECD, one which began to emerge at the very outset of OECD’s environment work in the ‘70s. This was comprehensive environmental planning, including land-use and the incorporation of environmental considerations at an early stage of decision-making in all sectors likely to have significant environmental effects. Ministers had agreed that one way of integrating environmental policies more easily with other policies was through the preparation of environmental impact assessments (EIAs). To give effect to this, they included in their Declaration the principle of environmental assessment, supported by a Council Recommendation on the Analysis of the Environmental Consequences of Significant Public and Private Projects.29 Subsequently, major work on EIA was undertaken by the OECD throughout the remainder of the decade. At the mid-point of the decade, the Committee began to discuss the issue of stratospheric ozone depletion. This followed a proposal from Canada and the 28. See OECD document ENV/M(74)4. 29. See OECD document C(74)216.

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United States in 1975 that the OECD Notification and Consultation Procedure be employed to collect data from Member countries on the production, use and trade in chlorofluorocarbons. And, as agreed by the Ministers, the Environment Committee made a new attempt at engaging other OECD counterparts in co-operative activities. This was facilitated by an instruction from the OECD Council to all committees that, “A horizontal approach (to programme implementation) should be encouraged through joint meetings between subsidiary bodies”.30 It is not apparent from the record, however, that this led to any dramatic changes in inter-committee cooperation. As the decade progressed, energy and environment activities assumed greater importance in the work programme of the Environment Committee, and in the OECD more broadly. This was propelled by the “energy crisis” of 1973-74, with the Environment Ministers recognising the environmental implications at their 1974 meeting. The OECD Environment Ministerial had come on the heels of a call in December 1973 by US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger for the creation of an Energy Action Group within the OECD family of nations. This was intended to serve as a counterbalance to OPEC. The Group was quickly established, and then transformed in November 1974 into the International Energy Agency (IEA), and attached to the OECD as a quasi-autonomous body. The IEA’s charter called for work on issues related to energy conservation and the development of alternative sources, although “environment” per se was not mentioned; and the Agency rapidly began to include environmental projects in its programme, some carried out in collaboration with the Environment Directorate. OECD Council Acts on Environment: one of the “signatures” of the Environment Committee during the first half of the 1970s and beyond was the systematic conversion of its technical work into formal OECD Council Acts. The Acts were designed to either commit OECD governments to take certain actions (i.e., “Decisions”), or require the governments to consider pursuing certain objectives and making good faith efforts to achieve them (i.e. “Recommendations”). In 1973, the Environment Committee expressly asked its Sector Groups to consider for each activity whether it should lead to a Council Act. As a result, through 1975, the Council approved fourteen Recommendations on the environment, plus one Decision and one Resolution. Ten of the Recommendations were approved at the time of the first meeting of the Environment Committee at Ministerial Level, in November 1974. 50

30. Note the use of the term “horizontal approach”, which re-appeared in the mid-1990s.

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Decision • Protection of the Environment by Control of Polychlorinated Biphenyls – [C(73)1(Final)]. Resolution • A Procedure for Notification and Consultation on Measures for Control of Substances Affecting Man or His Environment – [C(71)73(Final)]. Recommendations • Determination of the Biodegradability of Anionic Synthetic Surface Active Agents [C(71)83(Final)]. • Guiding Principles Concerning International Economic Aspects of Environmental Policies [C(72)128]. • Measures to Reduce all Man-Made Emissions of Mercury to the Environment [C(73)172(Final)]. • Guidelines to Reduce Emissions of Sulphur Oxides and Particulate Matter from Fuel Combustion in Stationary Sources [C(74)16(Final)]. • Assessment of the Potential Environmental Effects of Chemicals [C(24)215]. • Analysis of the Environmental Consequences of Significant Public and Private Projects [C(74)216]. • Noise Prevention and Abatement [C(74)217]. • Traffic Limitation and Low-Cost Improvement of the Urban Environment [C(74)218]. • Measures Required for Further Air Pollution Control [C(74)219]. • The Control of Eutrophication of Waters [C(74)220]. • Strategies for Specific Water Pollution Control [C(74)221]. • Energy and the Environment [C(74)222]. • The Implications of the Polluter Pays Principle [C(74)223]. • Principles Concerning Transfrontier Pollution [C(74)224].

The titles of these Acts provide a good insight into the Organisation’s work programme priorities through the first half of the 1970s. Beyond environment-economy relationships, the Committee and Directorate focused heavily on energy issues, chemicals, and air and water pollution. The problems of cities also commanded significant attention; waste management issues were beginning to be dealt with; and land use matters, particularly in the urban environment and coastal zone, constituted the remainder of the agenda. It is noteworthy that the proliferation of draft OECD Decisions and Recommendations being submitted by all committees to the Council triggered a backlash. In

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early 1976, the Council and Secretary-General instructed Committees to advance only those proposed Acts that were “strong and verifiable”. It is safe to assume that the Environment Committee’s penchant for Acts contributed heavily to (if not provoked) this reaction – given the disproportionate number of Acts this Committee was generating in relation to other OECD bodies. The Council’s concern apparently had some effect. In the second half of the ‘70s, the Environment Committee rejected a number of proposed Acts advanced by its Sector Groups, and sent others back for strengthening. Overall, however, the Environment Committee kept sending Recommendations and Decisions to the Council. The wisdom of this was revealed in a variety of ways in later years, in particular in the early 1990s when a bevy of new nations, seeking membership in the Organisation, were confronted with the need to commit to the collective body of OECD Council Acts. And, probably much to their surprise, that included a very heavy dose of “environment”, especially in the areas of chemical safety and transboundary movement of hazardous wastes. This was a strong and proper message to would-be Members that “environment matters” in the “Rich Man’s Club”; and that they must get their environmental houses in order as part of the price of admission.31 1976-1979 By 1976, OECD’s institutional arrangements for conducting a coherent programme on environmental issues were basically in place, both in the Secretariat and in the Organisation’s Committee structure. There was also a good sense of programme direction and priorities as the result of, inter alia, the 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm, the 1974 OECD Environment Ministerial, and continuous deliberations on long-term strategies and programme activities by the Environment Committee and its quite active Sector Groups. Emile van Lennep remained OECD’s Secretary-General throughout the second half of the decade; Jim MacNeill (CAN) replaced Hilliard Roderick as Director for Environment in 1978; and the chairmanship of the Environment Committee passed from Hiroto Oka (Japan) to Tony Fairclough (UK) in 1976 and then to Erik Lykke (NOR) in 1979. Institutional Structure: in 1976, the Environment Committee had the following subsidiary bodies:32 • Group of Economic Experts (evolving in 1975 from the earlier Sub-Committee of National Economic Experts).

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31. A good description of OECD’s environmental work and achievements during the first half of the 1970s, plus an inventory of OECD Council Acts on the environment and a bibliography of major reports and studies, are contained in OECD and the Environment (OECD, 1976). 32. See Annex 4 for a description of the changes in the structure of the Environment Committee and in the Environment Directorate, over the period 1969-2000.

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• Group on Energy and Environment. • Group on Water Management. • Group on Air Management. • Waste Management Policy Group. • ad hoc Group on Transfrontier Pollution. • ad hoc Noise Abatement Policy Group. • Sector Group on Unintended Occurrence of Chemicals in the Environment (replaced in 1977 by a standing Chemicals Group). Three major changes were made to the Committee’s sub-structure in the late 1970s. A Management Committee for a new, Part II, Special Programme on the Control of Chemicals was created in 1978; and in 1979 a Group on State of the Environment was added, along with an ad hoc Group on Urban Problems. The OECD Environment Directorate was also transformed, reflecting the changing nature of environmental priorities in the Organisation. At the end of 1975, the Directorate’s substantive components were: the Central Unit for Evaluation and Analysis; a Natural Resources and Pollution Control Division; a Division of Urban Environment and Land Use; and a Special Studies Unit. In 1976, a re-structuring resulted in a three-component Directorate (in addition to the Director’s Office) comprising: an Environment and Energy Division; an Urban Environment and Land Use Division; and an Environment and Industry Division. The latter carried out the work programme on chemicals and wastes, plus the economics work of the earlier Central Unit for Evaluation and Analysis. In 1978, the rapidly growing chemicals programme led to the creation of a fourth component: a Chemicals Division. In addition, in 1976, cross-Division “teams” within the Environment Directorate were established to carry out studies on Transfrontier Pollution; Evolution of the State of the Environment; and Tourism and the Environment. In 1980, another re-structuring produced the following organisation of the Environment Directorate that remained basically unchanged over the next ten years. • Environment and Economy Division. • Resources and Energy Division. • Urban Affairs Division. • Chemicals Division. Programme Strategy and Priorities: the context for the conduct of OECD’s environmental work in the second half of the 1970s, and the new challenges being faced, were revealed in a statement by the Secretary-General to the Environment Committee in May 1977. Mr. van Lennep observed that: “The international economic scene, as you all know, has, in the last few years, been extremely preoccupied with the energy crisis and with the recession, inflation,

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unemployment, balance of payments problems, and with the ‘Dialogue’ between the North and the South. These important and difficult issues have preoccupied our Governments very much and it looks as if the environmental problems, although still given serious consideration, have somewhat been put in the background; at least they have not in the forefront of Governments’ minds when they were confronted and when they discussed these other major international issues. However, it is my firm conviction that despite this priority in the international debate on urgent issues, which very often are touching to the heart of the visibility of our economic systems and of our nations, environmental concerns have maintained the vital interest they had in the early 70s.” [ENV/M(77)1/Annex]. Against this backdrop, it is not surprising that, in the 1976-1980 timeframe, OECD’s environmental work placed an especially heavy emphasis on energyenvironment relationships and on strengthening the work on environmental economics. The economics work began to grapple with the impacts of environmental policies on employment, trade, investment and industry mobility, and to establish how sound environmental policies could support economic growth objectives.33 In October 1977, a Special Session of the Group of Economic Experts sharpened the work programme on economics and environment, and helped raise internationally the profile and influence of OECD’s contributions in this field. A major concern of OECD Member environmental policymakers in the 1976-79 timeframe was how to improve the quality, and the enforcement, of the extensive environmental legislation enacted earlier in the decade. This was, in part, in response to growing criticism from the business community over the alleged “over regulation” by governments, and the “excessive costs” of environmental policies. As a result, OECD’s capacity for monitoring and assessing national responses, through surveys and country studies – and the “peer review” nature of the Environment Committee and its sector groups – became more important to the Members. Further, there was pressure from the Council for the Environment Committee to monitor and report on the responses by Members to the numerous OECD Council Acts on the environment. Relationships between energy policy and environmental policy remained a high priority of the OECD. Along with new work undertaken by the Environment Directorate, the International Energy Agency (IEA) became more active in this area, as did the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) which established a Radioactive Waste Management Committee in 1975. The records of the meetings of the Environment Committee during the 1976-79 period are filled with reports of discussions of energy-environment matters, and of presentations to the Committee by IEA and NEA officials. This history reveals an increasingly close working relationship 54

33. Economic downturns in OECD countries and beyond in the mid-1990s had a similar effect on environment programme priorities in the OECD.

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between the Environment Committee and IEA, with papers being freely exchanged and commitments to joint undertakings abounding. The situation was far different with the NEA. Apprehension on the part of some Environment Committee delegates about nuclear energy resulted in the Committee turning aside overtures from the NEA to co-operate on the development of an NEA statement on nuclear waste disposal in the ocean and on a statement of general philosophy on nuclear energy. The Committee did agree to review and comment on the findings of a new NEA International Consultative and Surveillance Mechanism for Dumping of Radioactive Wastes, established in 1976 to monitor the North Atlantic dumping sites. But this was, for the Environment Committee, apparently a “defensive” strategy. Chemicals in the environment grew in importance as a mainstream OECD environmental undertaking, with the Environment Committee assigning high priority to chemical activities annually including the second Ministerial-level Committee meeting in 1979. The creation in 1976 of six working groups on various aspects of chemicals management attested to the growing scope and magnitude of the programme; a trend intensified by the establishment of the extra-budgetary Part II Special Programme on the Control of Chemicals in 1978. The second half of the 1970s saw the OECD initiate pioneering work on what was to become the dominant “global” environmental issue of the next decade: stratospheric ozone depletion. Based on the aforementioned proposal in the Environment Committee by Canada and the US in 1975 – that the OECD Secretariat use the Notification and Consultation System to obtain information about the production and use of CFCs – the Environment Directorate’s Environment and Industry Division initiated a survey which resulted in a major international report in 1976 entitled Fluorocarbons: An Assessment of World-wide Production, Use and Environmental Issues: First Interim Report.34 Two years later, an expanding OECD effort produced the Economic Impact of Restrictions on the Use of Fluorocarbons. This work – and further studies launched by OECD in 1980 of the stateof-knowledge of atmospheric chemistry and of the modeling of ozone depletion, as well as of potential health and environmental effects – provided the foundation of data and analysis, particularly on economic aspects, on which the Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer (1985) was based, as well as its Montreal Protocol (1987). The 1976-79 period also found OECD beginning its pioneering work on hazardous wastes. The Environment Committee’s Waste Management Policy Group (WMPG), created in 1974, began work in 1976 on a “comprehensive plan” for waste management in OECD countries, including aspects of the disposal, recovery and recycling of domestic wastes.35 Toward the end of the decade, discussions in the WMPG began to focus on issues associated with the transport of hazardous wastes 34. OECD Environment Directorate, 1976. 35. Development of such a plan had been recommended by the Council in C(76)155(Final).

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across international borders, setting the stage for major work by the WMPG on transfrontier waste movement issues over the next two decades. The Environment Committee’s Group on Water Management was also very productive during this period, producing in 1977 a series of reports on water pollution control strategies in three industries: petroleum, metal plating, and textiles. These studies reflected a growing interest in Member countries on the role of new technologies in solving environmental problems more cost-effectively. The 1976-79 timeframe saw OECD’s work on country environmental reviews and on data and statistics take on greater importance. Following the review of Sweden, and then of Japan, the Environment Committee agreed to continue the country studies into the next decade. Consideration was given in the Committee and in the Group on the State of the Environment, following creation of the latter in 1979, to the initiation of several “multinational reviews”. These would consist of examinations of specialised issues across a range of Member countries for comparative purposes, seeking to identify common problems and approaches, and to draw general conclusions. Suggestions for topics included: “The enforcement of pollution control” and “Environmental problems in States having federal or regional authorities”. In 1978, the Environment Committee, and its supporting Directorate, intensified work on environmental data, in preparation for a meeting of the Environment Committee at Ministerial Level scheduled for the following year. And, urban concerns increased in the second half of the 70’s, including environmental aspects. At the annual meeting of the OECD Ministerial Council in 1977, US Secretary of State Cyrus Vance expressed concern about the urban problems facing advanced industrialised societies, and proposed creation of an Ad Hoc Group on Urban Problems to elaborate a work programme for the Organisation. The Group was created in 1979, with a three-year mandate to elaborate and manage a work programme with three major themes: Problems of Urbanisation; Urban Concerns Related to Economic Growth and Development; and the Role of Governments, Public Authorities and other Agents. It should be noted that the new Ad Hoc Group on Urban Problems – with its broad-based, integrated work programme which included environmental issues – was directed to report to the Council, and not to the Environment Committee. The Environment Committee’s Sector Group on the Urban Environment was abolished at this point, but the Secretariat function for servicing the Council’s Ad Hoc Group was vested in the Environment Directorate, and its Urban Affairs Division.

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Second Environment Ministerial: urban problems also attracted the attention of OECD Environment Ministers when they convened at the Organisation’s headquarters for the second time, from 7-8 May, 1979, under the chairmanship of Douglas M. Costle, Head of the US Environmental Protection Agency. The Ministerial theme,

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Development of Environmental Policies in Changing Economic Conditions, reflected the transition through which OECD Member countries were passing. Ministers used the occasion to point to major environmental achievements by OECD countries in 1970s: reducing pollution in fresh water bodies and in urban airsheds; limiting the release into the environment of certain persistent chemicals; extending national and regional parks; and protecting and rehabilitating sites of social or cultural value. Conversely, Ministers pointed to serious remaining and new challenges. These included the supply and quality of water, including drinking water in certain areas; the adverse effects of the excessive use of fertilisers; the impact on eco-systems of the long-range transport of airborne pollutants; increasing noise levels; the risk of accidents involving hazardous substances; and the continuing uncertainties about the linkages between environmental policies and economic performance. The Ministers were able to draw in their deliberations on the first international report on the State of the Environment in OECD Member Countries (OECD, 1979) prepared by the Environment Committee’s Group on State of the Environment. It is noteworthy that this report addressed, inter alia, the global-scale issues of stratospheric ozone depletion and climate change. The OECD Environment Secretariat also prepared three other background papers for Ministers which addressed the major subthemes of the meeting: • Environment and Current Economic Issues [ENV(79)4]. • Integration of Environmental Concerns in Decision-Making [ENV(79)5]. • Public Participation in Environmental Matters [ENV(79)6]. Regarding Ministerial products, Ministers adopted a Declaration on Anticipatory Environmental Policies as well as four Recommendations subsequently approved by the OECD Council: • The Assessment of Projects with Significant Impact on the Environment [C(79)116]. • Environment and Tourism [C(79)115].36 • Coal and the Environment [C(79)117]. • Reporting on the State of the Environment [C(79)114]. 36. Regarding the Act on Environment and Tourism, in 1978 the World Prize for Ecology was awarded by the international organisation Nature, Man and the Environment to the OECD Environment Committee and its ad hoc Group on Environment and Tourism. Special mention was made of the work on the economic, legislative and methodological aspects of environmental protection and on the evaluation of the implications of environmental policies with respect to tourism.

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Given the “anticipatory” theme of the Ministerial meeting and the nature of the background papers and the emerging Council Acts (e.g, emphasis on public participation and project assessment), it is clear that Environmental Impact Assessment commanded a high priority. Following up on their 1974 Council Recommendation, the Environment Ministers agreed in 1979 on a Recommendation on The Assessment of Projects with Significant Impact on the Environment.37 This aimed at promoting the more frequent use of environmental impact assessments and increasing the effectiveness of the procedures involved, such as, consultation, provision of information, implementation, monitoring. It further gave support to the development of assessment procedures for actions that might have significant transfrontier effects, following up on a Recommendation adopted by the Council one year earlier on Strengthening International Co-operation on Environment Protection in Frontier Regions.38 Through the latter, the Council had recommended that environmental impact assessments should include the study of the effects of the proposed activities on an equivalent footing on either side of the frontier, and that the countries concerned should co-operate to this end and inform one another of the results of the studies. In providing guidance for future OECD environmental work, the Ministers placed heavy emphasis on energy-environment relationships, understandably so, given that their meeting took place in the midst of the second oil crisis, 1979-80. They called on the OECD to “examine all aspects”. OECD’s contributions in the field of chemicals were also singled out as being of “primary necessity”, particularly to promote the harmonisation of national regulatory regimes. And, Ministers urged reinforcement of the Organisation’s work on economics and environment; a strengthening of efforts on data collection, statistics and reporting; and new work to help Member countries design and implement effective anticipatory policies. When the Committee then met in its next regular session on 29-31 October 1979, delegates decided to structure the 1980-work programme on the basis of the following thematic areas: – Resources and the Environment, including energy and land use. – Toxic Substances and the Environment. – Urban Affairs. – Environmental Policies in Changing Economic Conditions, including subsidies, charges and the role of technology. Further responding to priorities established by the Environment Ministers, national delegates to the regular session agreed to the further development of a 58

37. See OECD document C(79)116. 38. See OECD document C(78)77.

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comprehensive programme on waste management, extension of efforts on CFCs, and maintenance of work on transfrontier pollution. However, some delegates were beginning to question whether OECD could accomplish any more useful work on transfrontier issues. OECD Council Acts: the Environment Committee continued to convert its analytical work into guidelines and advice to governments that ended up as officials Acts of the Organisation.39 The second half of the 1970s produced the following Council Acts, all Recommendations:

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Equal Rights Access in Relation to Transfrontier Pollution [C(76)55(Final)]. A Comprehensive Waste Management Policy [C(76)155(Final)]. Principles Concerning Coastal Management [C(76)161(Final)]. The Reduction of Environment Impacts from Energy Production and Use [C(76)162(Final)]. Implementation of a Regime of Equal Right of Access and Non-Discrimination in Relation to Transfrontier Pollution [C(77)28(Final)]. Guidelines in Respect of Procedure and Requirements for Anticipating the Effects of Chemicals on Man and the Environment [C(77)97(Final)]. Reduction of Environmental Impacts from Energy Use in the Household and Commercial Sectors [C(77)109(Final)]. Multilateral Consultative and Surveillance Mechanism for Sea Dumping of Radioactive Wastes [C(77)115(Final)]. Water Management Policies and Instruments [C(78)4(Final)]. Reuse and Re-Cycling of Beverage Containers [C(78)8(Final)]. Strengthening International Co-operation on Environmental Protection in Transfrontier Regions [C(78)77(Final)]. Reporting on State of the Environment [C(79)114(Final)]. Environment and Tourism [C(79)115]. Environmental Assessment of Significant Projects [C(79)116]. Coal and the Environment [C(79)117(Final)]. Waste Paper Recovery [C(79)218(Final)].

39. A good description of the Environment Directorate’s structure and work programme at the end of decade of the 1970s is provided in a 1979 brochure produced by the Directorate: The Environment Directorate. (It compiles articles published in OECD Information in March, April, May and June 1979, Nos. 53, 54, 55, 56). (OECD, 1979.)

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Broadening the Agenda: The 1980s 1980-1985 The results of the May 1979 meeting of OECD Environment Ministers helped to re-raise the profile of environmental issues within the Organisation. As the SecretaryGeneral had noted to the Environment Committee in May 1977, environment had slipped in the Organisation’s priorities in the face of the Member country preoccupations about recession, unemployment and energy shortages. The “renaissance” was significantly abetted by a series of major studies published in the 1979-81 timeframe that addressed issues of “global interdependence” and relationships among economic growth, population, resource scarcity and environmental quality. These studies either had an environmental focus, or a significant environmental component. Prominent among them were: OECD’s Interfutures study (1979) which, inter alia, discussed a range of resource and environmental issues and their relevance for industrialised societies; the US Global 2000 Report to the President (1980); Japan’s Basic Directions for Coping With Global Environmental Issues (the “Okita” report) (1980); and the Brandt Commission’s North-South: A Programme for Survival (1980). As policymakers in OECD countries began to wrestle with these studies and their implications, they turned to the OECD for assistance with data collection, analysis and policy options. As a consequence, new work on “global issues”, and on relationships between OECD Members and other countries (including developing countries), was superimposed on OECD’s more traditional, domestic-focused environmental programme. In April 1981, to mark the beginning of its second decade of work, the Environment Committee held a Special Session on the OECD and the Next Decade of Environmental Action. A panel of distinguished speakers discussed The OECD and Policies for the ‘80s to Address Long-Term Environmental Issues. The event further stimulated and informed a first, substantial debate within the Environment Committee and throughout the OECD on long-term, global-scale environmental issues.40 As a follow up to the Special Session, the Environment Directorate convened two workshops, in July and October of 1981; and – drawing on these meetings and other consultations with experts – produced a series of issue papers on the following eleven topics for use by the Committee:41 – CO2 and Climatic Change. – The Ozone Layer. – Acid Precipitation. – Chemicals. 60

40. See The Environment: Challenges for the ‘80s (OECD, 1981), a report on the Special Session. 41. These were compiled in Economic and Ecological Interdependence (OECD, 1982).

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– International Movement of Hazardous Wastes. – Maintaining Biological Diversity. – Loss of Cropland and Soil Degradation. – Environmental Aspects of Bilateral Development Assistance. – Environmental Impact Assessment and International Co-operation. – Environmental Aspects of Multinational Investment. – International Application of the Polluter Pays Principle. Beyond describing the nature of the issue, and its potential consequences for OECD Member countries, each paper also identified international work currently underway and planned, and recommended next steps. The papers are particularly instructive in showing OECD’s strengths and weaknesses as viewed by Member countries in 1981. For example, OECD’s name did not show up in the listings of international work underway or planned on most of the resource-related issues. Conversely, OECD was prominently mentioned in the areas of the economics of environmental management, acid precipitation and chemicals (including CFCs); and was identified as an important “player” with respect to climate change, this by virtue of an OECD/IEA experts workshop in February 1981 on CO2 Research and Assessment. The participants in the later workshop recommended that OECD, in co-operation with IEA, should convene further experts meetings to examine the state-of-the-art of climate change, and provide guidance on policy options. That event was instrumental in encouraging the Organisation to become more heavily involved in climate change issues. The array of OECD meetings and workshops on “global issues” in the 1979-81 timeframe placed a spotlight on Member country relationships with developing countries, including co-operation in the field of environment. This was instrumental in the decision by OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC) – when it met at High Level in November 1981 – to convene a Special Meeting on Aid and Environmental Protection. The meeting, which took place in April 1982, produced a factual survey of the development assistance policies and procedures in place in Member countries for dealing with environmental concerns, and identified issues with implications for project selection, design and appraisal. Subsequently, DAC’s environmental work expanded during the 1980s and 1990s. Third Environment Ministerial: a good overview of what happened in environmental affairs in the OECD, and in its Member countries, in the 1980-85 timeframe, is provided in the record of the 18-20 June 1985 meeting of the Environment Committee at Ministerial Level.42 This third in the series of OECD Environment Ministerial meetings was chaired by Mrs. Huguette Bouchardeau, Minister of the Environment of France. Ministers were greeted on that occasion by a new OECD SecretaryGeneral, Jean-Claude Paye (FR), who replaced Emile van Lennep in 1984. 42. See Environment: Resource for the Future, selected statements and documents, OECD, 1985.

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In examining OECD’s environmental work over the first half of the ‘80s, Ministers commended the progress made on: analysing and clarifying the linkages between economic and environmental policy; establishing an OECD system for the control and management of new chemicals; preparing an OECD system for the monitoring and control of transboundary movements of hazardous wastes; providing guidance for further integration of energy and environmental policy; and assembling data on cost-effective responses to specific air and water pollution problems. The Ministerial was noteworthy for the impetus it provided to new OECD work in three areas: 1) transboundary movement of hazardous wastes, as concern grew among OECD nations and others about the absence of “rules of the game” and procedures for ensuring environmentally-safe management of such transfers; 2) co-operation with developing countries, to assist them in meeting domestic environmental threats as well as to join with OECD nations in attacking regional and global problems; and 3) natural resources management, with Australia playing a particularly prominent role in calling for a new “Natural Resources Programme” within OECD’s environmental work programme. Ministers also expressed concern about the growing number of industrial accidents involving the release of hazardous materials and toxic substances, motivated especially by the Union Carbide disaster in Bophal, India, the previous year (1984). This set in motion discussions and meetings within the framework of the OECD, which led to the initiation in 1987 of work on accidents involving hazardous substances. A dedicated “Programme” on industrial accidents began after a High Level Conference on the subject was held at OECD in 1988, having been requested by HLM III – the Ministerial-level meeting of the OECD Chemicals Committee – a request stimulated by the Sandoz/Schweizerhalle/Basel accident in 1986. In 1987, an ad hoc group was set up to prepare the 1988 High Level Conference on Accidents and a work programme. Regarding natural resources, in the early 1980s, a number of national delegates in the Environment Committee began urging that more attention be given in the Organisation’s environmental work (which they saw as being too “pollutionoriented”) to such issues as water quantity, wildlife management, wetlands preservation, coastal zone management and forest conservation. Other delegates, however, warned against “smearing out” the programme, and “trying to do everything”, especially in light of growing budget constraints. Nonetheless, the 1985 Environment Ministerial prepared the ground for a new OECD thrust on natural resources. The Ministerial also saw five new draft Council Acts approved, all Recommendations, C(85)100 through C(85)104, are included in the list of 1980-85 Acts at the end of this section.

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Programme Activities: “Chemicals” had assumed a very high priority in OECD’s environment work by the beginning of the 1980s. Drawing on a sense of urgency and the guidance emanating from the meeting of Environment Ministers in 1979, the OECD

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Chemicals Group met in May 1980 at “High Level” for the first time. A comprehensive work programme was agreed to, and then reviewed and refined at a second High Level Meeting in November 1982. In particular, efforts were increased to develop test methods that would, inter alia, replace those using vertebrate animals, reduce the costs of testing for Member countries (and firms), and eliminate technical barriers to trade. A first set of OECD Guidelines for the Testing of Chemicals was published in 1981. It was at the first High Level meeting, in 1980, when the concept of a new project on “existing” chemicals was initially discussed, i.e., the beginning of a major new undertaking for OECD’s chemicals work. It took shape in 1987 with the adoption of a Council Act on the Systematic Investigation of Existing Chemicals. In the 1980-85 period, the OECD Council adopted a series of 7 Acts promoting the harmonisation of chemicals control among Member countries. These Acts, included in the full list of Council Acts on environment at the end of this section, covered: – Mutual Acceptance of Data. – Test Guidelines. – Minimum Pre-Market Data Requirements. – Mutual Recognition of Compliance with Good Laboratory Practices. – Protection of Proprietary Rights of Data Submitted on New Chemicals. – Exchange of Confidential Data on New Chemicals. – The OECD List of Non-Confidential Data on Chemicals. – Information Exchange Related to the Export of Banned or Restricted Chemicals. Chlorofluorocarbons continued to receive attention by the Chemicals Group and the Environment Directorate’s Chemicals Division, which assumed responsibility for the subject from the Directorate’s Environment and Industry Division. The debates in the Chemicals Group, and the technical work that it undertook, assisted OECD Members in the international negotiations on an ozone protection convention being conducted by the United Nations Environment Programme. The discovery of the hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica in1984 provided a new stimulus and momentum for OECD’s efforts. In 1983, a decision was made to have the Chemicals Group and the Management Committee for the Part II Chemicals Programme convene in “Joint Meetings”, for reasons of efficiency and improved programme co-ordination. In 1984, the OECD Council approved a formal agreement on co-operation on chemical safety between the Organisation and the International Programme on Chemical Safety (IPCS) established by UNEP, WHO and International Labour Organisation (ILO). The Programme’s objective was to help ensure good co-ordination among the three participating UN organisations with major work on “chemicals and environment”; and OECD wished to ensure that both its views and work products were fully integrated into the IPCS.

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Waste management priority shifted from domestic solid waste recovery and recycling to the management of hazardous wastes, with increased attention to transboundary movements. OECD’s work was directed at 1) examining the economic, administrative and policy aspects of implementing hazardous waste legislation, with the ultimate objectives of developing policy guidelines for consideration by Member country governments; and 2) proposing ways to deal with problems of an international nature. Three priority areas were selected by the Environment Committee in December 1980 for the initial phase of work: – the transport of hazardous waste across national frontiers, including the types and quantities being transported, the reasons for the transport, and the practical and legal mechanisms in place to ensure the safety of operations; – the costs to industry of complying with the regulations, and the costs to regulating agencies of their enforcement; – the financial provisions necessary to ensure the appropriate handling, storage and treatment of hazardous wastes, including the monitoring of landfill sites for a sufficient period of time after closure, and the liability for damages caused by inappropriate management at any stage. By the end of 1981, the Environment Committee’s Waste Management Policy Group had prepared a detailed report which covered: national legislation; availability of insurance coverage for transport and treatment facilities; costs of complying with regulations; and types and quantities of hazardous waste exports from one country to another. The report also highlighted the potential for movement to developing countries, based on the growing profitability of such “North-to-South” transactions. In 1983, the OECD Council adopted a Decision-Recommendation [C(83)180(Final)] which obliged Member countries to control the transfrontier movement of hazardous wastes, drawing on a set of “principles” set out in this new Council Act. The Council also asked the Environment Committee to design a work programme to help elaborate and principles and promote their implementation.

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This new council mandate was reinforced and extended in 1985 at an OECDsponsored International Conference on the Transfrontier Movement of Hazardous Wastes, in Basel, Switzerland, where delegates called upon the Organisation to develop “an effective and legally binding system of controls”. In follow-up, the OECD Council approved a Resolution on International Co-operation Concerning Transfrontier Movements of Hazardous Wastes [C(85)100] through which it expressed the need for an “international” control system, and instructed the Environment Committee to “propose OECD instruments for implementing such a system and a draft international agreement by the end of 1987”. This triggered much of the OECD analytical and agreement design work that served to undergird the Basel Convention on Wastes concluded in March 1989.

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The conclusions of OECD Environment Ministers in 1979 also re-inforced the importance of the Organisation’s work on economics and environment. Their priorities for the Environment Committee during the first half of the 1980s included: the continuing elaboration of the PPP and other OECD Guiding Principles; new work on alternative instruments for proper pricing of resources, including water pricing, and on policy integration; and more intensive examination of the economic aspects of response strategies for global environmental issues. By 1985, agriculture-environment relationships were being examined co-operatively by the Environment Committee and the Committee on Agriculture in the first substantial inter-committee policy integration effort by the OECD. One of OECD’s major environmental events was held in June 1984, an International Conference on Environment and Economics. Designed to feed information and ideas into the next meeting of Environment Ministers scheduled for 1985, the Conference pulled together the existing knowledge in this field, and addressed a broad range of environment-economics interface issues, including macro-economic relationships, and the impact of environmental expenditures on economic growth, inflation, employment, productivity and the balance of payments. The results were intended for policymakers in the economic spheres as much as for those who held environment portfolios. During the 1980-85 period, the Environment Directorate’s Division for Economics and Environment began to work actively with the Directorate for Development Co-operation on the “greening” of development assistance strategies and programmes. This followed the High Level Meeting of the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) on Aid and Environmental Protection, convened 20 April 1982. Delegates had urged “close co-operation” between the DAC and the Environment Committee, and agreed to systematically incorporate environmental considerations into DAC’s periodic sectoral development meetings, beginning with its scheduled review of agriculture and water management in September 1982. The DAC also committed itself at that time to reviewing the environmental practices of Member countries’ assistance policies.43 In the area of energy and environment, a new project was launched by the Environment Committee in response to the call by OECD Environment Ministers in 1979 for a study of “the environmental implications of all forms of energy use”. Known as “COMPASS” – the Comparative Assessment of the Environmental Implications of Various Energy Systems – the project continued until 1985. Two major reports emerged from the work: Environmental Effects of Energy Systems – The OECD Compass Project (1983); and Environmental Effects of Electricity Generation (1985). At the 1985 meeting of the Environment Committee at Ministerial Level, Ministers approved a Council Recommendation on Environmentally Favourable Energy Options and their Implementation44 that was based on the Compass project. 43. See OECD document DAC(82)2. 44. See OECD document C(85)102.

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Another major project for the 1980s emerging from the 1979 Ministerial was a study of coal abatement technologies. This responded to Ministers’ concerns about the environmental impacts of coal production, use and transport, and their desire to accelerate the development of new technologies for pollution control purposes. The project included a Symposium on the Economic Aspects of Coal Pollution Abatement Technologies, held in The Netherlands, 24-28 May 1982.45 It also involved co-operation between the OECD and the International Energy Agency on extensive data collection and policy analysis, resulting in two major reports: Coal and Environmental Protection: Costs and Costing Methods (1983), and Coal: Environmental Issues and Remedies (1983). The coal project was representative of a substantial workload on energy and environment in the first half of the 1980s, an effort that increasingly drew the OECD Environment Committee and Directorate together with the IEA, both its Committees and its Secretariat. Discussions also continued between the Environment Committee and the Nuclear Energy Agency, with NEA senior officials reporting at every Environment Committee meeting, and vice versa. However, the relationship between the Environment Committee and NEA committees remained rather at “arms length”, despite expressions of good intentions to co-operate, in light of the continued reluctance of the Environment Committee to “embrace” nuclear energy. The Environment Committee’s interest was almost exclusively in being an environmental “watchdog” for the NEA monitoring of the North Atlantic dump site. As mentioned earlier, close working relationships were maintained between the Environment and Agriculture Committees. And, a new relationship was established in 1982 when the Environment Committee informed the Committee on International Investment and Multinational Enterprises (CIME) that it wished to submit “guidelines related to environmental protection” for inclusion in a revision the CIME was preparing of the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, first published in 1976. CIME’s goal was to have revisions ready for consideration by the OECD Council Ministerial in May 1984. This began a protracted debate between the two committees about how to address “environment” within the Guidelines. As it turned out, the Guidelines were not revised in 1984. A Council Decision that year46 simply called upon Members to a) establish “national focal points” for Guidelines monitoring and review; and b) utilise the CIME for the periodic review of the Guidelines and development of any necessary “clarifications”. In November 1985, the OECD Council approved a Clarification of the Reference to Environmental Policies – developed by the Environment Committee and agreed to by the CIME – a modest “foot-in-the-door” step on an issue that would be revisited and debated periodically through the remainder of the 1980s and the 1990s. 66

45. Refer to Coal Pollution Abatement – Results of an International Symposium, 1983. 46. See OECD document C(84)90.

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In reviewing the status of inter-Committee co-operation on environmental issues, OECD Environment Ministers commented at their 1985 meeting on the Environment Committee’s “excellent contacts with DAC and the IEA”, but “questioned the non-existent work with the Industry Committee, the Economic Policy Committee and others”.47 The period 1980-85 saw a significant expansion of work on “state of the environment”. Environment Committee enthusiasm for country reviews grew as each reviewed Member reported on important benefits received from the studies. For example, in New Zealand, the OECD review led directly to the establishment of the first environment agency. However, some Committee delegates began to voice apprehension about the resource-intensive nature of the reviews at a time of tight budgets and competing programme priorities. The concept of “multinational”, issueoriented reviews continued to be discussed; and a model was launched on “energyenvironment relationships” in co-operation with the IEA. Regarding country reviews, following studies of Sweden (1973) and Japan (1976), reviews were carried out in the 1980s on: New Zealand (1980); Greece (1983) and Yugoslavia (1985). A review of Urban Policy in Japan was undertaken in 1985 by the Group on Urban Affairs, outside the frame of the Environment Committee’s State of the Environment effort. Given the importance that the 1979 Environment Ministerial attached to improving the quantity and quality of environmental data and statistics, the OECD Environment Programme moved rapidly to strengthen its work in this area. A Questionnaire on the State of the Environment was developed, tested and then used every two years by the Environment Directorate to analyse and harmonise environmental data in OECD countries. It was subsequently adopted by Eurostat and the UN Statistical Office. In 1985, in conjunction with the third meeting of the Environment Committee at Ministerial level, the Directorate produced the second OECD report on The State of the Environment; and also a Compendium of Environmental Data, the first comprehensive data compilation published at the international level. The “state-pressureresponse” reporting framework which was designed and employed for these two publications was to be used by many international, national and sub-national environmental institutions thereafter. Urban problems continued to receive considerable attention within the Organisation, by the Environment Committee as well as by other OECD components. In 1982, the Council established a Group on Urban Affairs – with a broadspectrum urban issues mandate – replacing its Ad Hoc Group on Urban Problems. As with the latter ad hoc body, the new Group reported directly to the Council, rather than the Environment Committee, while the Secretariat function remained in the Environment Directorate in the form of an Urban Affairs Division. 47. See Ministerial report in ENV(85)1(Final).

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The first phase of an expanded urban issues work programme (1980-82) was summarised in a report by the new OECD Group in 1983: Managing Urban Change. This formed the basis of a first meeting of Ministers charged with urban affairs in OECD countries. The 1983 urban ministerial produced a comprehensive evaluation of policies being used to address urban decline and urban growth, and a set of policy recommendations which addressed, inter alia, environmental management issues. Council Acts: the following lists the full array of OECD Council Acts on the environment adopted in 1980-1985 period:

Decisions • The Mutual Acceptance of Data in the Assessment of Chemicals [C(81)30(Final], a Council Decision with accompanying Recommendations on: OECD Test Guidelines and OECD Principles of Good Laboratory Practices. • The Minimum Pre-Marketing Set of Data in the Assessment of Chemicals [C82)196(Final]. • Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises [C84)90] – prepared by the Committee on Investment and Multinational Enterprises – with a 27 November 1985 Clarification to the Reference to Environmental Policies from the Environment Committee. Decision-Recommendation • Transfrontier Movement of Hazardous Wastes [C(83)180(Final)]. Recommendations • Recall Procedures for Unsafe Products Sold to the Public [C(81)7(Final)] – a Recommendation from the Committee on Consumer Policy. • Certain Financial Aspects of Action by Public Authorities to Prevent and Control Oil Spills [C(81)32(Final)]. • The Mutual Recognition of Compliance with Good Laboratory Practices [C(83)95(Final)]. • The Protection of Proprietary Rights to Data Submitted in Notification of New Chemicals [C(83)96(Final)]. • The Exchange of Confidential Data on Chemicals [C(83)97(Final)]. • The OECD List of Non-Confidential Data on Chemicals [C(83)98(Final)]. • Information Exchange Related to Export of Banned or Severely Restricted Chemicals [C(84)37(Final)]. • International Co-operation Concerning Transfrontier Movements of Hazardous Wastes [C(85)100]. • Control of Air Pollution from Fossil Fuel Combustion [C(85)101]. • Environmentally Favourable Energy Options and Their Implementation [C(85)102]. • The Strengthening of Noise Abatement Policies [C(85)103]. • Environmental Assessment of Development Assistance Projects and Programmes [C(85)104]. 68

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These numerous Acts indicate the Environment Committee’s continuing penchant for converting technical work into formal Recommendations and Decisions, despite continuing, low-key criticism from within the OECD Council and the Secretariat’s Legal Affairs staff about a proliferation of environmental Acts. Programme Administration: to try to improve the utility and influence of the Environment Committee, Japan proposed in December 1982 that “policy discussions on selected topics” should be held routinely by the Committee. This was the first appearance of an issue that was often revisited by the Committee over the next decade-and-one-half; namely, how to ensure a “policy orientation” in the parent Committee whose meetings were increasingly being taken up with administrative and management issues? The Committee’s Bureau, comprised of the Chair and Vice-Chairs, was asked by the Committee to recommend measures for elevating the policy content of the meetings. (At this point the Bureau was already beginning to assume an expanded role in preparing the Committee meetings, including proposing options for dealing with issues that were to be placed before delegates.) The Bureau’s response was based on an options paper prepared by the Environment Directorate.48 It was two years later before one of the major recommendations – to hold high-level forums in conjunction with Committee sessions – was implemented. However, only one such forum was held, until the concept re-surfaced in the mid-1990s. During the period 1981-84, Don McMichael of Australia served as the Chairman of the Environment Committee, having replaced Erik Lykke in April 1981. In May 1984, Blair Seaborn (CAN) was elected to that position. In 1984, Erik Lykke replaced Jim MacNeill as the OECD’s Director for Environment when the latter left to become the Secretary General of the World Commission for Environment and Development.

******* A good overview of the OECD environmental work programme from 1970 to 1985, including its achievements and Council Acts on the environment, is provided in OECD and the Environment (OECD, 1986). 1986-1990 Looking back over three-plus decades of OECD work on environment issues, two peaks of activity stand out. The first occurred in the early ‘70s. Then, the environmental “awakening” across OECD countries led to the creation of the OECD 48. See OECD document ENV(83)11.

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Environment Committee and Directorate, and to the design and implementation of a coherent work programme in what was largely “virgin” territory with respect to international activities on environmental matters. A second surge of activity occurred toward the end of the 1980s, continuing to about 1992. This resulted from a convergence of international incidents and events that again raised environmental issues to the topmost levels of the governments of OECD Members. These included: • the negotiation of the Montreal Protocol on Protection of the Ozone Layer (1987), and of the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal (1989); • the report of the World Commission on Environment and Development (1987); • the Sandoz warehouse fire in Basel, Switzerland (1986), which demonstrated the transboundary impacts of hazardous accidents; • the Chernobyl nuclear accident (1986); • the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989) and the opening up of Eastern and Central Europe; and • the preparatory phase of the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) scheduled for Rio in 1992 – particularly the Bergen Conference in May 1990. This gathering of Environment Ministers from ECE countries was convened by the Government of Norway and the UNECE to develop a regional perspective and contributions for submission to the Rio Conference. For the OECD, these events collectively meant that the Organisation’s environment capabilities and work attracted increased interest from Member country governments. This translated into greater attention by the OECD Ambassadors to the environment programme, an increased level of resource support, and a broadening of OECD committee involvement. In May 1989, the OECD Council of Ministers (i.e., Ministers of Finance, Trade and Foreign Affairs) gave uncommonly prominent attention to environment and sustainable development issues at their annual meeting, in light of the international incidents and events enumerated above. The Ministerial Council also provided further guidance on the Organisation’s strategy and work programme in these areas, amplifying and extending the directions set out by OECD Environment Ministers at their June 1985 meeting.

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General Programme Content and Structure: regarding programme content, the Organisation’s environmental work in the second half of the 1980s was characterised by: 1) intensive efforts to support the ongoing international negotiations on the ozone depletion and hazardous wastes conventions with OECD’s analytical work and perspectives; 2) re-consideration of OECD’s “proper role” and “comparative

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advantage” vis-à-vis environmental issues – given the trend in its Member countries to look to UN forums with larger membership (with developing country representation) to tackle regional- and global-scale issues; 3) debates on what “sustainable development” meant for OECD’s overall work programme; and 4) efforts to fashion institutional and programmatic initiatives to support first-time interactions with the unfamiliar countries of the former Soviet Union, including how to integrate “environment” into the political and economic reform process. The evolution of the scope and content of the Environment Programme is evident in a comparison of the situations at the beginning and at the end of the 1986-1990 period. Influenced heavily by the 1985 meeting of Environment Ministers, the work programme of the Environment Committee in 1986 was clustered around three themes: I. Economic Development and the Environment – Integration of Environmental Policies with Agricultural Policies. – Use of Economic Techniques and Economic Instruments in Environmental Policy. – Policies to Improve the Management of Surface and Ground Water Resources. – Strengthening Co-operation with Developing Countries. II. Pollution Prevention and Control – Management of Hazardous Wastes. – Control of Major Air Pollutants (photochemical oxidants and mobile sources). – Issues in Energy and Environment. – Cross-Media Approach to Pollution Control. – Hazardous Installations and Environmental Protection. – Noise Abatement Policies. – Chemical Safety (four projects). – Safety of New Biotechnology Material. III. Environmental Information and National Reviews – Environmental Information (data, statistics, state-of-the-environment). – Review of Environmental Policies in Finland. In 1989, following the annual meeting of the OECD Council at Ministerial Level, the Environment Committee endorsed five themes for its Medium-Term (1990-91) programme: • The Economics of Sustainable Development. • Hazardous Substances and the Environment. • Energy and the Environment. • Society, Technology and Environment. • Environmental Aspects of Development.

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These medium-term themes reveal the influence on OECD Member countries of the World Commission’s Report, and the sustainable development concept. They also indicate Member countries’ desire to have the OECD expand its relationships with nonMembers, including developing countries, the newly independent countries of Eastern and Central Europe, and the so-called “Dynamic Non-Member Economies” of Asia and Latin America. Further, the five themes attest to the high priority attached by governments to energy-environment relationships, particularly as they relate to climate change; and also to the sound management of hazardous substances. The latter priority responded to a recent spate of industrial accidents that had released hazardous substances and toxic materials, and to the widespread negative publicity being accorded to the transport of hazardous wastes from OECD to developing nations. Sustainable Development: a major boost to OECD’s work on the environment – both in terms of visibility and momentum – occurred in November of 1988. Responding to a Norwegian request, OECD Secretary-General Paye convened a one-day meeting of high-level officials from OECD countries to consider the implications for the Organisation of the 1987 report of the World Commission on Environment and Development. The participants strongly agreed that the OECD should embrace the “sustainability” concept for its own programme planning purposes, and that the Organisation should show the way internationally by “elaborating the concept in economic terms”.49 When the OECD Council met at Ministerial level the following May (1989), Ministers reinforced the importance of work on sustainable development. Then, in October 1989, the OECD Environment Directorate and the Economic and Statistics Department co-sponsored a meeting of experts on The Economics of Sustainable Development. One of its by-products was The Economics of Sustainable Development – A Progress Report, (OECD, 1990). The experts meeting was notable for several reasons. First, it was the first time that the Economic and Statistics Department had moved to the forefront on environmental issues in the Organisation since the early ‘70s stimulated by pressures from OECD governments abetted by the secondment of a senior official from Norway to bolster the Department’s capabilities.50 The experts’ meeting was also noteworthy in helping shape OECD’s strategy for addressing sustainability issues. The experts warned the Organisation about getting bogged down in trying to develop a definition of sustainable development. Instead, they argued, the OECD should concentrate on assisting their Members in

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49. This call was repeated a decade later by the Secretary-General’s High Level Advisory Group on the Environment. 50. Norway’s special interest in having a strong OECD programme on sustainable development resulted from the fact that its Prime Minister, Gro Harlem Brundland, had headed the World Commission; and also that a meeting of Environment Ministers from ECE countries was being planned for Bergen in 1991 to discuss regional follow-up to the Commission’s report.

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pursuing selected goals that most people would agree were essential to advance countries along the path toward sustainable development. A set of nine such goals was later defined by the Environment Secretary, endorsed by the Environment Committee, and treated as the OECD “gospel” on sustainable development for the next decade: – Promoting World-wide Economic Growth. – Integrating Economic and Environmental Policies. – Pricing Goods and Resources to Reflect Environmental Costs. – Promoting Technological Change to Support “Clean” Growth. – Placing Unique Resources Under Sound Management. – Controlling Population Growth where Excessive. – Upgrading Factors Supporting Sound Environmental Management (e.g., skilled labour, educated experts and public). – Expanding International Co-operation. – Monitoring Progress Towards Sustainable Development Objectives. The experts’ meeting was also noteworthy for the programme guidance it provided. In particular, it sounded a clarion call for new work on: reform of tax systems; the measurement of performance through indicators of environmental conditions, pressures and changes; natural resource accounting; and full-cost “social pricing”. Programme Priorities: during the 1986-1990 period, OECD’s work on environment and economics remained at, or near, the top of all Members’ priority listings in the field of environment. In the face of continuing calls by the OECD Council and Environment Ministers for OECD leadership on policy integration, emphasis was placed on the integration of environmental policies in selected economic sectors, subsuming agriculture, energy, transport, manufacturing and coastal zone management. In addition, wetlands and forest management were studied to assess the extent to which environmental costs were being taken into account by policymakers – and to establish the potential of regulatory and economic measures to achieve sound management, and whether governmental interventions (subsidies, pricing, etc.) could eventually have negative effects. OECD’s work programme on environmental economics also examined the use of alternative instruments and techniques to achieve policy integration; and a major survey of Economic Instruments for Environmental Protection was published in 1989. Another economics-environment focus was climate change, with analyses carried out on socio-economic impacts as well as on policy tools, including some of the first international work on trading of emission rights. It was at the time of the October 1989 Experts Meeting on the Economics of Sustainable Development that the OECD announced that it would undertake a new modeling study of the costs of various climate change response strategies. This led to the development of an applied general equilibrium model, “GREEN”, by the

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Economic and Statistics Department, representing another manifestation of renewed interest in environmental issues by the Department. The modelling supported a stream of pioneering studies and publications on the economics of climate change over the 1990-92 period. The Organisation’s work on climate change had, in fact, begun to accelerate somewhat earlier when the US introduced in the Environment Committee in 1987 a proposal for a project on the socio-economic aspects of climate change. The Committee was strongly supportive, and urged the Environment Directorate to ensure that the project proceeded in close co-operation with the IEA. This promoted collaboration between OECD and IEA on a broad spectrum of climate-related activities, including joint studies and joint meetings. Notable among the meetings was the April 1989 IEA/OECD Seminar on Energy Technologies for Reducing the Emissions of Greenhouse Gases. The IEA’s capacity to collaborate on environmental issues was strengthened in 1987 with the creation of an Energy and Environment Office in the Agency. Chemical safety remained a high priority for the OECD. The chemicals work of the Environment Committee – with its emphasis on burden sharing, voluntary testing by industry and co-operative assessments by OECD Member countries – had been strongly endorsed by Environment Ministers in 1985. The programme also benefited from support and guidance received at the Third High Level Meeting of the Chemicals Group in March 1987. While implementation of previous Council Acts on new chemicals remained a priority, work on existing chemicals blossomed. In addition, the initial elements were put in place for what was to become a sizable effort on biotechnology. The Environment Committee’s work on the environmental aspects of biotechnology in a sense “intruded” into a domain that heretofore had been the exclusive property of the Committee for Science and Technology Policy. While both the Environment and STP Committees urged close co-operation, concerns in some capitals about environmental regulation getting in the way of the development of the biotechnology industry often made for a strained relationship. These concerns continued into the mid-1990s. The 1986-90 timeframe saw a major, and highly successful, OECD effort in the field of hazardous waste management. The Waste Management Policy Committee accelerated its efforts to design an international system for the control of transboundary movement of hazardous wastes, as had been recommended at the 1985 OECD Conference in Basel. The recommendation was subsequently converted by the OECD Council into a formal Resolution [C(85(100)] – which called upon the Environment Committee to prepare a draft International Agreement by 1987. By mid-1986, the Committee had prepared a draft Council DecisionRecommendation on the export of hazardous wastes from the OECD area, adopted by Council as C(86)64; and was working on the following elements of an international system: a definition of hazardous wastes; an agreed list of wastes; the har-

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monisation of technical standards; and waste shipment notification procedures. The work was energised by efforts which had been initiated within the UNEP to prepare a global convention on transfrontier movement of hazardous wastes. OECD’s technical analyses, as well as the discussions and debates among Member country delegates in the WMPG, contributed substantially to the conclusion in 1989 of the negotiation of UNEP’s global convention (i.e., the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movement of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal). Interestingly, in December 1988, the Environment Committee debated how to handle OECD’s draft International Agreement that had by then emerged from the Waste Management Policy Committee, given that UNEP’s global Basel Convention was also well advanced. The Committee’s decision was to have the Council adopt a Resolution voicing support for the global effort, and appending to it OECD’s draft International Agreement, as a further signal of OECD Member country concern about, and efforts on, the hazardous waste transport issue. The Resolution also called upon the OECD Secretariat to review the results of Basel and to re-consider its draft Agreement in light of it, as well as to evaluate what OECD could do to control waste movements from OECD nations to developing countries pending entry into force of the Basel Convention. The WMPG subsequently decided that there was no need to pursue the OECD Agreement and related activities; rather, the OECD effort should shift to supporting the Basel Secretariat in advancing the global convention, and to undertake a new set of studies related to waste minimisation and recycling. A new environmental initiative was undertaken by the Organisation in this time period on accidents involving hazardous chemicals. Following a series of well-publicised industrial accidents, Environment Ministers meeting at the OECD in 1985 declared that they would “ensure the existence of appropriate measures to control potentially hazardous installations, including measures to prevent accidents”. The Third High Level Meeting of the Chemicals Group in 1987 addressed this matter in detail, and agreed that the “OECD provides an effective forum for intensifying national and international efforts to prevent accidents involving hazardous substances.” The following February (1988), the OECD organised a Ministerial-level Conference on Accidents Involving Hazardous Substances, held in Paris at the invitation of the French Government. The results strengthened the resolve of governments to address this matter more vigorously, and to look to the OECD to help identify policy options and promote common approaches across OECD countries. A three-year work programme was quickly designed and approved by the Environment Committee. It was funded largely by extra-budgetary contributions, and overseen by a new subsidiary body of the Environment Committee, the ad hoc Group of Experts on Accidents Involving Hazardous Substances.51 51. The programme was extended when the initial three-year mandate came to an end, and continues today.

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In July 1988, the OECD Council adopted two legally-binding Decisions on industrial accidents involving hazardous substances aimed at 1) upholding the public’s right to be informed of both the potential dangers of hazardous installations and the conduct and measures they should adopt in the event of an accident [C(88)85 Final]; and 2) strengthening co-operation between authorities in neighbouring countries by means of consultations and exchanges of information about hazardous installations, warning procedures, emergency plans and response actions [C988)84 Final].52 Through the second half of the 1980s, the environmental content of the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises remained under discussion in the Organisation. The CIME requested the Environment Committee in 1986 to indicate how it wished to see environment treated in a revision of the Guidelines, scheduled for completion in 1990. The Environment Committee informed the CIME that it would “work toward” a separate environmental chapter to replace the “clarification” which was annexed to the existing version of the Guidelines. Consultations were carried out with BIAC and TUAC, with the industry side opposing a dedicated environmental chapter, while TUAC indicating its support for the proposition if the “working environment” were to be included. CIME, and the Council, subsequently agreed to add a new chapter on environment, as prepared by the Environment Committee, to a revised version of the Guidelines (issued in 1991). While the environmental community, in general, supported this move, many NGO representatives viewed the language as “minimalist”, and well short of what the business community had already agreed to in other international fora. Transportation and environment also attracted considerable attention in the 1986-90 timeframe. In addition to long-standing work on this subject by the Environment Committee and the Group on Urban Affairs, the European Conference of Ministers of Transport (ECMT) – an OECD affiliate – began to consider environmental issues, and to place “environment” on the agenda of meetings of OECD Transport Ministers. Based on a Swedish proposal, the ECMT Council of Ministers met in Special Session in November 1989 to discuss Transport Policy and the Environment. The involvement of Transport Ministers in this period broadened the engagement of sectoral Ministers in environmental issues, which had heretofore principally involved Ministers of Energy and of Agriculture. The year 1989 saw the beginning of what was to become a major OECD effort in the area of trade and environment. The Trade Committee completed a report that year on links between trade polices and environmental policies, and referred it to the Environment Committee for comment. The latter “welcomed the opening of what we hope will be a continuing dialogue with the Trade Committee”.

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52. See OECD Environment Monograph No. 24 – Accidents Involving Hazardous Substances, 1989. The Organisation also collaborated with UNEP in preparing an International Directory of Emergency Response Centers, (OECD Environment Monograph No. 93, 1991.)

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Clean technology likewise began to command a high priority, with the Environment Committee undertaking a review of technology trends and opportunities in 1987. Technology-environment relationships also were treated as a component of a major three-year, cross-Directorate Technology and Economy Programme (TEP) launched in 1988, and managed for the Organisation by the Directorate for Science, Technology and Industry. Then, in their Spring 1989 meeting, the OECD Ministerial Council highlighted the need for OECD countries to play a leadership role internationally in promoting technology innovation and diffusion to address environment threats. This message was reinforced at the G-7 Summit of the Arch, in Paris in July 1989, when Heads of State drew the linkage between technology innovation and sustainable development. Following the G-7 meeting, the Japanese Government proposed an OECD initiative on environmental technology that could be announced by the Council when it met in Tokyo for a special session in the fall of 1989. This led directly to the design by the Environment Directorate of a three-year, cross-Directorate programme on Technology and Environment, launched by the Environment Committee in 1990. Through the 1980s, the environmental aspects of urbanisation and urban management received attention within the work programme of the Council’s Group on Urban Affairs. Two meetings of OECD Ministers responsible for urban affairs were held, in 1983 and 1986. These gave rise to a three-pronged OECD approach to urban problems in general, encompassing economic, social and environmental issues, and utilising area-based, multi-sectoral analyses. Priorities included urban housing, finance and land markets, such as, re-structuring and “brownfields”. Engaging Non-Member Countries: in the 1985-1990 period, the OECD’s engagement of non-Member countries expanded markedly, both in the scope and depth of activity, including in the field of environment. At the decade’s conclusion, the Organisation’s outreach to non-member countries was conceptualised in terms of the following three groupings: 1) traditional “developing countries”; 2) Dynamic Asian Economies (DAEs); and 3) the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. By 1990 environmental concerns were quite firmly embedded in the Organisation’s work programme for developing countries; while they were just beginning to be addressed with respect to the DAEs and the nations of Central and Eastern Europe. Regarding developing countries, the Environment Committee and the Development Assistance Committee worked together quite closely during the second half of the ‘80s, jointly producing an Environmental Checklist for Possible Use by High-Level Decision-Makers in Bilateral and Multilateral Development Assistance Institutions;53 co-sponsoring a number of seminars on the environmental assess53. See OECD document C(89)2.

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ment of projects; and initiating planning for a first joint meeting of Environment and Development Ministers held in early 1990. DAC established a Working Party on Development Assistance and Environment in 1989; and this same year the OECD Development Centre announced that it would introduce an environmental component into its work programme. With respect to Central and Eastern Europe, in 1989 the Environment Directorate began participating in a G-24 Working Group established by the Commission of the European Communities (CEC) to co-ordinate environmental co-operation with Poland and Hungary on behalf of the (then) twenty-four OECD Members. The CEC was concurrently supporting similar groups in other sectors. The Environment Directorate was also represented on an in-house “East-West Task Force”, established by the OECD Secretary-General, to plan and co-ordinate the Secretariat’s Eastern and Central European work. Early in 1990, the Council strengthened the Organisation’s overall outreach effort by creating a Centre for Co-operation with European Economies in Transition (CCEET). Environmental activities were gradually introduced into the Centre’s broad-based work programme over the next few years. Bergen Ministerial Conference: as noted at the outset of this section, the preparatory phase of the 1992 UNCED, in Rio, had a major influence on OECD’s environment programme in the 1986-90 period. Especially influential was the European Ministerial Conference on Sustainable Development held in Bergen, Norway in 1990. Sponsored by the Government of Norway with the support of the UNECE, the meeting was unique for the large degree of direct participation in both the planning and conduct of the conference granted by governments to private sector representatives ... from the scientific community, religious groups, non-governmental environmental organisations, business and labour. In a review of two decades of environmental progress written in 1992, The World Environment – 1972-1992,54 the authors – referring to the Bergen Conference – observed prophetically that, “Broadening the sphere of discussion is likely to be an enduring feature of the future.” This openness to the “outside”, which came to be known as “The Spirit of Bergen”, provided a precedent for private sector groups to demand greater entree to other government-organised conferences, and to a broad array of international organisations, including the OECD, WTO and the international financial institutions. The Bergen Conference also placed a spotlight on the matter of government accountability for following through on promises and commitments. Ministers identified improved data and statistics as one essential requirement; and better indicators of performance as another. Both were areas in which, in the eyes of the Ministers, OECD had a strong capacity to contribute. Ministers also considered 78

54. Source: Chapman and Hall, London, p. 786.

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the possibility of arranging for periodic reviews of the environmental performances of their countries, conducted by the OECD in co-operation with UNECE. The concept of country-specific environmental performance reviews did not receive the support in Bergen required to have it included as a conference recommendation. However, it re-emerged – and was universally endorsed – the next year at the May 1991 meeting of OECD Environment Ministers. This provided the mandate for the Organisation’s Environmental Performance Review Programme, launched in 1992. Council Acts: again, a review of the major OECD Council Acts on the environment adopted during the 1985-90 period reveals much about the principal work undertaken:

Decisions • Exchange of Information Concerning Accidents Capable of Causing Transfrontier Damage [C(88)84(Final)]. • Transfrontier Movement of Hazardous Wastes [C(88)90]. • Supplementing Council Decision [C(81)30] Concerning the Mutual Acceptance of Data in the Assessment of Chemicals [C(89)23]. Decisions-Recommendations • Exports of Hazardous Wastes from the OECD Area [C(86)64(Final)]. • Measures for the Protection of the Environment by Control of Polychlorinated Biphenyls [C(87)2]. • Systematic Investigation of Existing Chemicals [C(87)90]. • Provision of Information to the Public and Public Participation in Decision-Making Processes Related to Accidents Involving Hazardous Substances [C(88)85(Final)]. • Compliance with Principles of Good Laboratory Practice [C(89)87(Final)]. • Co-operative Investigations and Risk Reduction of Existing Chemicals [C(90)163(Final)]. • Reduction of Transfrontier Movements of Hazardous Wastes [C(90)178(Final)]. Recommendations • Measures Required to Facilitate the Environmental Assessment of Development Assistance Projects and Programmes [C(86)26]. • Water Resources Management Policies: Integration, Demand Management and Ground Water Protection [C(89)12(Final)]. • Application of the Polluter-Pays-Principle to Accidental Pollution [C(89)88(Final)]. • Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control [C(90)164(Final)]. • Environmental Indicators and Information [C(90)165(Final)]. • Use of Economic Instruments in Environmental Policy [C(90)177(Final)]. 79

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It is worth noting that ten of these Council Acts involve “Decisions” under which Member countries assumed binding obligations. The Decisions all fall into the areas of chemicals management (including industrial accidents) and hazardous waste management ... areas in which the Governments clearly looked to OECD for leadership in harmonising policies and practices. Programme Administration: the structure of the Environment Committee experienced further changes, as new subsidiary bodies were created by the Chemicals Group: the Risk Assessment Advisory Body (March 1989); the Steering Group on Existing Chemicals (November 1989); and a Panel on Good Laboratory Practices (November 1990). By the decade’s end, the Environment Committee was beginning to consider a possible wholesale modification of its subsidiary body structure in light of the changing nature of environmental issues, and the OECD Council’s demand for a more “streamlined and relevant” institution overall. In this regard, in 1989 the Committee debated combining its Groups on Air and Energy but decided to postpone a decision in anticipation of undertaking a comprehensive review of the Committee structure following the next Environment Ministerial, scheduled for 1991. The prospect of combining the Air and Energy Groups was symptomatic of the gradual move by OECD during the 1980s away from the classical, media-based (air, water, land) approach to environmental issues. The 1986-90 period saw the chairmanship of the Environment Committee change from Don McMichael to Fiona McConnell (UK) in 1986, then to Roger Blakely (NZ) in 1989. In 1988, Erik Lykke retired as Director for Environment, and was replaced by Bill L. Long (US). Towards Sustainable Development: The 1990s 1991-1995 A number of high-profile, environment-related international events commanded the attention of OECD Governments during the first half of the 1990s. In turn, this re-raised the profile and importance of environmental issues in the OECD. Most notable were: • the UNCED, in June 1992, in Rio ... including its Ministerial component known as the “Earth Summit”;

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• the meeting in Marrakesh, Morocco in April 1994 to sign the Final Act of the Uruguay Round on trade liberalisation, where environment-trade relationship became a major point of debate;

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• meetings of European Environment Ministers, in 1991 (Dobris), 1993 (Lucerne) and Sofia (1995), which shaped and guided the Environment for Europe Programme; • the First Meeting of the Conference of Parties to the Framework Convention on Climate Change in Berlin, April 1995; plus • G-7 Economic Summits. The OECD sponsored its own high-profile meetings on the environment in this timeframe. Included were the fourth meeting of the OECD Environment Committee at Ministerial Level at the very outset of the period (30-31 January 1991), and a joint meeting of OECD Environment Ministers and Development Assistance Ministers in December of that same year. Then, in the Spring of 1994, a special meeting of IEA Energy Ministers was convened in Interlaken, Switzerland, to discuss energyrelated environmental issues, climate change in particular. As a result, “environment” was very high on OECD’s agenda during the first half of the 1990s, with initiatives and support emanating from the OECD Council and the Secretary-General’s office; and proposals for new work and approaches being brought by Member country experts into a wide array of OECD committees and technical groups. Inter-Committee Co-operation: the elevated interest in environmental issues in the OECD “house” converged with the Council’s quest for greater co-operation among committees in addressing cross-cutting issues. The result was a move to establish inter-committee working groups on subjects that lay at the interface between environmental policy and economic or development policy. With the Uruguay Round drawing to conclusion, and trade-environment issues attracting considerable attention from governments North and South, as well as from industry and environmental NGOs, the OECD Trade Committee and Environment Committee created a Joint Session of Trade and Environment Experts in 1991. The Joint Session’s mandate was to debate, analyse and attempt to reconcile the divergent perspectives and interests of the trade and environment “cultures”. Several years would elapse before GATT/WTO launched its own Committee on Trade and Environment. Two years later, in 1993, the Committee on Agriculture and the Environment Committee joined forces to create a Joint Working Party on Agriculture and Environment, formalising and strengthening a close working relationship that had existed for some ten years between these two bodies. That same year, the Committee on Fiscal Affairs and the Environment Committee established a Joint Session on Taxation and Environment, as OECD Governments expressed growing interest in the use of environmental taxes, and in possible overhaul of national tax systems, to achieve environmental objectives. These joint activities, and the inter-disciplinary approach taken by inter-Committee bodies, were viewed by OECD as being directly responsive to pri-

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orities for future work set out in the international plan of action, Agenda 21, approved by OECD Members, and other Governments, at the UNCED in 1992. OECD Response to UNCED: the heavy impact of UNCED, and Agenda 21, on OECD’s work programme is apparent in the Organisation’s efforts throughout 1991-95 timeframe on such issues as: the elaboration and promotion of the concept of sustainable development; changes in patterns of consumption and protection; development and transfer of environmentally-safe technologies; chemical safety; and protection of genetic diversity.55 In November 1993, to help ensure a “solid, well co-ordinated response by the Organisation to UNCED” as requested by the Council, Secretary-General Paye appointed a Deputy Secretary-General (Makoto Taniguchi) as OECD’s Special Representative to the UN Commission on Sustainable Development. (The Commission is a Ministerial-level body established by UNCED to promote and oversee the implementation of Agenda 21). Further, a new position of Technical Co-ordinator for Sustainable Development was attached to the Development Co-operation Directorate to support an Organisation-wide programme response. Among OECD’s substantive contributions to UNCED follow-up was a Workshop on National Action Plans for Sustainable Development convened jointly by the Environment Directorate and the Development Co-operation Directorate in Ottawa in October 1993. One of the products was the creation, at the non-governmental level outside the OECD, of an international network of individuals interested in sharing experiences about national plans – the “Green Planners Network”, which continues in existence. In response to UNCED’s request that “developed countries take the lead in promoting changes to consumption and production patterns, in late 1992 the Environment Directorate began informal consultations with Member country experts on a possible new OECD activity. This subject had long been a contentious topic in the “North-South dialogue” in the United Nations where developing countries had been pressing for many years to get the industrialised nations to reduce their consumption levels. OECD governments for the most part had rejected out of hand what they took to be an untenable demand for reduced living standards. In early 1993, the Netherlands proposed in the Environment Committee that the Organisation respond positively to the UNCED request on consumption/production;56 and, in June of that year, the OECD Ministerial Council agreed that “OECD should consider the feasibility of analyzing the relation between consumption and

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55. OECD’s association with UNCED in effect began with the establishment by the OECD Council in 1991 of an ad hoc Group on Environment and Development whose two-part mandate was to co-ordinate the Organisation’s contributions to the UN Conference, and to organise the meeting of OECD Ministers of Environment and Development Assistance in December 1991. 56. See OECD document ENV/EPOC/RD(93)11.

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production patterns and sustainable development”.57 One year later, a project on this subject was added to the Environment Committee’s work programme. Then, in July 1995, the Environment Directorate sponsored a workshop in Rosendal, Norway, where government and private sector experts considered the proper conceptual framework for addressing this complex subject, and examined an array of concepts and approaches that might be employed to promote environmentally-friendly pattern changes (e.g., carrying capacity, eco-space, eco-efficiency). UNCED’s influence on OECD also reached to the Chemicals Programme. New work on “risk reduction” was launched, following the emphasis placed on it in Agenda 21; and the OECD joined FAO, ILO, UNEP, UNIDO and WHO in a formalised co-ordination structure on chemical safety, specified in Agenda 21, known as the Inter-organisation Programme for the Sound Management of Chemicals (IOMC). In Rio in 1992, the Heads of State and of Government signed international conventions on climate change and on biological diversity; and agreed to begin work on a desertification convention. The substantial OECD and IEA work on climate change (mentioned earlier, and below) was – and continues to be – targeted at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. In support of the Convention on Biological Diversity, the OECD Environment Committee created an Experts Group on the Economic Impacts of Biodiversity in 1993, under the Group on Economic and Environment Policy Integration; and the Experts Group quickly began to investigate the application of market mechanisms for the sustainable use and conservation of biodiversity. By 1995, the Experts Group was drawing its work together in preparation for an OECD conference on Incentive Measures for Biological Conservation and Sustainable Use, scheduled for 1996 in Australia. In addition, from 1993 through 1995, the Club du Sahel58 hosted a series of meetings for the OECD country negotiators on the evolving the UN Convention on Desertification. G-7 Economic Summits: in 1975, the leaders of six major industrialised nations – Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States – meeting in Rambouillet, France, agreed to convene annually to discuss political and economic matters.59 Environmental issues first appeared on the agenda of a G-7 Economic Summit in a major way in 1989 in Paris, at the “Summit of the Arch”.60 Nineteen of the fifty57. See OECD document SG/PRESS(93)33, para. 19. 58. An OECD affiliate that engages officials from the West African nations in the Sahelian region plus major donors in discussions of needs and project co-ordination. 59. Canada’s participation in 1976 created the “G-7”; and Boris Yelsin’s presence at the Denver (US) Summit in 1997 transformed the assemblage into the “Summit of the Eight”. 60. Following the 1989 Summit of the Arch, environmental issues have appeared in the Communiqués from each of the subsequent G-7/8 Economic Summits (i.e., Houston, 1990; London, 1991; Munich, 1992; Tokyo, 1993; Naples, 1994; Halifax, 1995; Lyon, 1996; Denver, 1997; Birmingham, 1998; and Cologne, 1999). As would be expected, the attention that the Heads of State have devoted to environmental issues at these meetings has varied widely; in part because the G-7 Environment Ministers began in 1994 to hold their own meetings, and issue their own Communiqués.

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two paragraphs of the Summit Communiqué were devoted to environmental issues. The Introduction referred to the need for: collective action to safeguard the environment for future generations; world-wide adoption of sustainable development; and a united response by governments to the threats of stratospheric ozone depletion and climate change. Operative paragraphs covered, inter alia, water pollution, deforestation, technology innovation and transfer to address pollution, the role of industry, energy efficiency, developing countries and the environment, economicenvironment relationships, and environmental information and assessment. Regarding the latter, the OECD was specifically called upon by the Heads of State61 to examine how selected environmental indicators could be developed. This gave a major boost the Environment Committee’s work on environmental indicators during the first half of the 1990s. In the 1991-95 timeframe, OECD’s environmental work received explicit endorsements at two of the G-7 Economic Summits. In London in 1991, the Heads of State commended the Organisation for launching the Country Environmental Performance Review Programme, and for its work on the integration of economic and environmental policies. Then, in Tokyo in 1993, the Heads of State called for a study by IEA and OECD of “energy and environmental technologies”, particularly as related to the climate change threat. Following a one-year “scoping study” by IEA/OECD, the two organisations collaborated in designing what was to become the Climate Technology Initiative, drawing in the process on views expressed at a High-Level OECD/IEA Meeting on Climate Change in 1994. The Climate Technology Initiative, whose objective was to accelerate the development and deployment of cleaner energy technologies, was presented to the international community by 23 OECD Member countries, plus Korea and the European Commission, in Berlin in April 1995, at the First Meeting of the Conference of Parties to the Climate Change Convention. That same month (April 1995), Environment Ministers from the G-7 countries, meeting in Hamilton, Canada, called for OECD to: 1) review subsidies and tax disincentives from the viewpoint of environmental management – a request that reinforced and propelled ongoing OECD work on this subject; and 2) support Member countries in efforts to improve the environmental performance of government agencies. The second request led to a “Greening of Governments” element being added to the Organisation’s work on changing consumption and production patterns. The component included the “greening” of government policies as well as government procurement and other practices. Environment for Europe Programme: international events with major repercussions for the Organisation’s environmental work in the 1991-95 timeframe included the bien84

61. Refer to paragraph 37 of the Communiqué.

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nial Environment for Europe conferences of European Environment Ministers, joined by their counterparts from the US, Canada, Japan and Australia. The first meeting, in Dobris Castle, Czechoslovakia in 1991, launched the “Environment for Europe” process, based on a planning and co-ordination framework for both national actions and international assistance intended to help promote environmental improvement and sound management in the nations of Central and Eastern Europe. Subsequent Ministerials were held in Lucerne, Switzerland (1993); Sofia, Bulgaria (1995); Aarhus, Denmark (1998); with the next scheduled for Kiev, Ukraine in 2002. In 1993 in Lucerne, the Ministers proposed that the OECD serve as Secretariat for a new Task Force, co-chaired by the Commission of the European Communities (EC) and a Central or Eastern European Country, and established to facilitate implementation of an Environmental Action Plan for Central and Eastern Europe (EAP). Following approval by the OECD Council, a Task Force Secretariat was created within the Environment Directorate’s Non-Member Countries Branch. Task Force Membership extended beyond government representatives to include officials from the World Bank, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, other international organisations and the non-governmental sector. Thus, in fulfilling the Secretariat function, the OECD was able to play a central role in shaping the work programme and priorities for the Action Programme, and also to facilitate the integration of other OECD environmental work on Central and Eastern Europe fully into the implementation of the EAP. The major areas of work in the EAP context were: a) National Environmental Action Programmes; b) environmental financing; and c) cleaner production. It was also in Lucerne in 1993 that Environment Ministers requested OECD and UNECE to join forces in carrying out “pilot reviews” of Poland, Bulgaria and Belarus, basing the reviews on the OECD Environmental Performance Review Programme which was then in its second year. The pilot effort was subsequently launched following approval by the OECD Council, which stipulated that the studies must be financed through extra-budgetary support. The Lucerne Ministerial further called for OECD-UNECE co-operation to promote the wider use in Europe of economic instruments for environmental protection. The request received positive follow-up by both institutions. An adjunct to the Environment for Europe process was the establishment by the Environment Directorate and the Directorate for Science, Technology and Industry of an Advisory Group on Environment and Industry to better inform the process about industry-technology-environment relationships, and to draw industry experts more closely into the programme. Fourth OECD Environment Ministerial: on January 30-31, 1991, the OECD Environment Committee met at Ministerial-level for the fourth time. This session had a profound effect on both the content and structure of OECD’s environment programme.

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Chaired by Georgio Ruffolo from Italy, the Environment Ministers examined both retrospectively and prospectively the major trends in environmental affairs in the OECD region under the theme “Environmental Policymaking in the 1990s”. The Ministers agreed that there had been a progression of management strategies over three decades, beginning with the “identify and repair” approach of the 1970s which gave way to one of “anticipate and prevent” in the ‘80s. Now, in the 1990s, the challenge was “sound, cost-effective environmental management”, based on long-term strategic planning and closer international co-operation. The key requirements for OECD environmental policymakers would be to: 1) pursue environmental objectives in a period of severe budget constraints; 2) demonstrate to the public, and to national treasuries, that environmental goals were being attained in the most cost-effective ways; and 3) achieve full integration of economic and environmental polices. In terms of the major environmental challenges ahead, the Ministers highlighted global-scale problems of stratospheric ozone depletion, climate change, marine pollution, deforestation, desertification, soil degradation and loss of biological diversity. To respond to the new environmental “problematique”, Ministers agreed to pursue a series of goals that they embodied in an Environmental Strategy for the 1990s.62 The Strategy was based on three “pillars” of work: integrating economic and environmental decision-making; improving environmental performance domestically and across the OECD region; and strengthening international co-operation. This was subsequently used by the OECD Environment Committee as the framework for its work programme, and also in a re-structuring of the Environment Directorate. In 1992, the name of the Environment Committee was changed to the Environment Policy Committee (this new formulation will be used through out the remainder of this paper). Programme Priorities: the 1992-95 work programme of the Environment Policy Committee addressed many of the priorities set out by the Environment Ministers in January 1991. OECD’s Programme of Country Environmental Performance Reviews was launched. New work was initiated on the identification and elimination of those subsidies, taxes and other market interventions that distort the use of environmental resources; and sector studies began to establish where improved policymaking and strict application of the Polluter-Pays-Principle was essential in the areas of energy, transport, agriculture and coastal zone management. Ministers’ priorities also stimulated the Organisation to step up its efforts on hazardous air pollutants, particularly in urban areas, on the environmental aspects of biotechnology, on chemical safety, and on technology-environment relationships. 86

62. See Ministerial Communiqué of 31 January 1991 [SG/PRESS(91)9.].

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Other subjects of emphasis in the 1992-95 environmental work programme included: the assessment of ways in which OECD Governments could improve their own environmental performances; inventory and distribution of information on the expanding use of “eco-labeling” schemes; co-operation with UN agencies to expand the system of “National Accounts” to reflect environmental values; and, additional work on the economics of climate change. Ministers strongly endorsed OECD’s recent efforts, especially the use of the Organisation’s “GREEN” model to clarify macroeconomic relationships. The reinforced climate change mandate emanated in part from the Ministers’ review of the 2nd World Climate Conference held in 1990, and their determination to have the OECD provide analytical support for the international negotiations on an international convention on climate change. Among the Environment Policy Committee’s highest priority activities during the 1991-95 period was the Programme of Country Environmental Performance Reviews. Its “raison d’être” was to strengthen the accountability of Member countries with respect to their domestic objectives and international commitments, and to promote environmental progress through “peer pressure”. The Programme was launched in 1992 on a “pilot basis”, with reviews of Germany and Iceland. It became fully operational in 1993 with examinations of Portugal, Norway and Japan. By the end of the first half of the decade, eleven countries had either been examined or were in the process of being reviewed. In addition, at the beginning of the decade, the OECD’s Economic and Statistics Department began including “environmental chapters” in its well-known Economic Reviews on a selective basis. Work on environmental indicators also blossomed. The scope of activity subsumed: 1) classical environmental indicators, e.g., air and water quality; 2) sectoral indicators, e.g., in the areas of transport, agriculture, energy; and 3) environmental accounting. Methodological development work was carried out, as well as the application and testing of indicators in the Environmental Performance Reviews. In 1995, an update of the OECD Environmental Data Compendium was published, with data included for the first time on Mexico, a recent new Member, and on three countries which were “on the path to accession” in the Organisation: the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland. Economic and environment policy integration remained very high in the programme priorities. The Economic and Statistics Department published heavily on insights drawn from its “GREEN” model studies of the macroeconomic implications of alternative policy response strategies for dealing with climate change. In June 1993, the Environment Directorate joined with the IEA, Development Co-operation Directorate and the Economic and Statistics Department in sponsoring an OECD Conference on Climate Change. This was a heavily-attended, high-profile event that set out and examined the state-of-knowledge on the economics of climate change. Its major objective was to support OECD Members and other Governments in their

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efforts to negotiate implementing protocols under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change signed a year earlier in Rio. Following the request from the G-7 Environment Ministerial in Hamilton, Canada (April 1995) for OECD to deepen its work on subsidies and tax disincentives. The Environment Policy Committee and Committee on Fiscal Affairs co-sponsored a workshop on this topic in November of that same year to review the stateof-knowledge and to identify next steps. The two Committees also co-operated in the development of a comprehensive survey of Environmental Taxes in OECD Countries (July 1995) and then turned their attention to implementing strategies for the introduction of environmental taxes. The economics work programme of the Environment Policy Committee during 1991-95 also emphasised the areas of trade-environment relationships; employment and environment; the best use of economic instruments; and policy integration in the sectors of transport, energy and agriculture. As noted earlier, in 1991 the Environment Policy Committee and Trade Committee joined forces in creating a Joint Session of National Experts on Trade and Environment to shape and manage the Organisation’s work on trade and environment relationships. One of the first products was Procedural Guidelines for use by government policymakers in balancing trade and environmental objectives.63 In May 1995, OECD’s Ministerial Council received a report from the Joint Session which presented the conclusions and recommendations of the assorted studies and workshops. The Ministers extended the Joint Session’s mandate through 1997, commissioning studies on the environmental effects from changes in freight transport attributable to trade liberalisation; trade effects of eco-labeling schemes; and environmental effects from changes in tariff escalation. By mid-decade, however, OECD’s role in the trade-environment area was beginning to be questioned by some OECD Members. The focus of international attention had shifted to the WTO, and specifically to its Committee on Trade and Environment which was “up and running” and engaging a much broader representation of countries than the OECD normally would bring together. Members did agree, in both the Environment and the Trade Committees, that OECD could provide an unsurpassed quality of analytical work on key policy issues being discussed in the WTO, and at a much faster pace. OECD also had the advantage of being the only body which systematically brought trade and environment experts together to analyse and debate the issues, an advantage that OECD continues to have over other international fora, including the WTO, even a decade and a half later. Thus, a Trade-Environment programme was maintained in the OECD, with participants 88

63. See OECD document OECD/GD(93)99.

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working hard to ensure that the Organisation was not “marginalised” and would continue to address issues that were at the centre of the debate. In 1994, the US proposed in the Environment Policy Committee that OECD, through the Export Credits Group of the Trade Committee, should develop common Environmental Guidelines for Government-supported Export Financing. A consensus was not reached among Governments at that time to pursue such Guidelines in the Organisation, although the Export Credit Group did carry out preliminary work and information exchange during the second half of the 1990s. The matter continues under discussion in the OECD and is receiving greater consideration by Member countries. By mid-decade, the “globalisation” phenomenon was beginning to be discussed in earnest across the OECD, including in the Environment Policy Committee. This set the stage for intensive analysis of the environmental ramifications of globalisation in the 1996-99 period. The Organisation also initiated an examination of “regulatory reform” in OECD Member countries in the Fall of 1995 which – as the work progressed in subsequent years – came to include issues of both “de-regulation” and “re-regulation” in the field of environment. In May 1995, the Council agreed to the immediate start of negotiations in the OECD aimed at reaching a Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) in time for the Council Ministerial meeting in 1997. This was linked to the preoccupation most OECD Members were displaying about identifying and removing all forms of impediments to economic globalisation. By the end of 1995, concerns were being voiced in the Environment Policy Committee about the environmental content (or perceived lack thereof) of the MAI negotiations. This set the stage for a debate on investment-environment relationships, and the MAI, which continued well into the second half of the 1990s. Chemical safety remained a high priority for the Environment Programme. The 1991-95 work programme of the Joint Meeting of the Chemicals Group and Management Committee emphasised: existing chemicals; risk reduction work on five chemicals, including lead and mercury; the development of principles, methods and practical instruments for chemical safety; updating of OECD’s Principles for Good Laboratory Practice; and development of test guidelines. Work on harmonisation and labeling of hazardous chemicals gained momentum. In a harbinger of things to come, Hungary asked to become a full participant in OECD’s Mutual Acceptance of Data system (a request granted by the Council in 1993). This led the Chemicals Group to conclude that there was strong rationale to open this Programme to all qualified non-member countries, leading to efforts to try to gain Council approval for such action. At the end of the period, the work programme on Chemical Accidents began to emphasise “outreach” to non-member countries.

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The 1991-95 timeframe also saw the OECD return to the field of pesticides, a preoccupation during the late 1960s and early 1970s at the advent of the Organisation’s environmental work. The trigger was a meeting of experts and policymakers held in Sweden in 1991 to review the status of international work on the safe management of pesticides. One of the principal recommendations was that OECD should take on a new role with respect to pesticide re-registration, and employ the burden-sharing-based methodology used so successfully in the Environment Directorate’s long-standing Chemicals Programme. The Chemicals Group then held a Special Session on Pesticides in May 1992, and defined the scope, strategy and priorities for a new activity. By the end of 1995, surveys had been carried out of Member country priorities for the development of test methods for pesticides, of country data requirements for biological pesticides, and of pesticide risk reduction activities of OECD and selected FAO countries. A new multi-year programme on Harmonisation of Regulatory Oversight in Biotechnology was launched in 1995 by the Joint Meeting of the Chemicals Group and Management Committee. This was supported by a BIOTRACK-ONLINE information system, accessible through the Internet that contains information on field releases of genetically-modified organisms and on commercialisation of genetically-modified plants. This programme and other biotechnology activities conducted elsewhere in the OECD were co-ordinated by the IntraSecretariat Internal Co-ordination Group for Biotechnology. In the area of Pollution Prevention and Control, the special three-year Programme on Technology and Environment was completed in 1994. A Programme report was published, Technologies for Cleaner Production and Products: Toward Technological Transformation for Sustainable Development (September 1995), along with a selfassessment manual for Governments. In September 1994, a workshop in Hanover, Germany, addressed clean industrial production technology for developing countries. Related efforts, under the direction of the Group on Pollution Prevention and Control, evaluated Life-Cycle-Management as applied to industrial operations, and also “product policy”. The transportation sector was another priority for the Environment Policy Committee’s work on Pollution Prevention and Control. The initial focus was on cleaner motor vehicles and air quality. This extended work on transport and the environment that OECD, IEA and ECMT had been carrying out both independently and jointly for some five years. Co-operative activities included sponsorship of a series of conferences to assess technological prospects and policy choices for clean transport.

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In 1995, EPOC’s Group on Pollution Prevention and Control created a Level-3 Task Force on Transportation to, inter alia, define strategies for “environmentally sustainable transport”. The totality of the Organisation’s work on transport and

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environment was reviewed, distilled and packaged to support OECD’s expanding outreach to non-Member countries on environmental management. For example, a workshop on Urban Transport and Environment, jointly sponsored by the Environment Directorate, the ECMT and the OECD Territorial Development Service, was held in Bucharest, Romania in 1995, within the framework of the Organisation programme for Co-operation with European Economies in Transition. In co-operation with several UN agencies, the Pollution Prevention and Control Group held a workshop series in 1994/95 that led to the publication by OECD in 1995 of a Pollutant Release and Transfer Register – A Guidance Document for Governments. Based on the Toxic Release Inventory developed in the United States, the OECD Pollutant Release and Transfer Registers (PRTR) approach was similarly designed to help keep citizens informed about the sources and amounts of potentially toxic materials in their communities. Several pilot projects were carried out, in co-operation UNEP and UNITAR, to bring the experience and needs of non-member countries into the process of establishing the PRTR system world-wide. Climate-energy relationships received prominent attention, especially from the IEA and the Environment Directorate, often through collaborative efforts. IEA’s work obtained a substantial boost from a special meeting of IEA Energy Ministers in Interlaken, Switzerland, in the Spring of 1994. The meeting, which responded to the Minister’s desire to be more “pro-active” in the ongoing international negotiations of protocols under the Climate Change Convention, concluded that the Agency should take a longer-term view of energy-environment relationships in its modeling and analyses, increase its emphasis on co-operation with non-member countries, and strengthen its work on climate-related technologies and policy integration, especially in the transport sector. These conclusions brought the philosophy and content of IEA’s climate-related work into close alignment with that of OECD’s Environment Policy Committee. This created a de facto “common agenda” that facilitated co-operation between EPOC and the IEA in subsequent years. While EPOC-IEA environmental co-operation flourished, this cannot be said for EPOC’s co-operation with the NEA. The NEA’s Radioactive Waste Management Committee again sought to engage the Environment Policy Committee in a collaborative activity, this time to examine the concept of passive multibarrier systems located in deep geologic formations for disposal of long-lived, high-level radioactive waste, “in light of sustainable development”. The NEA’s goal was to develop a “collective opinion” on the environmental and ethical basis of deep geological disposal. After referring the NEA invitation to the Level-2 Group on Pollution Prevention and Control, and receiving its views, the Environment Policy Committee decided to decline. Once more it proved impossible to develop the necessary con-

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sensus in the Environment Policy Committee, given the anti-nuclear sentiments of some OECD Members. The Environment Policy Committee’s work programme on climate in the 1991-95 timeframe focused on four sets of issues: 1) methodologies and formats for Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Emission Inventories, for use by governments in their reporting under the Climate Change Convention; 2) “guidelines” to assist governments prepare their “National Communications” required under the Convention; 3) technologies for reducing GHG emissions; and 4) – as mentioned earlier – the economics of climate change. The OECD’s pioneering work on GHG Emission Inventories was launched independently by the Organisation as a contribution to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which was mandated to provide the scientific and technical support for the Climate Change Convention. It was especially significant that, in 1994, two years after the OECD’s work began, the IPCC adopted the Emissions Inventories project as one of its own, and henceforth included it in the IPCC work programme, a sign of the worldwide relevancy and importance of the Organisation’s initiative. Discussions in the Environment Policy Committee in the early 1990s revealed broad differences of opinion on what type of role the OECD should play in the field of climate change. Some delegates wished the Organisation to be very active across the spectrum of issues, including the development of policy options for Member governments as well as technical analyses. Others, however, were keen to keep OECD outside of the Convention negotiation process, and balked at anything that smacked of an OECD position or preference on policy matters being discussed by negotiators. This led to a difficult debate in the Environment Policy Committee in 1993 on the Environment Director’s proposal to establish an Advisory Committee to OECD on Climate Change. The result was a cautious agreement to establish a less-formal ad hoc Group of Experts on Climate Change. One year later – in the face of a growing OECD workload on climate change, and the growing prominence of the issue internationally – the Environment Secretariat proposed the creation of a Climate Forum to promote multi-sectoral, strategic approaches to climate change, both in Member Governments and in the OECD work programme. The Forum would also contribute views and ideas on OECD work in this field, and serve to help publicise the results of the Organisation’s ongoing efforts. The Environment Policy Committee and the IEA Council were cautious, and initially divided in opinion, concerned that this might draw the OECD too much into “policy” matters. In September 1995, the Committee agreed to establish the Forum on a “trial” basis. After two successful meetings, the Committee agreed in late 1996 to integrate it fully into its structure. 92

Waste management remained a high priority for the Environment Directorate and its Waste Management Policy Group. In this post-Basel Convention period,

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OECD focused its efforts on the control of wastes from OECD Members that crossed international borders for purposes of recovery or re-cycling. In 1992, the OECD Council approved a new Act64 which established a system for controlling hazardous waste trade within the OECD region, based on a “red, amber or green” waste characterisation. For the next three years, the Waste Management Policy Group concentrated on developing a guidance manual for this internal OECD country system (published in 1995); and on conducting technical reviews of various types of waste and monitoring the application of the system by OECD countries. OECD’s waste-related activities also broadened toward mid-decade to include waste minimisation and Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR). The Environment Policy Committee convened an International Workshop on Waste Minimisation in Washington in 1995, jointly sponsored by the US, Canada and Mexico. That same year, a Workshop on Clean Production and Waste Minimisation was held at OECD Headquarters for Member country experts as well as for officials from the Dynamic Non-Member Economies of Latin America and Asia, including China, and representatives of other international organisations (e.g., UNEP, UNIDO, UNDP, World Bank). Finally, urban environmental issues continued to receive substantial attention during the 1991-95 period, particularly as the result of recommendations from a High Level Conference on the Problems of the Cities in 1992. Engaging Non-Member Countries: in the early years of the 1990s, OECD Governments were preoccupied with the implications of economic “globalisation”, the economic and political transformation of Eastern and Central Europe, the emergence of the Asian “tigers”, completion of the Uruguay Trade Round, the 1992 Earth Summit, and global scale environmental issues. It is no wonder then that the OECD mantra at that time was “outreach and openness” to non-members. OECD Membership had remained at twenty-four countries since New Zealand entered in 1974. Then, in rapid succession, Mexico was formally accepted into the Organisation in 1994, the Czech Republic in 1995, and Hungary, Poland and Korea in 1996. There was an important environmental dimension to the accession process, one which engaged the Environment Policy Committee and Directorate quite actively. As a condition for membership, each applicant country was required to review, and accept, the Organisation’s formal Acts ... and, as we have seen, many of these dealt with chemical safety, waste management, hazardous accidents, and an array of other environmental subjects. Thus, the Environment Policy Committee was heavily occupied during this period with information collection and analysis of the applicants’ environmental credentials; and the Environment Directorate con64. See OECD document C(92)39/FINAL.

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sulted closely with senior officials and technical experts from those countries seeking membership about the Council Acts on environmental matters. Significant benefits for the environment accrued. It was apparent that the officials in Foreign Offices and Economic Ministries from applicant countries who managed the accession process from their end were surprised by the amount of attention they had to devote to environment. The implicit message that “environment is really important to OECD countries” was not a bad one to transmit, even though the heavy environmental content was the serendipitous result of a “Actoriented” Environment Committee over the years. Furthermore, as the Environment Policy Committee raised concerns about environmental needs and shortcomings during the accession process, the applicant governments sometimes took rapid steps to shore up their capabilities. In the case of Korea, the Environment Ministry received eight new positions to deal with chemical safety when concerns were voiced by several OECD Members during accession examinations about certain deficiencies in this area. The OECD Environment Directorate was concurrently carrying out a rapidly expanding Non-Members Countries Programme. Under the larger umbrella of the Organisation’s Centre for Co-operation with European Economies in Transition, by 1995 a broad spectrum environmental programme was in place with the following elements: General Work Programme – Studies of economic-environment policy linkages (environmental funds). – Integrating energy and environment policies. – Environment for Europe for which the OECD provided the Secretariat for the international EAP Task Force that manages the activity. – Industry and the Environment, supported by the OECD ad hoc Advisory Group on Industry and the Environment. – Environmental Performance Reviews (Poland). Russia – Environmental information systems, an OECD review plus follow-up workshop to design a unified information network. – Environmental Performance Review. Programme of Technical Assistance to the Newly Independent States of the Former Soviet Union 94

– Strengthening Inter-Republican environmental co-operation, such as, privatisation, eco-labeling, environmental standards.

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– Implementation of the Environmental Action Plan, particularly national action preparation. The work programme for non-members also included a co-operative venture with the World Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development to prepare a comprehensive report on environmental liability in the context of privatisation in Eastern and Central Europe. Within OECD, work was carried out by environmental and tax experts and resulted in publication of OECD Guidelines on Environmental Funds, also known as the “St. Petersburg Guidelines” based on the venue of the workshop in Russia where the Guidelines were discussed and endorsed in October 1994. OECD’s environmental co-operation with Asian nations was also growing. A “dialogue” programme for the Dynamic Asian Economies (DNMEs) was established, later to become the Emerging Market Economy Forum (EMEF) after participation was expanded to include certain Latin American nations. The Environment Directorate held the first DNME workshop on an environmental topic in 1992, on “The Use of Economic Instruments for Environmental Management”. In 1995, a second workshop addressed issues associated with “Cleaner Production and Waste Minimisation in OECD and Dynamic Non-Member Economies”, and Proceedings with that title was published in 1997. In 1994, a team of officials and experts from China paid a first visit to the Environment Directorate, paving the way for meetings and document exchanges in the second half of the ‘90s. In 1993, at the request of the Council, OECD launched an Organisation-wide Linkages study to elaborate, analyse and document the likely relationships between OECD Member countries and major developing nations to the year 2020. “Environment” emerged as a central set of issues. This was an acknowledgment of: a) the new opportunities afforded by globalisation, international co-operation and improved technology to solve domestic, regional and global environmental problems, including climate change, deforestation, trade-environment conflicts and population migration from degraded environments; and b) the potential adverse consequences for OECD Members if the emerging nations were not able to deal with their own environmental problems and to join the larger community of nations in addressing regional and global environmental threats. With respect to the poorer developing nations, the Development Assistance Committee, through its Working Party on Development Assistance and the Environment, was increasing its support for environmental activities and strengthening its co-operation with United Nations and other international institutions on development and environment issues, including the UN Commission on Sustainable Development, World Bank and UNDP. By 1995, DAC had issued nine sets of Guidelines on Best Practices for dealing with various types of environmental threats.

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OECD Council Acts: given the high level of activity on environmental issues in the 1991-1995 timeframe, it is rather surprising that only four new OECD Council Acts were adopted in light of the profusion of environmental Acts in previous periods:

Decisions • Documentation for Transfrontier Movement of Wastes [C(95)154(Final)]. • Control of Transfrontier Movements of Wastes Designed for Recovery Operations [C(92)39(Final)]. Recommendations • Integrated Coastal Zone Management [C(92)114(Final)]. • Chemicals Accident Prevention, Preparedness and Response [C(92)1(Final)].

Programme Administration: following the Environment Ministerial, and as part of a broad effort to strengthen its programme and enhance the Committee’s image and effectiveness, the Environment Committee decided in 1992 to re-constitute itself as the Environment Policy Committee (EPOC). It also began discussing the idea of adding to its regular meetings “special sessions” on major policy issues which would be designed to attract high-level participation and engender useful and timely policy dialogues. The Committee further agreed to re-structure its subsidiary bodies to streamline the reporting functions and to bring the structure more into line with the mainstream environmental issues then being dealt with by the Organisation. In 1991, when Environment Committee re-structuring was first discussed, ten standing “Groups” and assorted ad hoc bodies were reporting directly to it. EPOC delegates decided in 1992 to replace this unwieldy arrangement with a “three tier” structure. Beneath the Level-1 parent Committee, four Level-2 subsidiary bodies were established: the Group on Economic and Environment Policy Integration; the Group on Pollution Prevention and Control; the Group on Chemicals; and the Group on Environmental Performance. At Level-3 were the various working parties, task forces and groups already in existence that were now to report to one of the four Level-2 Groups. Further, the Level-2 Groups could add or eliminate Level-3 bodies, subject to concurrence by the parent Committee. 96

The Committee agreed at the outset that the existing State of the Environment Group would become a Level-3 entity, reporting to the Group on Environmental

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Performance; and that the ad hoc Group on Hazardous Accidents would henceforth report to the Chemicals Group. Two major issues arose in the Committee’s efforts to restructure. One had to do with the wisdom of creating a Group on Pollution Prevention and Control. While the merits of treating all forms of pollution in an integrated manner went unchallenged at the conceptual level, some Committee members voiced concern about their ability to find delegates for the Group who had the breadth of experience, knowledge and perspective necessary to make judgments about integrated pollution prevention and control. In most Member countries, the various types of pollution (air, water, solid wastes) were still being treated in a non-integrated fashion, by different government ministries and offices. Nonetheless, on September 1992, a Pollution Prevention and Control Group was formally established. The second difficulty for the Committee was deciding how and where natural resource issues should be addressed. This reflected the long-standing difference of views among governments about OECD’s role vis-à-vis natural resources. As it turned out, EPOC delegates decided in 1993 against creating a major Level-2 Group on Natural Resources; rather, resource management issues would be addressed within the programme of the Group on Economic and Environment Policy Integration, “since OECD’s unique contributions in the crowded field of natural resources management should be in the sphere of economics”. Also in 1993, the Group on Economic and Environment Policy Integration established a Level-3 Experts Group on the Economic Aspects of Biological Diversity. The process of re-structuring led to the disappearance of two long-standing subsidiary bodies of the Environment Committee. The Air Management Policy Group went out of existence in 1993, continuing the trend away from a classical air, water, land approach to environmental issues; and the Group on Energy and Environment was terminated two years later. Another casualty of institutional change in 1993 was the Committee’s ad hoc Group on Technology and Environment whose mandate effectively ended with the submission of its final report. 1993 also saw a re-structuring of the Environment Directorate, bringing it into close conformance with the Level-2 structure of EPOC. A Division on State of the Environment was created – to handle environmental data and indicators, and to manage the Country Environmental Performance Review Programme; and a NonMember Countries Branch was established. These joined the Environment Directorate’s existing Divisions for Economics and Environment, for Chemical Safety, for Pollution Prevention and Control, and for Urban Affairs. Another major change in the structure of the Environment Directorate occurred in 1994 when its Urban Affairs Division was integrated into a new OECD Territorial Development Services (TDS). The EPOC was not directly affected by the loss since

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the Group on Urban Affairs, which the Urban Division supported, had been reporting to the Council, rather than to the Environment Policy Committee. Regarding EPOC leadership, Fern Hurtubise (CAN) assumed the Committee chair in 1992, succeeding Roger Blakely. 1996-2000 OECD’s environmental work in the second half of the 1990s has been defined by both events and concepts. Defining events include: – meetings of the OECD Environment Committee at Ministerial Level in 1996 and 1998 as well as early preparatory work for the next Ministerial, in 2001; – meetings of the OECD Council at Ministerial Level in 1997 and 1998, where environment and sustainable development received prominent attention; – the establishment by the Secretary-General in 1997 of a High Level Advisory Group on the Environment; – the signing of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change in late 1997, and subsequent meetings of the Conference of Parties to the Climate Change Convention in 1998 (Buenos Aires) and 1999 (Bonn). Two other “events” were major factors in the conduct and content of environmental activities in the OECD during this period. In June, 1996, Donald Johnston (CAN) became Secretary-General of the Organisation, succeeding Jean-Claude Paye. Second, economic recession across OECD Membership in the 1996-98 period created pressures on Member governments to reduce funding to international organisations. For the first time, the OECD was confronted with the need to downsize programmes and staff in a major way, affecting virtually every Committee and Secretariat unit. OECD’s environmental work was also driven by a series of broad “concepts” that commanded the attention of numerous components of the Organisation. Notable among them were: “linkages” between industrialised, middle income and poorer developing countries; “globalisation”; “climate change”; “sustainable development”; “accountability”; and “strategic vision”. Collectively, they had the characteristics of: 1) being highly interrelated; and 2) requiring multidisciplinary, interCommittee and inter-Directorate efforts for effective debate, analysis and policy formulation. The term “horizontal activities” – a vestige from the early 1970s – came back into vogue.

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Fifth OECD Environment Ministerial: the Environment Policy Committee met for the fifth time at Ministerial level from 19-20 February 1996. The occasion also marked the Committee’s 25th Anniversary. Ministers observed that, since they had last met

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five years earlier, profound changes had taken place in the world, posing major new challenges for environmental managers and policymakers. They noted, in particular, that “The nature and pace of change, embodied in the concept of ‘globalisation’, is striking”; and that “Many of the major environmental problems of today are global in scale and effect”. John Gummer, UK Secretary of State, chaired the meeting, the theme of which was “Environmental Management in an Era of Globalisation”. Convened at a time of economic downturn in their countries, the Ministers used the occasion to re-state that environmental protection was not being bought at the expense of economic growth – and they cited recent OECD analyses, such as Environmental Polices and Employment (1997), to refute such assertions. In their assessment of past performance, Ministers drew on two OECD reports prepared for the occasion: Integration of Environmental and Economic Policies; and, Environmental Performance in OECD Countries: Progress in the 1990s. The 1996 OECD Environment Ministerial re-affirmed the validity of the Environmental Strategy for the 1990s (adopted by Ministers in 1991) as continuing to provide the “essential directions for OECD’s future work”. Regarding the specific content of future work, Ministers singled out: maintaining the Organisation’s support for the major conventions agreed to in Rio; helping ensure that environmental aspects were fully taken into account in the international trade and environment debate; assisting Member governments improve their own environmental performances; strengthening ties with non-Member countries, inter alia, through leadership in the Environment for Europe Programme; and elaborating the sustainable consumption and production concept. The latter included the role of “eco-efficiency”, and prospects for achieving “factor-10” improvements in resource efficiency and pollutant reduction. Products of the Ministerial included: a Declaration on Risk Reduction for Lead and an associated Resolution of the Council concerning the Declaration on Risk Reduction for Lead;65 and a Council Recommendation on Improving the Environmental Performance of Government,66 plus a companion Council Resolution on Improving the Environmental Performance of the OECD.67 Ministers also called upon the OECD Council to adopt, within the year, an OECD Decision on the Adherence of Non-Member Countries to the Council Acts related to the Mutual Acceptance of Data in the Assessment of Chemicals. Further, the Ministers requested the OECD to carry out the following three specific tasks that subsequently received high priority treatment by the Organisation: – “a thorough assessment of the relationships between globalisation and environmental policies”, with a report to the OECD Council within two years; 65. See OECD document C(96)42(Final). 66. See OECD document C(96)39(Final). 67. See OECD document C(96)40(Final).

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– “a wide-ranging analysis of the effects of subsidies and tax disincentives”, with a report to the Council within two years; – “a further examination of the potential for environmental (or ‘green’) tax reform”, with a report to the Council by Spring 1997. In addition, Ministers decided to depart from the traditional once-every-five-years schedule for OECD Environment Ministerials, and rather to meet again in 1998 “following the Special Session of the UN General Assembly to review progress since the Rio Conference on Environment and Development”. They also expressed a desire to hold pre-Ministerial consultations in 1998 with representatives of non-governmental environmental organisations, the business community and labour organisations as they had done in advance of their 1996 meeting. The 1996 event was the first Environment Ministerial which included consultations with environmental NGOs. Prior to that, pre-Ministerial consultations had been limited to business and labour representatives, through BIAC and TUAC. The Environment Policy Committee, meeting in Regular Session later in that year, agreed that, at the 1998 Ministerial, representatives of the three private sector groups should meet concurrently with Ministers. In 1996, three separate consultations were held, at the insistence of BIAC. When the OECD Ministerial Council met in May 1996, just after the Environment Ministerial, Council members received six reports that had been endorsed by the Environment Ministers, including several which had been requested by the Ministerial Council the previous year: – Globalisation and Linkages to 2020. – Regulatory Reform. – Globalisation and the Environment. – Green Tax Reform. – Sustainable Consumption and Production Patterns. – Environmental Regulatory Reform. These reports – with the exception of the last on Regulatory Reform – became part of the OECD contributions to the UNGA Special Session on Environment and Development in New York in June 1997, along with an inventory of OECD’s recent and ongoing work on sustainable development issues.

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High-Level Advisory Group on Environment: in December 1996, six months after assuming the leadership of OECD, Secretary-General Donald Johnston established a High-Level Advisory Group on Environment (HLAGE), which was to report back to him within a year. The Group’s mandate was to undertake an independent assessment of the Organisation’s future role in international environmental affairs, and to recommend measures to strengthen the Organisation’s performance in supporting

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both Member countries and the international community more broadly. The final report of the High-Level Group, Guiding the Transition to Sustainable Development,68 contains both the Group’s terms-of-reference and its conclusions and recommendations. The HLAGE had fourteen eminent members chosen from fourteen OECD Member countries. It was co-chaired by Jonathan Lash, President of the World Resources Institute in Washington, and Stephan Schmidheiny from Switzerland, President of The AVINA Group and founder of the Business Council for Sustainable Development. It was significant that the members of the HLAGE should propose in light of the times – at their initial meeting with the Secretary-General held to review the Group’s mandate and procedures – that the scope of their assignment be broadened from “environment” to “sustainable development”. Mr. Johnston readily concurred. Thus, the Group examined over the course of one year what the Organisation should, and could, do to help move OECD countries, and other nations, along the path toward environmentally-sound social and economic development. The conclusions of the HLAGE emphasised that OECD has a major role to play – by virtue of its membership (the most technologically- and economicallyadvanced nations), its unique mix of disciplines, and its economic orientation. On the other hand, OECD’s response to date was judged by the Group as inadequate, both in terms of the Organisation’s degree of commitment in confronting forcefully within its work programme the challenges embodied in sustainable development, and its failure to be a consistent, articulate voice within the international community for sustainable development goals. The HLAGE’s “overarching recommendation” was that the OECD, “given its unique ability through systematic analysis and peer review to develop a shared framework of strategic policy ... should become the key intergovernmental organisation providing the industrialised nations with the analytical and comparative framework of policy necessary for their economies to make the transition to sustainable development”. And, to establish firmly the philosophical underpinning and administrative mandate for such a major undertaking, the Advisory Group called upon OECD to “re-interpret the 1961 OECD Convention – which calls on the Organisation to pursue polices to promote ‘sustainable economic growth and employment’ – in light of 21st Century conditions and challenges so that sustainable economic growth takes on a new meaning”. The HLAGE members argued that while virtually every substantive component of the Organisation should play a role in this new endeavour, leadership would have to come from the very top. The Secretary-General should serve as the chief sustain68. OECD, November 1997.

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able development officer at the OECD, supported by the Council and the Secretariat. He should also establish and head a Management Committee on Sustainable Development, which included all OECD Directors, plus the heads of the International Energy Agency, the Nuclear Energy Agency, and other comparable bodies, as well as the European Conference of Ministers of Transport. In terms of programme, the Group identified a broad array of needs, but urged careful selectivity in the years immediately ahead. It did observe that improving “resource productivity” was a particular challenge for the Organisation: “If OECD could promote resource productivity over the next thirty years as well as it has promoted labour productivity over the past three decades, this would go a long way to help the move toward sustainable development”. The report of the HLAGE proved to be timely and influential. It focused the attention of the Council and Member governments on the environmental/sustainable development capabilities and opportunities of the Organisation at a time when budget constraints were forcing tough choices to be made about OECD’s future work programme. In that regard, the HLAGE’s conclusions and recommendations resonated well with the Secretary-General and in the Council. An early expression of support was the inclusion of objectives related to sustainable development among the “new strategic objectives for the Organisation” set out in the SecretaryGeneral’s report to the Council, The OECD – Challenges and Strategic Objectives: 1997. In early 1998, Secretary-General Johnston presented the Council with a series of specific proposals for strengthening OECD’s contributions to sustainable development goals, much along the lines of the HLAGE recommendations. The proposals were discussed extensively, intensively, and positively in the first half of the year – at meetings of the Environment Policy Committee at Ministerial Level (2-3 April); during the annual meeting of the OECD Council at Ministerial Level later that month; by the Economic Policy Committee, the Development Assistance Committee and the Environment Policy Committee in regular sessions; and within the Secretariat. OECD Project on Sustainable Development: at the April 1998 meeting of the OECD Ministerial Council, the Ministers of Finance, Trade and Foreign Affairs voiced agreement through their Communiqué that “the achievement of sustainable development is a key priority for OECD countries”; and they “encouraged the elaboration of the Organisation’s strategy for wide-ranging efforts over the next three years in the areas of climate change; technology development; sustainability indicators; and the environmental impacts of subsidies”. The Ministerial Council also called for an increased dialogue with non-member countries on sustainable development.69

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69. The Council Ministerial in April 1998 endorsed – in addition to Sustainable Development – five other “horizontal studies” for the Organisation: Regulatory Reform; Trade, Investment and Development and Policy Coherence; Corporate Governance; Health Policy and the Economy; and, Policy Implications for Aging Populations.

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The OECD Secretariat and representatives from OECD affiliates, including the IEA, NEA, ECMT, and Development Centre, subsequently transformed this Ministerial expression of intent into a new, three-year horizontal Project on Sustainable Development, endorsed by the Council in July 1998. Given the Council’s admonition about the need for focus and deliverance of practical products, the work is focusing on six sets of issues: subsidies, taxes and the creation of markets; climate change; sustainable development of natural resources; technology; engaging non-Member countries; and sustainable development indicators.70 To oversee and co-ordinate the Organisation’s Sustainable Development Project, and to promote co-operation with other international organisations thereto, the Secretary-General established a Director-level co-ordination group, with representation from all OECD substantive directorates and affiliated institutions (i.e., IEA, NEA, ECMT and the OECD Development Centre). He also designated a Deputy Secretary-General, Mr. Thorvald Moe, as the OECD’s day-to-day coordinator. In addition, an OECD Round Table on Sustainable Development was created to enhance co-operation with other international organisations, business and NGOs, and to gather – on a personal basis – Ministers of Finance and of the Environment. The first and current Chair is Simon Upton, Minister of the Environment of New Zealand. Sixth OECD Environment Ministerial: when OECD Environment Ministers met in April 1998 under the chairmanship of New Zealand’s Minister, Simon Upton, a major concern was how environmental issues should be addressed within what was by then a rapidly evolving OECD sustainable development strategy and programme. In the principal pronouncement from that meeting – a statement of Shared Goals for Action71 – Ministers “stressed the crucial importance of strong environmental policies in the implementation of sustainable development, and expressed the hope that other Ministers would integrate environmental concerns into their policies, whilst committing themselves to the integration of social and economic concerns into environmental policies”. As for the “Shared Goals”, the Ministers agreed that they would be to: – promote strong national policies and effective regulatory structures on the protection of the natural environment and human health; – promote an integrated policy approach, which encourages coherence among economic, environmental and social policies; 70. A full description of the project is contained in the OECD Three-Year on Sustainable Development: A Progress Report, 1999 (PAC/AFF(99)1). 71. See OECD document SG/COM/NEWS(98)39.

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– strengthen international co-operation in meeting global and regional environmental commitments; – strongly support participation, transparency, information and accountability in environmental decision-making by public authorities at all levels. The Environment Ministers highlighted a number of “priority areas for OECD work”, including analysis of the impact on the environment of globalisation, especially from accelerated liberalisation of trade and investment. In that regard they requested OECD to: – deepen its work on integrating environmental concerns into key economic sectors, such as agriculture and fisheries, transport and energy, and into trade, investment and fiscal policy; – analyse the potential impacts of the proposed Multilateral Agreement on Investment on the capacity to implement environmental policies and Multilateral Environmental Agreements; – strengthen the environmental component of the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises. Other OECD priorities identified by the Environment Ministers included: chemicals and risk management; the inclusion of environmental concerns in export credit financing decisions; support for national and international efforts to implement the Kyoto Protocol, and the Conventions on Biodiversity and Desertification; pursuit of policy approaches for improving resource efficiency; development of sustainability indicators for use, inter alia, in OECD country reviews; and further work on environmentally sustainable transport.

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Finally, in a call that defined a major component of the Environment Policy Committee’s work programme through the remainder of the 1990s, Environment Ministers: “invited the OECD to develop a new environmental strategy for the next decade and agreed to review it when they meet in 2001 to prepare for the ‘Earth Summit +10’ in 2002. The Strategy should help ensure excellence in the OECD’s contributions to the implementation of sustainable development in the next century”. It also worth noting that the pre-Ministerial consultations with representatives of the private sector for the first time involved a single session with BIAC, TUAC and non-governmental environmental organisations. All parties apparently judged the consultations to be a “success”. Programme Priorities: later in 1998, when the EPOC defined its work programme for the 1999-2000 biennium, the Committee included in the programme the following three activities which were described as “horizontal in nature and strategic in orientation, with significance for the next Ministerial”:

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1. Development of an “economy-based” Environmental Outlook and Strategy. 2. Development of a conceptual framework for addressing “resource efficiency”. 3. Implementation of a coherent, forward-looking environmental programme with non-members. Nine other activities were included in the Committee’s 1999-2000 work programme: 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

Economic and environmental policy integration. Globalisation and environment (trade, competition and investment). Sustainable consumption patterns. Climate change and environmentally sustainable transport. Mutual acceptance of data on chemicals; and biotechnology. Waste management. Country environmental performance reviews. Environmental data and information systems. Environmental indicators.

These twelve activities72 represented a substantial reduction from the twenty-one that comprised the 1995-96 programme. This responded to the Council’s desire for a concentration of OECD activities across all committees to improve the Organisation’s efficiency and impact, and in light of continuing budget reductions: Among the major issues for the OECD in the 1996-2000 period was the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI). The MAI was cited in the report of the High Level Advisory Group in 1997 as an example of why it is vital that environmental and economic policies are reconciled and made reinforcing. Commenting on the need for “ensuring policy integration” as a major step toward sustainable development, the HLAGE noted that “Progress in reconciling these policies has been slow at the international level largely because it has been slow at the national level”. In fact, this represented a considerable toning down of language in early drafts of the report which was sharply critical of the failure of the MIA negotiations to take environmental considerations into account at the outset, this despite the oft-repeated OECD commitments to policy integration over three decades. By 1997, environmental NGOs were strongly criticising the Organisation on this matter (via Internet and by other avenues); and the MAI experience had a spill-over effect in terms of stimulating the NGOs to take a harder look at OECD’s work and plans in other areas. The World Wildlife Fund International (WWF), one of the most active environmental NGOs on the MAI issue, distributed widely a discussion 72. A detailed description of each of the twelve major activity areas of the Environment Policy Committee, along with a listing of Council Acts on the environment and a selected bibliography of recent Environment Policy Committee publications, is contained in The OECD and the Environment, 1999.

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paper in April 1998 entitled, The OECD, Foreign Investment and Sustainable Development: Reorienting OECD Policy Work and the Multilateral Agreement on Investment. The essence is captured in the following extraction: “Insofar as many of the reforms discussed here are drawn from OECD documents, including strategies endorsed by OECD Ministers, the willingness of the OECD to move in this direction provides a test as to whether sustainable development rhetoric in the OECD is to lead to action on sustainable development now, or in the future. External observers of the OECD, who have increased in number as the result of the MAI negotiating process, will have an active interest in this test. The outcome of the test is therefore likely to have important implications for civil society’s perception and endorsement of the OECD and its work.” As it turned out, negotiation of the MAI stalled, and then was terminated in late 1998, as Member countries failed to agree on a number of central issues. While treatment of environmental management was not one of these, the dispute about the environmental content undoubtedly contributed to the abandonment. Subsequent events have, in fact, shown that the MAI experience stimulated the Organisation to find ways to provide greater openness and accessibility for private sector institutions. With “investment” still an OECD priority despite the MAI failure, work continued in the Organisation on “rules of the game” for liberalising investment, including the environmental dimensions. The first post-MAI event on investment and environment was held in January 1999 in The Hague, a meeting of the Emerging NonMember Economies Forum on Foreign Direct Investment and the Environment. Significantly, it involved participation from governments, industry and NGOs, and was viewed as an opportunity to bring together outside a negotiating forum the major interested parties from Member and non-member countries. The report by the High Level Advisory Group on the Environment also re-raised the issue of a possible “greening “ of export credit policies. Work on this issue continued at glacial speed within the Trade Committee’s Export Credit Group during 1996-98. However, with a push from OECD Environment Ministers in 1998 via their statement of Shared Goals for the Environment, and from the G-8 Heads of State in May 1999, the pace has picked up. However, the goal of commonly-agreed commitments and guidelines for the systematic review of export credit policies and projects is not yet in sight.

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At the time of this writing, agreement was near that OECD Members would share environmental information on large projects of US$100 million or more. Concerns about competitiveness aspects, and about who is going to pay for the environmental assessments, remained as major stumbling blocks. In their Communiqué of 26-27 May 1999, the OECD Ministerial Council “welcomed the progress toward the OECD Agreement on Environmental Information Exchange for Larger Projects in relation to officially supported export credits and urged that the work continue with

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a view to strengthening common approaches and to report progress at the next Ministerial Council Meeting”. The environmental component of the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises continued to be debated. Readers will recall that the initial Guidelines were published in 1976 as a component of a Council Declaration on International Investment and Multinational Enterprises. The Guidelines are recommendations addressed by OECD Governments to multinational firms operating in their countries. The 1976 version did not address environmental considerations. In 1984, following a comprehensive review of the Guidelines by the CIME, an environmental annex, in the form of a “clarification”, was added as a compromise in the face of objections from the business community and several Council members to a separate environmental “chapter”. Then, following the next CIME review, a full “chapter” on environment was added to the Guidelines in 1991. While this somewhat placated environmental interest groups, they remained largely unsatisfied given their view that the environmental guidelines were unduly weak. In late 1997, the CIME began to consider its next five-year review of the Guidelines, and environment again arose as an issue, along with the treatment of labour standards, a TUAC preoccupation. When OECD Environment Ministers met in April, 1998, they included in their Shared Goals for Action statement a call for a “strengthening of the environmental component of the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises”. Unlike past reviews, the CIME – and the Directorate for Financial, Fiscal and Enterprise Affairs (DAFFE) which provides the Secretariat backstopping for the Committees – were much more open to consideration of environmental aspects this time around, and also sought early input from private sector environmental organisations. This spirit of “openness” derived in part from the OECD’s new commitment to policy integration within the Organisation’s Sustainable Development programme, and in part as a reaction to the recent unhappy MAI experience vis-à-vis public access (or lack thereof). What will come of this is yet to be determined: the CIME/DAFFE commitment is to review the Guidelines, and not necessarily to update or strengthen them. And contentious issues regarding the environmental responsibilities of multinationals remain to be resolved, including environmental impact assessment, application of the Precautionary Principle, transparency and use of best environmental practices. The question of the territorial scope of the Guidelines (i.e., their potential application beyond the country in which the multinational enterprise is operating) is also likely to be an important issue in the review. Climate change remains near the top of OECD priorities as the century comes to a close. It was cited in virtually all of the OECD’s pronouncements on strategic objectives and programme priorities during the second half of the 1990s. Climate

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Change finished second, behind Economic and Environment Policy Integration, in country rankings of priorities for the Environment Policy Committee’s 1999-2000 work programme; and, as noted above, the subject is the focus of one of four “crosscutting projects” for the Organisation’s new Sustainable Development Programme. The Climate Change effort continues to involve an array of OECD components, including the Economics Department, Environment Directorate, Agriculture and Fisheries Directorate, Development Co-operation Directorate, and Directorate for Fiscal, Financial and Enterprise Affairs, as well as the IEA, NEA, ECMT and the Development Centre. With the advent of the Sustainable Development Programme in 1997-98, the Economics Department re-entered the climate area in a substantial way. The principal programme objective of the Organisation’s work is to help Member countries assess domestic and international policies to limit reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Specific priorities include: the elaboration and implementation of the Kyoto Protocol and the Climate Change Convention; economic, environmental and other technical assessments, including the effects on national economies of achieving the Kyoto targets and the quantification of costs of mitigation measures, employing OECD’s “GREEN” model; and examining potential costs and strategies for moving beyond the Kyoto targets to the longer-term objective of stabilising atmospheric concentrations of Greenhouse Gases. OECD’s climate work continues to be tightly linked to the activities of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Secretariat for the Framework Convention. The IEA is deeply involved in the effort of supporting the IPCC and the FCCC Secretariat, and the Agency is also collaborating with the UN Environment Programme to assess priorities for the operation of the developing countryoriented Clean Development Mechanism established at the Kyoto Protocol meeting. IEA-UNEP co-operation has included of a series of joint regional workshops on the “Mechanism”. Throughout the second half of the ‘90s, OECD through the Environment Directorate has continued to collaborate with the IEA in providing the secretariat for the Annex I Expert Group73 under the Climate Change Convention. Between 1996 and 1997, the technical work for the Annex I Group focused on assessment of domestic mitigation policies and on opportunities for “common action” in areas such as transport, subsidy reform, and carbon/energy taxes. Given the sensitivity for some countries of a “common action” approach, the work was discontinued; although the studies have remained an influential reference for OECD Member governments, particularly as they now begin to tackle the construction of domestic policies more aggressively.

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73. The Expert Group is comprised of specialists from Member countries and countries in transition, and provides a platform for the development of analyses and the exchange of ideas and information.

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Since 1997, OECD’s technical analyses for the Annex I Group have focused on: 1) Kyoto mechanisms (i.e., joint implementation and international emission trading) and 2) monitoring and compliance issues. Themes common to the studies include: how to ensure environmental credibility and performance while not imposing excessive transaction costs; and improving the economic efficiency of the outcomes. An extensive set of reports has emerged from this work, many released as OECD Information Papers. The OECD also continues to help advance international discussion and understanding of climate change through the annual Forum on Climate Change. Co-sponsored by the IEA, the Forum brings non-member countries and important private sector stakeholders together with experts and policymakers from OECD countries. Subsidies, and their relationship to environmental management, remained another OECD priority throughout the 1995-1999 timeframe. The G-7 Environment Ministerial in 1995 helped launch the effort, with its call for OECD work on this subject. By the year’s end, the OECD had convened a workshop on the “Subsidies and Environment”; and, in January 1996, the Environment Policy Committee and the Committee on Fiscal Affairs created an Ad Hoc Experts Group on Subsidies and Environment to design and oversee a work programme. Then, when the OECD Environment Ministers met in April 1996, they called for a “wide-ranging study of the effects of subsidies and tax disincentives on sound environmental practices in various economic sectors and of the benefits of their elimination or reform”. Next, the OECD Ministerial Council in May 1996 requested a “further examination of the potential for environmental (or ‘green’) tax reform, and analyses of the elimination or reform of environmentally-harmful subsidies”. In the 1996-98 period, the work programme of the Ad Hoc Group of Experts on Subsidies and Environment led to a series of reports: – Subsidies and Environment: Exploring the Relationships (1996). – Government Support to Industry (1996) – 2 reports. – Reforming Energy and Transportation Subsidies: Environmental and Economic Implications (1997). – Environmental Effects of Reforming Agricultural Policies: A Preliminary Report (1998). – Improving the Environment through Reducing Subsidies (1998). The data and insights contained in these reports, along with conclusions and recommendations from the Ad Hoc Experts Group, were presented to OECD Environment Ministers when they met in 1998 in the form of a synthesis report on Impacts of Economic Support Measures on the Environment74 – thereby fulfilling the request by Ministers at their 1996 meeting for such a report in two years. 74. See OECD document ENV/EPOC/MIN(98)9.

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Trade-environment relationships remained one of the top most priorities in OECD’s environmental agenda thoughout the second half of the ‘90s. The Joint Session of Trade and Environment Experts carred out a set of studies on the use of trade measures in multilateral environmental agreements, and prepared a synthesis of the main themes and lessons. The group also examined the Trade implications of extended producer policies, such as environment-related packaging and take-back requirements; and analyzed trade issues in the greening of government purchasing. As part of the Joint Session’s efforts to analyze the environmental effects of trade liberalisation, it began examinations of the fossil fuel sector and the environmental services industry. Regarding trends, the second half of the decade saw OECD’s work on environmental economics swing back toward an emphasis on macro-economic considerations, the starting point for OECD’s work in the early 1970s, which gave way to micro-economic analysis over the following two decades. The 1996-2000 period also saw “natural resources” re-emerge as a priority in the Organisation’s environment programme. This was, in part, the result of the recommendation of the Secretary-General’s High Level Advisory Group on Environment that OECD should address “resource productivity” in the years ahead with the same vigour it had promoted “labour productivity” in the past. The “resource productivity” theme was subsequently endorsed by OECD Environment Ministers and the Council, and then translated by the Environment Policy Committee into a new activity – Increasing Resource Efficiency – in the 1999-2000 work programme. Elements of the new activity include: the development of natural resource use indicators; environmental impacts of resource use; management, technology and economic-based strategies for increasing resource efficiency; waste minimisation; and development of sustainable products. In 1998, the Environment Policy Committee’s Group on Environmental Performance (GEP) began to plan for the second cycle in the programme of OECD Environmental Performance Reviews. By the year 2000, all 29 Member countries will have been reviewed, as well as Bulgaria, Belarus and Russia. In reporting to the EPOC on its evaluation of the first cycle, the GEP concluded that: “Strong points of the programme include its performance orientation, its focus on environmental results and cost-effectiveness of policies, the use of peer pressure, and attention to environment-economy interface issues and policy integration. Additional strong points are the attention from and involvement of high-level decision makers from Member countries, including Environment Ministers, and the influence of the programme beyond OECD countries.”

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For the second cycle of reviews, the Environment Policy Committee agreed that the process should be streamlined to accommodate more reviews each year, and also to reflect new policy orientations. Regarding content, “core” environmen-

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tal issues of water, air, waste and nature/biodiversity would continue to be covered, with a balance struck between pollution and natural resources issues. Significantly, there would be a deliberate focus on sustainability issues, including the reviewed country’s overall commitment to sustainability, the institutional arrangements for pursuing it, production and consumption patterns, and treatment of both environment-economy and environment-social interface issues. Fulfillment of international commitments on major environmental conventions will also receive attention; as will the effects of globalisation on the environment (e.g., trade, environmental aid, international tourism and international transport). The evolution of the review programme toward issues of sustainable development and globalisation is a further reflection of the role that OECD Member countries perceived for the OECD in the field of environment as the 1990s drew to a close. In that regard it is noteworthy that the producer of OECD’s famous Economic Reviews – the Economic Development Research Committee (EDRC) – decided in 1999 to include Environmentally Sustainable Growth as one of four optional subjects for treatment in the “Structural” chapter of the EDRC Reviews, with the choice of options the prerogative of the reviewed country. The 1996-2000 period saw the Organisation’s work on industrial chemicals continue. Non-Member countries, such as, South Africa and Slovenia, began participating in work related to the Mutual Acceptance of Chemical Data; and discussions on participation were held with several other major chemical producing countries outside the OECD. The work programme on “existing chemicals” was accelerated, abetted by international initiatives by the chemicals industry. By 1999, 368 high-volume industrial chemicals were registered in OECD’s investigative programme, and 122 investigations had been completed. A notable achievement of the chemicals work was the reaching of consensus among Member countries on harmonised criteria for the classification of chemicals for the (eight) existing health and environment classification “end points”. This objective – which had been included in UNCED’s Agenda 21 (Chapter 19) – had been pursued for many years by several UN organisations. The classification criteria agreed in the OECD are now being promulgated internationally through the UN Economic and Social Council. In the area of pesticides, the OECD worked to organise a burden-sharing among Member countries on re-registration reviews. And, Member country experts, meeting with representatives of the pesticide industry, trade unions and environmental NGOs in February 1998 at the OECD Pesticide Forum, agreed on common guidelines for registrations. A new and politically-sensitive issue began to be addressed by the Joint Meeting of the Chemicals Group and Management Committee: the development of testing and assessment methods for endocrine disrupters. A special task force designed a concep-

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tual framework (including objectives and priorities) for testing potential endocrine disrupting chemicals, and organised validation studies of promising screening tests. Engaging Non-Members: at the outset of this section, it was suggested that a number of basic “concepts” heavily influenced the content of OECD’s environmental work in the 1996-2000 period, including sustainable development and globalisation. “Linkages” was another influential concept, encompassing OECD’s relationships with a range of other institutions and “stakeholders”. The High Level Advisory Group on the Environment, OECD Environment Ministers, and the OECD Council all urged the OECD to do a better job of linking to and supporting others across the board, i.e., nonmember countries, international organisations, and private sector institutions. Special attention was given, through an OECD cross-Directorate “horizontal study”, to relationships between OECD Members and major developing nations to the year 2020 ... and particularly relationships with the “Big 5”: India, Indonesia, China, Russia and Brazil. Building on a “Linkages I” study in 1995, Linkages: OECD and Major Developing Economies, a second-generation, model-based analysis was undertaken, leading to a second major report, in 1997: The World in 2020: Toward a New Global Age. The second report, sometimes referred to as “Linkages II”, gave heavy emphasis to environmental relationships, and highlighted potential conflicts between OECD and major developing countries over, e.g., the effects of environmental policies of OECD Members on international trade, and funding for environmental protection in developing countries. Conversely, Linkages II also points to a series of significant, realisable opportunities for new collaboration between rich and poor countries in the decades immediately ahead ... if sound policies can be put in place to deploy the emerging array of “cleaner” technologies, and to reap the positive benefits of globalisation in support of widely-agreed sustainable development goals. Environmental co-operation with non-members countries continued to expand during the second half of the ‘90s. Support for central and eastern European countries (CEE) and the Newly Industrialising States of the former Soviet Union (NIS), including Russia, commanded very high priority. The OECD Environment Directorate continued to house the secretariat of the Task Force for the Implementation of the Environmental Action Programme whose principal objective is to facilitate implementation of the policy and institutional aspects of the EAP. In 1999, the Non-Member Countries Branch of the Environment Directorate, which is serving as the secretariat for the international Task Force, prepared a comprehensive review of environmental trends in the CEE and NIS countries as well as their progress over the last 8-10 years in addressing the environmental aspects of the economic and political reform process: Environment in the Transition to a Market Economy.75 112

75. EAP Task Force Secretariat, OECD, 1999.

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In June 1998, the Environment Ministers of the countries participating in the EAP convened in Aarhus, Denmark, for the 4th “Environment for Europe” Ministerial Conference. They agreed on a common framework for future work under the EAP, with differentiated sub-programmes for central and eastern European countries and the NIS. Not only were the NIS lagging behind the CEE countries economically and environmentally, but most CEE countries were beginning to advance even faster as they worked toward accession to the European Union. The OECD’s principal environmental focus under the EAP thus became the NIS, and with the following priorities: – the implementation of environmental policies, including national environmental action programmes, with a particular emphasis on water management; – identifying ways of overcoming obstacles to environmental financing, through better project preparation and demonstration projects; – strengthening environmental management in enterprises, with the active involvement of the private sector. The OECD also began working more closely in this period with the Regional Environment Centre for Central and Eastern Europe, a non-governmental institution situated in Szentendre, Hungary. The Regional Centre is taking the lead in helping implement the EAP sub-programme for Central and Eastern Europe. Co-operation with Russia and China also grew in the 1996-99 timeframe. An Environmental Performance Review of Russia was completed in 1999 by the OECD with the assistance of the UNECE. This will now provide a better basis for dialogue between Russia and its partners on future environments priorities in that country. Work has started on the role of economic instruments in Russian environmental policy, preparatory to an OECD-sponsored workshop on this topic in late 1999 or early 2000. With China, OECD held a workshop in April 1999 on environmental monitoring, and has begun work on environmental indicators. Plans are to convene a workshop in 2000 to review OECD country experience with such indicators, and to identify ways to improve China’s set of environmental indicators. Work is also underway to compile information on China’s use of environmental funds, again preparatory to a workshop in 2000 to examine policy and institutional options for strengthening China’s system of funds. As noted earlier, a particularly important event was the conference convened by the OECD Emerging Market Economies Forum in January 1999, in The Hague, on Foreign Direct Investment and the Environment. The conference attracted some 150 participants from OECD nations, non-member countries in Asia, Central and Eastern Europe and Latin America, and international organisations, including the World Bank, EC, UNCTAD, UNEP and UNCSD.

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OECD Council Acts: the following OECD Council Acts on the environment were adopted in the period 1996-2000:

Decisions • Amending Annex II to the Council Decision C(81)30(Final) Concerning the Mutual Acceptance of Data in the Assessment of Chemicals [C(97)186(Final)]. • Amending the Annexes to the Council Decision/Recommendation C(89)87(Final) on Compliance with Principles of Good Laboratory Practice [C(98)3(Final)]. • Adherence of Non-Member Countries to the OECD Council Acts related to the Mutual Acceptance of Data in the Assessment of Chemicals, i.e., C(81)30(Final) and C(89)7(Final) – [C(97)114(Final)]. • Amending the Decision concerning Control of Transfrontier Movements of Wastes Destined for Recovery Operations [C(92)39(Final)] with respect to the Green and Amber Lists of Wastes – [C(95)154(Final)]. Recommendations • Implementing Pollutant Release and Transfer Registers [C(96)41 Final]. • Environmental Information [C(98)67 Final]. • Improving the Environmental Performance of Government [C(96)39(Final)]. Resolutions • Declaration on Risk Reduction for Lead [C(96)42(Final)]. • Improving the Environmental Performance of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development [C(96)40(Final)].

Programme Administration: the Organisation’s institutional arrangements for the conduct of environmental policy continued to change during this five-year period. In late 1997, the OECD Council moved to streamline and “rationalise” the Organisation’s extensive committee structure, supported by a consultant review. The Council’s Executive Committee followed this up with its own report in July 1998: The OECD Committee Structure: A Review. Concurrently, the Environment Policy Committee was carrying out an examination of EPOC’s sub-structure and its way of doing business. Based on an analysis prepared by the Environment Directorate, the Committee agreed in November to: – a merger of the Waste Management Policy Group and the Working Party for the Review Mechanism for the OECD system of controls for transboundary waste transport; and 114

– simplification of the sub-structure of the Chemicals Committee; and

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– abolishing the Risk Assessment Advisory Group; the Steering Group on Existing Chemicals; and the Advisory Group on Risk Management. This did not mean that the work was discontinued; rather, that it was carried out within a different and streamlined Committee structure. One result of the Council’s review of the structure and operations of its committees was a change in committee nomenclature, with all Level-2 bodies of EPOC hereafter designated as “Working Parties”, and Level-3 bodies referred to as “Working Groups”. For example, EPOC’s Level-2 Group on Economic and Environment Policy Integration (GEEPI) became the Working Party on Economic and Environment Policy Integration (WPEEPI).76 Regarding environmental leadership, the chairmanship of the Environment Policy Committee changed from Michael von Websky (GER) to Eldrid Nordbø (NOR) in 1997. In 1998, Mrs. Joke Waller-Hunter (NET) succeeded Bill Long as Environment Director.

76. A diagramme on page 9 of ENV/EPOC(98)190 shows this new sub-structure of the EPOC; and an annex to that document contains the mandates of the Committee and its subsidiary bodies.

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Part III

Summary: Achievements and Conclusions OECD’s Major Environmental Achievements OECD has been variously described as a “forum for governments”, a “talk shop” and a “think tank”. For any institution whose stock-in-trade is dialogue, data, analysis and reports, trying to identify how its efforts and products have changed the world is, at best, difficult. How, for example, does one measure the impact on government policy or behaviour of what a national delegate learns at an OECD event, or from an OECD report? Even where governments undertake explicit commitments by agreeing to Council Decisions, the Organisation rarely carries out systematic, in-depth evaluations of Member country compliance. Nonetheless, there are good indicators of accomplishment. In the case of OECD’s environmental achievements over one-half century, the following provide testaments and insights – and are sources that the author has utilised in developing this document: ⇒ Ministerial Communiqués, Declarations and Press Releases in which Ministers often specifically cite major OECD achievements. They emanate from: •OECD Environment Policy Committee meetings at Ministerial Level. • Joint OECD Ministerials (Environment-Development in 1992). • G-7 Environment Ministerials (and G-7 Economic Summits). • Environment for Europe Ministerials. • UN Commission on Sustainable Development meetings. ⇒ OECD Annual Reports, summarising yearly highlights as seen from viewpoint of Secretariat. ⇒ Summary Records of biannual meetings of Environment Policy Committee. The Summaries contain the Environment Director’s report on progress and, on occasion, Committee views on accomplishments. ⇒ Citations of OECD environmental work and publications in other documents, such as Citation Indexes.

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⇒ References to OECD’s achievements in world literature on the history of international environmental affairs (e.g., The World Environment: 1972-1982; International Approaches to Chemicals Control – A Historical Overview). ⇒ Environmental prizes awarded (e.g., World Prize for Ecology and International Prize for Environmental Law, both to OECD in 1978). ⇒ Views of senior officials, both inside and outside OECD, who have been associated with the Organisation’s environmental work over a long timespan. Drawing on such “indicators”, it is possible to identify OECD’s achievements, in the field of environment during the second half of the 20th Century. The author’s views of the most important are set out below, first in the form of eight general (generic) achievements, and then as a listing of fifteen specific, issues-oriented achievements. General Achievements The Organisation’s major accomplishments can be defined in terms of the following eight general categories: 1. Providing a unique forum for senior environmental policymakers from OECD Member Countries Historically, the OECD’s overriding function has been to provide a policy-level forum for its Member countries. In the field of environment, the OECD Environment Committee was “the place to be” for Environment Ministers in the 1970s and into the 1980s. The situation has changed over the last decade-and-a-half as the Ministers have found no lack of opportunities and requirements for meeting outside of the OECD (e.g., European Communities meetings; UN Commission on Sustainable Development; UNEP; NAFTA; G-7 Environment Ministers; international convention negotiations). Nonetheless, the OECD still offers a unique and valuable place where senior officials, including Ministers, can come to reflect on and debate major policy issues, and agree on common approaches, away from the pressures and constraints of international negotiations. 2. Producing principles, guidelines and policy recommendations and options for Members

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From its inception, the OECD has supported and influenced the development of domestic environmental policy, and the harmonisation of environmental practices and policies among its Members, through the production of principles and guidelines for sound environmental management, as well as by providing Governments with policy recommendations and policy options. Examples are numerous: the OECD Guiding Principles Concerning the International Economic Aspects of Environmental Policy; guidelines for the testing of chemicals; waste management principles and guidelines; principles, guidelines and contingency plans for dealing with hazardous accidents; guidelines on the use of environmental funds in Eastern and Central

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Europe; guidelines for the introduction of Pollutant Release and Transfer Registers; guidelines for development assistance agencies; and guidelines and recommendations on trade-environment relationships and on sector policy integration. The numerous Council Decisions and Recommendations cited in Part II of this document are key vehicles used in developing and promulgating this guidance. Recognition of notable accomplishment is presented in The World Environment: 1972-1992 (page 704). The authors refer to the important “codification of environmental trends and policy responses by OECD Members” set out in the Declaration by OECD Environment Ministers at their meeting in Paris in 1979, and observe that, “This was the first statement of the modern form of environmental protection policy to emerge from the developed countries as a whole, and it resulted from the critical analysis of the trends in various sectors as they affected the environment.” 3. Setting standards and monitoring compliance While not usually thought of as a standard-setting body, the OECD has, over the years, been very influential in this area. In the late 1960s, its science-oriented work on air and water pollution contributed to some of the early international standards in this field, established within the FAO and WHO; and, in the 1970s, OECD’s programme of transboundary air pollution directly affected the standards adopted domestically and internationally for instrumentation design and calibration, as well as for sampling and monitoring. It is in the field of chemicals, however, where the OECD has left its major mark in the preparation of international standards, and in compliance monitoring. Council Decisions related to the Mutual Acceptance of Data (MAD) comprise an internationally-agreed system which helps to underpin national technical regulations in the area of acceptance of safety data for chemicals assessment. By establishing the basis for harmonised national policies for data acceptance and by developing and maintaining internationally-agreed instruments for their implementation (e.g., Test Guidelines, Good Laboratory Practices, and Compliance Monitoring Procedures), OECD has created among its Members a standards-based system which meets the objectives of transparency and avoidance of unnecessary barriers to trade created by technical regulations. By opening up the system to non-Member countries, the system has become in principle universal. 4. Developing practical products for Governments From the early 1970s when Secretary-General van Lennep set out his vision of the OECD’s role in the field of environment, the Environment Committee has continually tried to avoid the theoretical and to ensure that the Organisation’s environmental work products were relevant for near-term policymaking. Thus, for three decades OECD has produced: technical analyses in, e.g., the areas of chemical

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safety, waste management and air pollution; compilations of data, statistics and indicators of environmental conditions and trends in Member countries; and an array of guidebooks, registers and instruction manuals on, e.g., laboratory testing, cost-benefit analysis and pollution inventorying and reporting. The standards-setting role described in the previous “achievement” is another example. This practical work, in its totality, has undergirded environmental policymaking at both national and international levels on a broad range of issues: chemicals, fertilisers and detergents in the environment; economic instruments and regulatory measures; the costs of environmental protection; climate change; trade and environment; transboundary air pollution; and urban air quality. The quotation in the description of achievement 2, above, regarding OECD’s “critical analysis of trends”, typifies the importance others have accorded the Organisation’s analytical capabilities. Over the years, OECD’s broad-scope State of the Environment Report, and Compendium of Environmental Data in OECD Countries have been consistent “best-sellers”. 5. Supporting the development of major international environmental conventions and programmes OECD support for international conventions has included the provision of forums for negotiators and technical experts from Member countries, as well as contribution of technical analyses, information and data on Member country policies, conditions and trends. Over its lifetime, OECD has made major contributions to: the Convention on Long-Range Transport of Air Pollution negotiated in the UNECE; the Vienna Convention on Ozone Depletion and its Montreal Protocol; the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol; and the Basel Convention on Transboundary Movement of Hazardous Wastes. The Organisation has also supported the UN Convention on Biodiversity through analytical inputs on biotechnology and on the economics of biodiversity management; and the Desertification Convention by hosting meetings of Member country negotiators.

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Regarding support for international programmes led by other organisations, OECD’s work on chemicals provided essential information for the development of the International Programme of Chemical Safety; and the ECE’s Programme of Country Environmental Performance Reviews was built on the OECD model, and with a strong infusion of OECD technical support. Furthermore, OECD played a major role in building support among OECD Members for a Sustainable Production/Consumption Programme within the UN Commission on Sustainable Development. The Organisation subsequently carried out analyses to help build a conceptual framework for identifying and addressing the complex issues associated with consumption and production pattern changes; defined policy options and opportunities for promoting behavioural change; and examined the social and environmental consequences of possible changes for OECD nations as well as for other countries.

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6. Promoting accountability and responsibility for environmental actions by Member countries OECD’s achievements in this area began in the 1970s with the first systematic compilation of environmental data and statistics across the OECD, subsuming both environmental quality trends and country expenditures. In the 1980s, the Organisation undertook pioneering work on environmental indicators; and then in the 1990s launched the innovative Programme of Country Environmental Performance Reviews. Another important contribution to promoting greater accountability and responsibility by government was the Organisation’s work on Environmental Impact Assessment, particularly in the 1970s and early ‘80s. 7. Promoting integration of economic and environmental policy In the early 1970s, the OECD spoke out loudly on the need for governments to address the qualitative aspects of economic growth, arguing that governments should not pursue policies that treat the highest possible growth rate as an objective in itself. Thus, for some 30 years, the OECD has been a strong advocate of the close integration of economic and environmental policy. This has involved much more than rhetoric. A variety of mechanisms have been designed, tested and recommended to assist and motivate Member country governments to ensure that their economic and environmental policies are complementary and reinforcing, rather than conflicting. Such mechanisms have included: evaluation of market-based instruments, such as charges and taxes, used in combination with regulatory measures; establishment of joint committee working groups; and the inclusion of policy integration performance criteria in the OECD Programme of Country Environmental Performance Reviews. One of the major contributions of the Organisation vis-à-vis policy integration has been the use of joint committee working groups that bring representatives from economic and finance ministries together with their environmental counterparts to debate and attempt to resolve differences, and to develop common guidelines and approaches. A creation largely of the 1990s, especially notable have been the OECD joint groups on trade and environment, agriculture and environment, and taxation and environment. Other important “integration” contributions were made through joint work programmes without formally constituted groups on energy and environment, climate change and sustainable transport. Characterising OECD’s policy integration work as a major achievement is, however, relative. Clearly, compared to the degree of interdisciplinary, inter-committee co-operation undertaken in other international bodies, OECD’s performance has been “state-of-the-art”. However, in an absolute sense, the work done by the Organisation to date on this “key to sustainable development” falls well short of what is required. Improving performance in this area is one of the OECD’s major challenges for the future. The OECD has had most success with the integration of environment policy and sectoral policy in transport, energy and agriculture, and specifically where the effort

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was directed at the specific environment issues of the moment. Where OECD has been singularly unsuccessful is in ensuring that the Organisation’s officials, as well as Member country policymakers and other officials, are consistent and vocal advocates for the environmental content of their work on a day-to-day basis. The OECD is not yet at the point where, in discussions with non-member country officials, representatives from the Organisation’s mainstream economics and finance components will automatically, and systematically, raise environmental considerations. 8. Influencing Non-Member Countries This achievement is another of largely 1990s vintage. With the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the move of countries around the world to market-based economies, new opportunities – and imperatives – for engaging countries outside the OECD “club” were suddenly placed before the Organisation. At the same time, association with the OECD became “respectable” for countries of the former Soviet Union and of the developing world. In the field of environment, OECD has wielded most influence on those countries seeking membership in the Organisation, and on other countries of Central and Eastern Europe through OECD’s participation in the Environmental Action Programme for that region. As discussed earlier, the dialogue on environmental requirements with those countries wishing to accede to OECD Membership in the 1990s – Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Mexico and Korea – substantially raised their levels of awareness of, and commitment to, sound environmental management. It has also encouraged and assisted these nations to become active on environmental issues at the regional and global levels.

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Mexican Environment Minister Julia Carabias was asked by a local reporter during a press conference in Mexico City in 1993 about why she was such a strong advocate of Mexico’s entry into OECD. She responded that there were three major reasons: 1) the OECD was an excellent forum for ensuring that Mexico’s views and proposals regarding international environmental issues and priorities were heard and taken seriously by the major nations of the world; 2) OECD offered a fount of information and ideas that assisted policymaking in Mexico; and 3) association with the Organisation’s views and policies provided a “ new level of confidence” for her, as well as strong argumentation and support in presenting environmental proposals and policy initiatives to Mexican “budgeteers”, legislators and citizens, since she could point out that “other OECD countries are already doing it this way”. A notable OECD achievement regarding non-member countries is the degree and quality of the support and direction it has provided to the Environmental Action Plan for Central and Eastern Europe as Secretariat for the International Task Force, including support for the associated meetings of European Environment Ministers. Further influential contributions include the environmental exchanges the Organisation has initiated under the Dynamic Non-Member Economies programme, and also

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bilaterally with China and Russia, especially in the areas of environmental economics, information systems and monitoring. OECD Secretariat staff helped develop the recommendations that the Chinese Government used to reform the country’s system of pollution charges; and China’s decision to translate a number of the Environment Directorate’s publications on environmental economics is another indicator of the importance it attaches to the Organisation’s experience and knowledge in this field. The support that OECD has provided for the development of international environmental instruments has also been an effective way to influence non-member economies, such as encouraging the involvement of NMEs in climate change initiatives. The Organisation has seen the importance of restricting its role to analytical support, and not creating OECD negotiating blocs, which could adversely impact on the acceptance of OECD’s work an views by non-member countries. Further, the difficulties in negotiating a Multilateral Agreement on Investment notwithstanding, OECD has promoted a growing international environmental dialogue on trade and investment issues during the 1990s. While suspicion remains about OECD Member countries interests, the debates within OECD forums (which have been increasingly operating to non-member participation) are nevertheless promoting broader analysis and positive discussion about environmental policies and capacities in non-member economies. Finally, the growing integration of environmental consideration into the principles, guidelines and pronouncements emanating from the OECD Development Assistance Committee has impacted constructively on the content and quality of development assistance policies and programmes, and has directly influenced the character of discussions about such assistance with recipient developing countries. Specific Achievements To provide greater specificity to this analysis of OECD’s major achievements, the following are the author’s selection of the Organisation’s fifteen most important accomplishments in the field of environment over the last half century. The selection is based on the application of two related criteria: 1) for which accomplishments is OECD best remembered?; and 2) where has the OECD had the most influence or success? (The order does not imply a priority ranking.) 1. OECD Guiding Principles Concerning the International Economic Aspects of Environmental Policies The Polluter Pays Principle (PPP) is often what individuals think of first when asked to cite OECD’s contributions to environmental management. The Guiding Principles are much broader than the PPP, however;77 and the Organisation’s followup efforts to elaborate the Principles and to monitor their implementation in Mem77. See p. 44.

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ber countries, shaped OECD environmental work for over two decades. These efforts also placed OECD in the centre of international efforts to define environmental goals, strategies and programme priorities for governments. The Guiding Principles were the first such statement by the world’s industrialised nations on environment-economy relationships. Given the experience and insights Member countries gained in debating and negotiating the OECD Guiding Principles, which emerged just before the UN Conference on the Human Environment in 1992, they proved to be a major influence in shaping the famous “Stockholm Principles” approved by governments at the UN Conference.78 2. Chemical Safety In International Approaches to Chemicals Control: A Historical Overview (1992), Rune Lonngren reviews the milestones in efforts by the international community to respond to the threats to human healthy and the environment over the past halfcentury; and he highlights the contributions of the spectrum of regional and global institutions. The OECD is prominently cited. Speaking of the work of the Environment Committee’s Chemicals Group through the 1970s, Lonngren states: “The OECD Chemicals Group assembled people active in national administrations in the world’s most industrialised countries being confronted with unprecedented chemical problems, affecting mainly environment and public health. In retrospect, the achievements of the Group are remarkable, and no doubt the work had a strong influence on the later development of international work on chemicals control.” While the entire Chemicals Programme can be legitimately cited as one of OECD most outstanding environmental successes, individual components can stand alone as notable achievements. The OECD Guidelines for the Testing of Chemicals is one example. Commenting on this activity, Lonngren observed that: “This was the greatest, practical oriented international programme regarding the control of chemicals ever undertaken”. A second notable achievement of the Chemicals Programme is the OECD Principles of Good Laboratory Practice, developed in the early 1980s at the same time as the first Test Guidelines, and revised in 1997. A third achievement with special mention is the Mutual Acceptance of Data concept and implementing programme, including its recent opening up to participation by non-Members. The OECD Notification and Consultation Procedure for chemicals established in the early 1970s also deserves mention. While it did not continue for many years

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78. A good description of the impact of the Guiding Principles on Member countries is presented in a 1979 publication by the Environment Directorate: Transfrontier Pollution 19751978: Measures Related to OECD Recommendation C(74)224 on Principles Concerning Transfrontier Pollution.

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as a chemicals activity, it did establish the concept of prior notification and consultation on environmental issues at the international level. Lonngren observed that: “... in retrospect, the establishment of the Notification and Consultation Procedure was a landmark which demonstrated the serious extent to which OECD incorporated the environmental sector into its work”. The Chemicals Programme demonstrated that government and industry could work together to share costs and to expedite the testing and assessment of potentially hazardous chemical substances. It produced basic methodologies for testing and assessment; and promoted the philosophy and techniques of Good Laboratory Practices and Mutual Acceptance of Data. In 1997, the Environment Directorate’s Environmental Health and Safety Division, formerly the Chemicals Division, conducted an in-house study to attempt to quantify the savings resulting from the Programme. The conclusion was that the annual net direct savings to governments and industry, using conservative assumptions, are US$64 million. This amount does not include such unquantifiable benefits as the reduction of non-tariff barriers to trade, and savings in time and conflict avoidance as the result of OECD-developed harmonised classification, assessment and testing methods. 3. Long-Range Transport of Air Pollutants During the 1970s, the scientific, technical and economic evaluations carried out by OECD on the long-range transport of air pollutants in Europe provided the building blocks for two major international environmental achievements: the UNECE’s Co-operative Technical Programme to Measure the Long-Range Transport of Air Pollutants in Europe (EMEP) launched in 1978, which began involving countries of Eastern Europe; and the framework UNECE Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution signed in 1979 by 34 industrialised nations of Europe and North America. The OECD work was based on the Co-operative Technical Project to Measure the Long-Range Transport of Air Pollutants, initiated in 1971 by the Air Management Sector Group of the Environment Committee, and involved measurements and instrument standardisation by national monitoring authorities in eleven Member countries. As described on pages 46-47, this project – combined with related analyses of the economic, legal and administrative aspects by the Environment Committee’s Sub-Committee of National Economics Experts on the economic, legal and administrative aspects “... propelled OECD to the forefront of emerging international efforts to address transfrontier pollution problems”. 4. Transboundary Movement of Hazardous Wastes At the beginning of the 1980s, the OECD began a work programme on the international movement of hazardous wastes. This initiative produced much of the information on extent and content of waste traffic, as well as the basic principles and strategies for controlling such transport for environmental management purposes,

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on which the 1989 Basel Convention on Wastes was based. The Organisation’s efforts also led to the design and adoption by OECD Members in the early ‘90s of a system for controlling the movement of recoverable wastes in trade among OECD nations that continues in use today. 5. Environmental Guidelines for Development Agencies When the negative environmental impacts of development assistance projects captured public attention in the late 1970s, Member country governments turned to OECD’s DAC as the best forum for examining and debating the issues, and agreeing on common positions. The DAC, supported by the Development Co-operation Directorate, raised awareness of the dimensions and nature of the problem, gathered data on environmental investments by bilateral donor institutions, and developed statements of principles supported by “environmental checklists” for project officers and “best practice” guidelines. The collective effort – which has drawn technical support from the Environment Directorate and other components of the Organisation – had a major influence on the environmental sensitivity and policies of bilateral donor institutions, and also on multilateral financial institutions. The DAC effort is now emphasising strategies for sustainable development and assistance to developing countries in complying with global environmental conventions. 6. Climate Change Economics and Response Strategies

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For the better part of two decades, the OECD has carved out a singularly important and successful niche in the climate field: helping Member countries, and the international community at large, understand the economic consequences of alternative response strategies and policy tools. In the mid-1980s, the Economics Division of the Environment Directorate carried out some of the first international studies in this field – often in co-operation with the International Energy Agency – with emphasis on the potential of tradeable emission rights and energy taxes. In the early 1990s, the Organisation’s Economics Department, utilising the “GREEN” model it developed, provided one of the first macro-economic perspectives on the implications for OECD Members, as well as for other groups of nations, of alternative strategies for limiting greenhouse gas emissions. This work continued through the 1990s, with the Environment Directorate’s Climate Office spearheading OECD’s efforts to assist Members evaluate issues and options during the negotiations on the Climate Convention and Kyoto protocol; and then supporting the Annex I Experts Group to elaborate and pursue the Convention/Protocol after signature of these international instruments. With the launch of the OECD Sustainable Development Programme in 1998 (and its central climate change component), OECD’s technical analyses and overall support for Member countries and the international process have become more integrated, placing

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the evaluation of climate change response scenarios and policy instruments in a broad economic and social context. Although only indirectly linked to climate change economics, another notable achievement for the Organisation in this field was the pioneering work carried out in the 1990s on greenhouse gas emission inventories, an OECD initiative that the IPCC soon embraced as a joint OECD-IPCC effort. This project established the essential requirements and parameters for greenhouse gas measurement and reporting; injected greater reality and insight into the requirements for GHG monitoring; and strengthened OECD’s relationships with developing countries which appreciated more fully OECD’s objectivity and capacity for contributing to the international effort. 7. Stratospheric Ozone Depletion It is unlikely that many beyond the “old-timers” in the field of international environmental affairs associate the OECD with the stratospheric ozone depletion issue. That is because, beginning in the early 1980s, OECD governments made a deliberate decision to concentrate ozone depletion activities in the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), given the global nature of the issue. However, when the issue first arose in the mid-’70s, OECD Member countries, led by the US and Canada, turned to the OECD for assistance, requesting the Organisation to collect data and information, and to carry out policy analysis, on CFC production and use, atmospheric processes, health effects and the socio-economic consequences of remedial action. The products of the OECD work programme fed the negotiating process leading up the Vienna Convention negotiations in 1984-85, and later the Montreal Protocol negotiations. 8. Trade and Environment With the establishment in 1991 of the Joint Session on Trade and Environment, the OECD became the first international body to tackle head-on the complex relationship between trade and environment, and to attempt to reconcile differences through policy analysis and preparation of guidelines for governments. The fact that the effort involved a co-operative venture between trade and environment officials contributed to its success ... including success in helping bridge the large gap in understanding and confidence that had divided the two “cultures”. The OECD’s initiative provided the point of departure for work by the GATT (and later the WTO) on trade and environment issues; and it demonstrated to governments and other international bodies the necessity of addressing the issues through interdisciplinary, inter-institutional efforts.

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9. Economic Instruments The OECD has long been the premier international institution for analysing and recommending the use of various market-based instruments to achieve environmental objectives effectively and at least cost. The work began in the Environment Committee soon after its creation in 1970, and has evolved over time to include, in the 1990s, studies of the reform of national tax systems, establishment and management of environmental funds and the identification and removal of environmentally-damaging subsidies and tax disincentives. Textbooks on environmental economics invariable cite OECD’s contributions; and non-member countries that approach OECD on environmental issues for the first time invariably want to engage on discussions of the economics of environmental management. China’s request in 1997 to translate six of the Environment Committee’s economic studies was one indicator of achievement, and a high tribute. 10. Sector Policy Integration As described earlier in Part III, OECD’s track record in promoting policy integration and in showing the way by example is mixed. Nonetheless, what the Organisation has managed to do in bringing together officials and experts from various disciplines to undertake joint work on agriculture-environment, taxationenvironment, development-environment, energy-environment and trade-environment is unsurpassed in the international community. And, more than just assembling individuals to debate the issues, the data, analyses, reports and recommendations that emerged from the programme activities have impacted heavily on policymaking in Member countries. Individuals participating in the joint work invariably agree that the experience in OECD forums makes a positive difference in their working relationships with colleagues from other ministries and agencies back in their capitals. 11. Environmental Impact Assessment

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OECD has had a major influence on the adoption by OECD Member country governments of Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) as a central instrument for environmental policy, encompassing economic-environment policy integration; anticipatory strategies; public participation; and accountability. Serving as both a forum for discussion and debate, and as an analytical body, the OECD was able to build widespread support for EIA application and procedures across Member countries through: the development and promulgation of EIA principles and guidelines; the use of “peer pressure”, exerted through Ministerial-level debates on the subject and Council Recommendations (in 1974 and 1979); and the use of the Country Environmental Performance Reviews to bring the last hold-outs on board.

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12. Country Environmental Performance Reviews The initiation in 1992 of this programme of periodic reviews of the environmental performances of sovereign nations by an international organisation was both innovative and rather remarkable. Only one year earlier, the concept of such an undertaking was ridiculed by one OECD Environment Minister who said that a “person would have to be crazy to think that his government, at least, would permit a group of international civil servants to tramp through the countryside, making instantaneous judgments about the environmental conditions and policies his country”. The first cycle of reviews attracted very strong support among the reviewed countries – and after the reviews had been carried out as well as before – as indicated by the annual priority rankings assigned by Member countries to OECD’s environmental activities. The review process, including the conduct of the reviews in Member countries and the peer review meetings in Paris, has proven to be an excellent mechanism for promoting policy integration, since the heavy emphasis on economic-environment relationships brought together a broad array of government ministries and engaged private sector interests.79 13. Environment Data, Statistics and Indicators The OECD was the first international body to assemble, harmonise and publish comprehensive data on environmental conditions and trends in a large grouping of nations. Its State of the Environment reports, and the periodic Compendium of Environmental Data, have consistently been best-sellers among OECD documents, and environmental publications overall. The Organisation has similarly carried out pioneering analytical work, and published extensively, in the area of environmental indicators with the OECD “pressure-state-response” framework for developing and promulgating indicators having been adopted by many other international bodies and domestic agencies. 14. Environmental Support for Eastern and Central Europe OECD support has taken various forms. The OECD Country Environmental Performance Reviews carried out on Poland (1995), Bulgaria (1996) Belarus (1997), Czech Republic (1999) and Russia (1999) helped to motivate and guide those nations in addressing the environmental aspects of the economic and political reform process. In each of these cases, the OECD reviews were the first independent, comprehensive assessments of environmental policies and conditions in the reviewed countries; and they established a better basis for dialogue and 79. Programme benefits are detailed in the evaluation of the first cycle of reviews conducted by the Environment Committee’s Group on Environmental Performance in 1998 [ENV/ EPOC(98)2].

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co-operation, including on technical assistance programmes. In the case of Poland, the review contributed significantly to Poland’s preparation for accession to the OECD. By co-operating with the UN Economic Commission for Europe in the design and conduct of OECD’s reviews of Poland, Belarus, Bulgaria and Russia, the OECD helped to build a programme capacity in that UN body, which now is enabling reviews to be extended to the non-OECD members of the ECE. In addition, OECD studies of the environmental information systems of Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Bulgaria and Belarus produced insights and recommendations that have contributed to improvements in the quality and utility of the information networks and their products. Further, OECD’s selection by European Ministers of Environment in 1991 as the institution to provide the Secretariat for the Task Force for the Implementation of the Environmental Action Plan for Central and Eastern Europe was both a tribute and a challenge. The contributions the Organisation subsequently made to the programme – by helping shape agendas, ensuring good information exchange among participating countries and institutions, serving as an “honest broker” on issues involving financial institutions and recipient governments, and integrating OECD’s environmental work into Action Plan implementation – have earned plaudits from the participants and an enthusiastic renewal of the OECD’s Secretariat mandate by the Environment Ministers on several occasions. 15. Changing Consumption and Production Patterns Identifying this issue area as one of achievement for the OECD is rather ironic, since the subject was an anathema for OECD Members for decades. The Organisation’s role emerged from the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development and Agenda 21 when there was a renewed call for the industrialised countries to change wasteful habits. When the OECD Environment Committee subsequently concluded that it was timely and necessary to begin looking at possible consumption/production changes, the basis for a new OECD effort was created. The Organisation’s special contribution was to legitimise the issue among Members; and through meetings and studies to clarify concepts and issues. The products of the work programme moved the international debate beyond North-South rhetoric and generalities, to a more thoughtful and constructive dialogue among a broad range of countries and private sector stakeholders about what is possible, and what the implications are (good and bad) of actions that might be taken by governments to promote changes in consumption/production patterns.

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Conclusions From a review of OECD’s involvement in international environmental affairs over some three-plus decades, it is possible to draw certain conclusions regarding what worked and did not, and why; and also to suggest pathways for the future. As described in the preceding section, OECD has clearly amassed an impressive array of environmental accomplishments over the period of its existence. The Organisation has acquired a reputation for high quality work, reliability, objectivity and the ability to anticipate and operate at the cutting edge of environmental policy. High-profile accomplishments for an international institution like the OECD are, however, much harder to achieve today than in previous decades. In the early days, the OECD was privileged with little competition from other international organisations in the environmental arena; and functioned as a small, closely-knit club of like-minded countries in a world with clear boundaries between North and South, and between market and centrally-managed economies. Today, the international arena is crowded with institutions with environmental programmes and pretensions. Further, the sharp gradations between types of countries and economic systems are blurred at a time when the global reach of environmental challenges inevitably requires OECD Members to engage non-member countries in continual dialogues and co-operation. Thus, OECD often may appear to policymakers not be the best forum, politically or operationally, for addressing many of today’s major environmental threats, which increasingly are broadly international in their origins, impacts and response requirements. This presents the Organisation with new challenges and opportunities in defining its environmental goals and programme priorities. A key to OECD’s environmental success in the past has been its ability to attract the attention, participation and commitment to its programme from senior officials from Member country governments, particularly Environment Ministers. It is striking, in that regard, how influential the meetings of the Environment Policy Committee at Ministerial Level have been in defining the Organisation’s environmental work, and in motivating and guiding the Committee’s subsidiary bodies as well as the Environment Secretariat. However, for reasons stated in the previous paragraph, the international demands on Ministers have reached such propor-

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tions that it is increasingly difficult for the OECD to command their attention beyond the periodic Environment Ministerials. Possibly, if the EPOC were to continue to meet at Ministerial level more frequently than the one-every-five-years pattern of the 1974-1996 timeframe (as has been the case since 1996), the situation should be improved. Inviting Ministers from key non-member countries on a selective basis could also enhance the quality and influence of the OECD Environment Ministerials. The challenge would still be keep OECD Environment Ministers, and their senior staff, focused on OECD’s environmental work between Ministerials. Creative means should be continually sought to accomplish this. A well-designed “policy forum” associated with regular sessions of the EPOC should help. An innovative approach worth testing would be to invite Environment Ministers, on an individual basis, to a particular regular session of the Committee, to present his/her ideas about major issues and OECD’s role. Many Ministers might find this attractive, particularly if such a visit to the Organisation could be linked to other meetings with, e.g., the Secretary-General, other senior OECD officials and Environment Directorate staff. Council Acts, both Recommendations and Decisions, have been very important in the annals of OECD’s environmental history. Their negotiation has drawn senior government officials into the Organisation’s programme; and, for the most part, OECD Recommendations and Decisions have provided useful guidance and direction to Member countries. While there seems to be a move away from converting environmental work into Council Acts, and the Council may well balk at any proliferation in their number, the Environment Committee and its subsidiary bodies should routinely pursue opportunities for such conversions. High quality analytical work has been a hallmark of the Organisation’s environmental work, and must remain so if the OECD is to remain relevant, useful and influential. This is all the more so given the tendency of Member countries to look beyond the OECD, when it becomes a matter of pursuing major policy goals that require interaction with either a larger number of countries, as in the UN, or a smaller number at the regional level through, e.g., NAFTA or the EC. If this tendency persists, OECD’s environmental contributions will be increasingly found in its analytical support for undertakings in other forums. But, as has been shown over the past decade (e.g., OECD activities on Central and Eastern Europe, climate, trade and chemicals), such a supporting role can still be powerful, meaningful, necessary and fulfilling.

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On the other hand, support for international conventions, and programmes spearheaded by other international bodies, must be carefully selected, designed and continually evaluated. There is a danger that OECD could become “marginalised”, and waste resources on addressing minor issues at the fringes of policymak-

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Conclusions

ing. This potential would appear to be large since it is always difficult to get a Committee consensus to “let go” of any long-standing programme area. There is an overriding need, however, to ensure that the Organisation’s environmental work remains “fresh” and at the cutting edge. In this regard, the historical record shows that the OECD has been quite flexible, while at the same time maintaining a continuity by building on and extending earlier successful work. “Sunset clauses” in programme activities and in “Level 3” groups are, nonetheless, more important today than in the past. The economic dimension of environmental policy has been OECD’s most important domain in the past, and should be in the forefront of programme planning and implementation. The advice offered by Secretary-General van Lennep to the Council and the Environment Committee in the late 1960s and early 1970s, about the need to maintain an economic perspective as well as his other guidance, remains valid today. Policy integration has been another hallmark of OECD’s environmental work since the early 1970s, even though, as stated earlier, progress in this area can often be asserted only in comparison to the lack of progress by other international and national institutions. OECD’s unique Committee structure, and its multidisciplinary Secretariat, equip the Organisation to make its future “mark” in the environmental field by continuing to pursue the vital, elusive policy integration goal. The OECD’s commitment to the pursuit of Sustainable Development, in furtherance of the recommendation of the High Level Advisory Group on Environment, provides a new framework and motivation to gain the inter-Committee, interDirectorate co-operation needed to move farther in this area. OECD’s Chemicals Programme is especially unique and valuable. Its highlytechnical work programme has made for a somewhat incongruent “fit” within the Organisation overall, prompting proposals over the past decade for a more independent status, e.g., a Part II financed Centre for Environmental Health and Safety. Efforts should be made, however, by the Environment Directorate, and by the Council, to resist any structural or programmatic moves that would distance and/or decouple the Chemicals Programme from the Environment Committee and Directorate. The benefits of the historic close relationship between the Chemicals Programme and the rest of the Environment Programme have been considerable; and any weakening of the ties would likely be disadvantageous to each. The Country Environmental Performance Review Programme offers an excellent mechanism to accomplish a number of important goals: engaging Ministers; promoting policy integration in reviewed countries; testing and making operational use of indicators of environmental performance and of progress toward sustainable development; and stimulating and pushing governments to maintain commitments and upgrade performance.

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From the time that the first review was carried out (of Sweden in 1973, an ad hoc effort which pre-dated the dedicated programme launched in 1992), the studies have both drawn on and supported other environmental work of the Organisation and have also provided an important “feedback” of perspectives and ideas for OECD’s future work. The second cycle of Performance Reviews to be launched in 2000, with a sharp focus on some of the most urgent issues of the day, including progress toward sustainable development, should yield equally important dividends. Some of the OECD’s most important environmental achievements of the past decade have been derived from the efforts to assist countries of Eastern Europe, Mexico and Korea to move along the accession path toward full membership in the Organisation. While the membership path may be closed for the foreseeable future, opportunities should be sought to engage other countries known to be aspiring Members in environmental discussions and, ideally, in joint work. This would apply to those countries that have at least established a minimum environmental capacity and appear to be committed to improving their performance. Such membership aspirants have special motivation to co-operate effectively and to demonstrate progress. The Emerging Market Economy Forum provides one vehicle for pursuing this objective. The fledgling programme of environmental co-operation with China is also worthwhile to pursue, possibly in co-operation with related efforts of other public and private institutions, including the World Bank and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development. Clearly, OECD countries will not resolve major global environmental problems without engaging key non-Member Economies to a greater degree in the years ahead.

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Annex 1: Chronology of Major International Events

Annex 1

Chronology of Major International Events Selected list of events that most influenced OECD’s Environmental Programme

1947 1948 1953 1956 1957 1961 1962 1964 1967 1968 1969

⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒

1970 1971 1972

1973 1974 1976 1977 1978

⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒

Marshall Plan speech at Harvard University Organisation for European Economic Co-operation (OEEC) created European Productivity Agency established International Geophysical Year (IGY) European Nuclear Energy Agency (ENEA) established Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) founded Silent Spring published International Biological Programme (UNESCO) Torrey Canyon Supertanker Accident Swedish Scientists Postulate Acidification from Transboundary Air Pollution Founex (Switzerland) Conference on Environment and Development, preparatory to 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment (ICSU/SCOPE) Group of Experts on the Scientific Aspects of the Marine Environment (GESAMP) (IMCO, WMO, UNESCO) OECD Environment Committee first meets (July) Senior Advisors to ECE Governments on Environmental Problems (ECE/SAEP) Man and the Biosphere Programme (MAB) (UNESCO) Convention on Wetlands of International Importance (Ramsar) UN Conference on the Human Environment (Stockholm) UN Environment Programme (UNEP) created European Communities establishes environment programme Club of Rome Limits to Growth report London Dumping Convention (IMO) First national green party in New Zealand First “energy crisis” Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES Convention) Rowland/Molina theory of stratospheric ozone depletion Man and the Biosphere Programme (MAB) – UNESCO Seveso (Italy) chemical accident UN Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat I) (Vancouver, Canada) UN Conference on Environmental Education (Tblisi, USSR) UN Water Conference (Mar del Plata, Argentina) UN Conference on Desertification (Nairobi, Kenya) ECE Co-operative Programme for Monitoring and Evaluation of Long-Term Transmission of Air Pollution in Europe (EMEP)

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1979

1980 1982 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989

⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒

1990

1991

⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒

1992

⇒

1993

⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒

1994 1995

⇒

136

1997

⇒ ⇒ ⇒

Three Mile Island (New York) nuclear accident Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution (LRTAP Convention) (UNECE) Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (Bonn Convention) First World Climate Conference (Geneva) World Conservation Strategy (IUCN/UNEP/WWF) Brandt Commission report, North-South: A Program for Survival World Charter for Nature (UN General Assembly) UN Convention on Law of the Sea Bhopal (India) chemical accident First World Industry Conference on Environmental Management (Versailles, France) Antarctica ozone hole reported Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer (UNEP) International Conference on the Assessment of the Role of Carbon Dioxide and other Greenhouse Gases (Villach, Austria) Sandoz chemical accident, Rhine contamination (Basel, Switzerland) Chernobyl nuclear accident (Ukraine, USSR) Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer (UNEP) Cairo Guidelines for the Environmentally Sound Management of Hazardous Wastes (UNEP) Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development (“Brundtland Report”) International Conference on the Changing Atmosphere that produced the Toronto Targets (Toronto, Canada) Berlin Wall removed Exxon Valdez supertanker oil spill (Alaska) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) established by UNEP and World Meteorological Organisation Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movement of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal Persian Gulf Crisis European Ministerial Preparatory Conference on Sustainable Development (Bergen, Norway) Second World Climate Conference (Geneva) Global Environment Facility (GEF) (World Bank, UNEP, UNDP) Business Council for Sustainable Development founded Meeting of European Environment Ministers (Dobris Castle, Czech Republic), launching Environment for Europe process Caring for the Earth: A Strategy for Sustainable Living (IUCN, UNEP, WWF) Second World Industry Conference on Environmental Management (Rotterdam, The Netherlands) Business Charter for Sustainable Development, prepared by the International Chamber of Commerce UN Conference of Environment and Development (UNCED) and the “Earth Summit” (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) UN Framework Convention on Climate Change UN Convention on Biological Diversity UN Commission on Sustainable Development (UNCSD) Changing Course: A Global Business Perspective on Development and the Environment Environment for Europe Ministerial (Lucerne, Switzerland) G-7 Economic Summit (Tokyo) Uruguay Round of Trade Negotiations concluded (Marrakesh, Morocco) G-7 Environment Ministerial (Hamilton, Canada) World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) – merger of Business Council for Sustainable Development and ICC’s World Industry Council on the Environment 1st meeting of the Conference of Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (Berlin) Environment for Europe Ministerial (Sofia, Bulgaria) UN Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat II) Istanbul, Turkey UN General Assembly Special Session on Sustainable Development “Rio plus 5” conference

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Annex 1: Chronology of Major International Events

1998 1999

⇒ 3rd meeting of Conference of Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (Kyoto, Japan) – “Kyoto Protocol” ⇒ Environment for Europe Ministerial (Aarhus, Denmark) ⇒ 4th meeting of Conference of Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (Buenos Aires) ⇒ 5th meeting of Conference of Partners to the UN framework Convention on Climate Change (Bonn, Germany)

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Annex 2

Chronology of OECD’s Environment Programme Highlights 1947 1948 1953 1957 1961 1965 1966

⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒

1969 1970

⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒

1971 1972 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979

1980 1981

1983

138

1984

⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒

Marshall Plan speech at Harvard University Organisation for European Economic Co-operation (OEEC) European Productivity Agency European Nuclear Energy Agency (ENEA) Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Directorate for Scientific Affairs establishes environment research division ad hoc Meeting on Research on the Unintended Occurrence of Pesticides in the Environment (Jouy-en-Josas, France) Report on Problems of Modern Society OECD Environment Committee established (July) Conference on Sonic Boom Environment Directorate formally constituted (January) Seminar on The Problems of Environment Economics Co-operative Technical Project to Measure the Long Range Transport of Air Pollutants OECD Guiding Principles Concerning the International Aspects of Environmental Protection International Energy Agency (IEA) 1st Meeting of Environment Committee at Ministerial Level Separate Chemicals Division established in Environment Directorate OECD Conference Better Towns with Less Traffic OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises Special Session of the Group of Economic Experts on Economics and the Environment Chemicals Testing Programme launched Part II Chemicals Programme established 2nd Meeting of Environment Committee at Ministerial Level Interfutures report Comparative Assessment of the Environmental Implications of Various Energy Systems (COMPASS report) Report on The Impact of Tourism on the Environment 1st Meeting at High Level of the Chemicals Group International Conference on Chemicals (Stockholm) 2nd High Level Meeting of the Chemicals Group First OECD Guidelines on the Testing of Chemicals Environment Committee Special Session on The OECD and Policies for the ‘80s to Address Long-Term Environmental Issues Development Assistance Committee Special Meeting on Aid and the Environment 1st Joint Meeting of the Chemicals Group and Management Committee for the Part II Chemicals Programme 1st Meeting of Ministers Responsible for Urban Affairs 3rd Meeting of Environment Committee at Ministerial Level 2nd Meeting of the Chemicals Group at High Level

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Annex 2: Chronology of OECD’s Environment Programme Highlights

1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991

1992

1993

1994

1995

1996 1997 1998

⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒

1st OECD State of Environment Report 3rd High Level Meeting of the Chemicals Group 2nd Meeting of Ministers Responsible for Urban Affairs Workshop to “Chart the Course” for OECD’s Work on Existing Chemicals (Ottawa) 3rd Meeting of the Chemicals Group at High Level EXICHEM Data Base launched Conference on Accidents Involving Hazardous Substances DAC Working Party on Development Assistance and Environment Economics Department’s GREEN modelling of climate change responses Centre for Co-operation with European Economies in Transition (CCEET) 4th Meeting of Environment Committee at Ministerial Level High Level Conference on Problems of the Cities Joint Meeting of OECD Ministers of Environment and of Development 1st Meeting of Joint Session of Trade and Environment Experts Council establishes ad hoc Group on Environment and Development to prepare for Earth Summit in Rio Technology and Environment Programme launched Environment Committee re-structured and re-named Country Environmental Performance Review Programme launched Chemicals Group Special Session on Pesticides OECD System for Controlling Recoverable Wastes in International Trade Among OECD countries 1st Meeting of Joint Working Party on Agriculture and Environment Deputy Secretary-General designated OECD Special Representative to UN Commission on Sustainable Development Workshop on National Action Plans for Sustainable Development (Ottawa) Special Meeting of IEA Energy Ministers on Climate Change (Interlaken) High Level OECD/IEA Conference on Climate Change Mexico joins OECD OECD Conference “Women in the City: Housing, Infrastructure and the Urban Environment” “Linkages I” study, Linkages: OECD and Major Developing Economies Rosendal (Norway) Workshop on Sustainable Production/Consumption Negotiations begin on Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) Harmonisation of Regulatory Oversight of Biotechnology (3-year) programme begun Pollutant Release and Transfer Register (PRTR) Guidelines published Climate Forum established International Conference on Waste Minimisation Czech Republic joins OECD Conference on Incentive Measures for Biodiversity Conservation and Sustainable Use 5th Meeting of Environment (Policy) Committee at Ministerial Level Hungary, Poland and Korea join OECD Report of the Secretary-General’s High Level Advisory Group on the Environment “Linkages II” study, The World in 2020: Toward a New Global Age Programme on Sustainable Development established “Linkages II” report -- World in 2020: Toward a New Global Age 6th Meeting of Environment Policy Committee at Ministerial Level

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Annex 3

OECD Leadership for Environmental Affairs Secretaries-General 1960-69 1969-84 1984-96 1996-present

Thorkil Kristensen (Denmark) Emile van Lennep (The Netherlands) Jean-Claude Paye (France) Donald Johnston (Canada)

Chairs of Meetings of Environment Policy Committee at Ministerial Level 1974 1979 1984 1991 1996 1998-present

Gro Harlem Brundtland (Norway) Douglas Costle (United States) Huguette Bouchardeau (France) Georgio Ruffolo (Italy) John Gummer (United Kingdom) Simon Upton (New Zealand)

Chairs of Regular Sessions of Environment Policy Committee 1970-73 1973-74 1974-76 1976-79 1979-81 1981-84 1984-86 1986-89 1989-92 1992-95 1995-97 1997-present

Christian Herter, Jr. (United States) Hiroto Ota (Japan) Rob Van Schaik (The Netherlands) Tony Fairclough (United Kingdom) Erik Lykke (Norway) Donald McMichael (Australia) Blair Seaborn (Canada) Fiona McConnell (United Kingdom) Roger Blakely (New Zealand) Fern Hurtubise (Canada) Michael von Websky (Germany) Eldrid Nordbø (Norway)

Directors for Environment

140

1971-78 1978-84 1984-88 1988-98 1998-present

Hilliard Roderick (United States) Jim MacNeill (Canada) Erik Lykke (Norway) Bill Long (United States) Joke Waller-Hunter (The Netherlands)

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Annex 3: OECD Leadership for Environmental Affairs

OECD Special Representative to the UN Commission on Sustainable Development 1993-97

Makoto Tariguchi (Japan)

OECD Co-ordination for Sustainable Development 1995-97

Marilyn Yakowitz (United States)

Deputy Secretary-General Responsable for Co-ordination of OECD work on Sustainable Development 1998-present Thorvald Moe (Norway)

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Annex 4

OECD Structure for Environmental Affairs Environment Policy Committee (and antecedents) Please note: The listing displays the focal point OECD Committees for environmental issues (and their subsidiary bodies) for selected years – initially the Committee for Research Co-operation and subsequently the Environment Committee (later renamed the Environment Policy Committee). Dates in parenthesis at the end of entrees indicate when the particular body was established. As noted throughout the text, many other OECD Committees have conducted important environmental activities since the inception of the Organisation. 1967 Committee for Research Co-operation (1966) – Advisory Group for Water Research – Advisory Group on Detergents – Air Pollution Study Group on Auto Exhaust – Steering Group on Sulfur Products in the Environment – Project Group on Water Basin Studies – Chemicals Information Systems Panel 1969 Committee for Research Co-operation – Advisory Group on Air Management Research (1968) – Advisory Group on Water Management Research (1967) – Consultative Group on Transportation Research (1968) – Study Group on Innovation in Urban Management (1969) – Study Group on Unintended Occurrence of Pesticides in the Environment (1969) 1971 Environment Committee (1970) – Water Management Sector Group – Air Management Sector Group – Sector Group on the Urban Environment (1971) – Sector Group on Unintended Occurrence of Chemicals in the Environment – Sub-Committee of National Economic Experts – Ad hoc Group on Pollution from Pulp and Paper – Ad hoc Group on the Impact of Power Stations on the Environment

142

1973 Environment Committee – Water Management Sector Group – Air Management Sector Group – Sector Group on the Urban Environment – Sector Group on Unintended Occurrence of Chemicals in the Environment – Sub-Committee of National Economic Experts – Joint Policy Issues Group on Waste Disposal – Group on Mediterranean Pilot Project on environmental degradation and pollution from coastal development

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Annex 4: OECD Structure for Environmental Affairs

1978 Environment Committee – Group on Water Management – Group on Air Management – Group on Energy and the Environment – Group of National Economic Experts – Chemicals Group (replaced Sector Group on Unintended Occurrence of Chemicals in the Environment) (1975) – Related committee: Management Committee for Special Programme on Control of Chemicals (1978) – Waste Management Policy Group (1974) – Ad hoc Noise Abatement Policy Group – Ad hoc Group on Transfrontier Pollution – Sector Group on the Urban Environment – Group of Experts on Traffic Problems 1979 Environment Committee – 1978 bodies plus – Group on State of the Environment – Related body: ad hoc Group on Urban Problems (as from January 1980; reports to Council, not Environment Committee; replaced Env. Cmte. Sector – Group on the Urban Environment) 1983 Environment Committee – Group of National Economic Experts – Group on Energy and the Environment – Group on State of the Environment – Waste Management Policy Group – Air Management Policy Group – Water Management Policy Group – Chemicals Group – Related Committee: Management Committee for Special Programme on Control of Chemicals – Related body: Group on Urban Affairs (1982) which replaced the ad hoc Group on Urban Problems 1985 Environment Committee – 1983 bodies plus – Ad hoc Group on Environmental Assessment – Ad hoc Group on Transport and Environment – Ad hoc Group on Noise Abatement Policies – Related body: (Council) Group on Urban Affairs – Urban Economy Development Group – Urban Services Group – Urban Housing Finance Group – Urban Country Review Group 1993 Environment Policy Committee – name change in March 1992 – Group on Economic and Environment Policy Integration (1991) – Experts Group on the Economic Aspects of Biological Diversity (1993) – Group on Environmental Performance (1991) – Group on State of the Environment (1979) – Chemicals Group (1975) – Steering Group on Existing Chemicals (1989) – Panel on Good Laboratory Practice (1990) – Risk Assessment Advisory Body (1989) – Group of Experts on Accidents Involving Hazardous Substances (1992) – Group on Pollution Prevention and Control (1992)

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– Waste Management Policy Group (1974) – Working Group, Review Mechanism for Council Decision C(92)39(Final) (re Hazardous Waste classification) (1992) – Air Management Policy Group – Technology and Environment Steering Group – Group on Energy and the Environment – Related Committee: Management Committee for the Special Programme on Chemicals (1978) – Round Table on Climate Change – Joint Session of National Experts on Trade and Environment (1991) – Joint Task Force on Taxation and the Environment (1993) – Joint Working Party on Agriculture and the Environment (1993) – Task Force for the Implementation of the Environmental Action Plan for Central and Eastern Europe (OECD serves as secretariat) – Related body: Group on Urban Affairs and project groups, e.g., Project Group on the Ecological City 1996 Environment Policy Committee – 1993 bodies plus – Ad hoc Joint Experts Group on Subsidies and the Environment – Advisory Group on Harmonisation of Classification and Labelling (1995) – Experts Group on Harmonisation of Regulatory Oversight in Biotechnology (1995) – Advisory Group on Risk Management (1994) – Pesticides Forum (1994) – Climate Forum (1994) – Task Force on Transportation (1995) 1998 Environment Policy Committee (Note changes in nomenclature to “Working Party” and Working Group”) – Working Party on Economic and Environmental Policy Integration – Working Group on Economic Aspects of Biodiversity – Working Party on Pollution Prevention and Control – Working Group on Transport – Working Group on Waste Management Policy – Working Party on Environmental Performance – Working Group on the State of the Environment – Working Party on Chemicals (Part I) – Working Group on Good Laboratory Practice – Working Group on Pesticides – Working Group on Chemical Accidents – Working Group on the Harmonisation of Regulatory Oversight in Biotechnology – Working Group on Test Guidelines – Working Party on Risk Assessment (abolished in 1999) – Working Party on Risk Management (abolished in 1999) – Working Party on Existing Chemicals (abolished in 1999) – Working Party on the Harmonisation of Classification and Labelling (abolished in 1999) related Committee: Chemicals Committee (Part II) – Forum on Climate Change – Joint Working Party on Trade and Environment – Joint Working Party on Agriculture and Environment – Task Force for the Implementation of Environmental Action Programme for Central and Eastern Europe

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Annex 4: OECD Structure for Environmental Affairs

Environment Directorate Note: The following shows the structure of the Environment Directorate as it existed during selected years, beginning with the Directorate for Scientific Affairs, which was the focal point for environmental work in the OECD just before the Environment Directorate was created. 1970

Directorate for Scientific Affairs – Environmental Research Division

1971

Environment Directorate – Central Unit for Analysis and Evaluation – Division for Natural Resources and Control of Pollution – Division for Urban Environment and Land Use

1973

Environment Directorate – Central Unit for Analysis and Evaluation – Division for Natural Resources and Control of Pollution • Water Sector • Air Sector • Chemicals Sector – Division for Urban Environment and Land Use • Urban Environment Section • Urban Land Use and Transport Section • Special projects on Siting of Power Plants and Mediterranean Pilot Project • Urban Environment Sector

1976

Environment Directorate – Division for Energy and Environment – Division for Environment and Industry (including economics work) – Division for Environment, the Cities and Land Use

1979

Environment Directorate – Division for Energy and Environment – Division for Urban Environment and Land Use – Division for Environment and Industry – Division for Chemicals – Inter-Directorate teams on Transfrontier Pollution; Evolution of State of the Environment; and Tourism and Environment

1980

Environment Directorate – Environment and Economy Division – Resources and Energy Division – Chemicals Division – Urban Affairs Division

1984

Environment Directorate (same structure as in 1980)

1989

Environment Directorate (same structure as in 1980)

1992

Environment Directorate – Economics Division – Chemicals Division – State of the Environment Division – Pollution Prevention and Control Division – Non-Member Country Branch – Urban Affairs Division

1996

Environment Directorate (same as in 1992 except for the following changes) – Chemicals Division is now called the Environmental Health and Safety Division, reflecting the wider scope of chemicals related work – Urban Affairs Division was transferred to new OECD Territorial Development Service

1999

Environment Directorate No change from 1992 plus 1996 structure

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Annex 5

Bibliography The following is highly selective, listing those documents deemed most useful in reconstructing the origins and evolution of OECD’s environmental activities since the Organisation’s earliest days. It does not begin to do justice to the tens of hundreds of reports, monographs, and speeches on environmental issues produced by the OECD (and the OEEC) over the last half century. Llewellyn, J. and Potter, S. (1991), Economic Policies for the 1990s, Oxford, UK: Backwell Publishers. Provides an economic context for the 1980s, projected into the 1990s, for the conduct of environmental activities by OECD nations. The sector-related chapters were written largely by OECD senior staff. Chapter 15, “Policies for the Environment”, written by Environment Director Bill Long, provides a retrospective and prospective look at international environmental trends and policies. Lonngren, R. (1992), International Approaches to Chemicals Control: A Historical Overview, Stockholm: KemI, The National Chemicals Inspectorate, Sweden. Reviews progress and highlights of international work on chemicals safety since the mid1960s, including OECD’s contributions. Good bibliography included. MacNeill, J., Winsemius, P. and Yakushiji, T. (1991), Beyond Interdependence: The Meshing of the World’s Economy and the Earth’s Ecology, New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press. OECD’s contributions to economy-ecology integration are embedded in this report prepared as a Triennial Commission contribution to the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development. OECD (1998), Functioning of EPOC, [ENV/EPOC(98)19], October, restricted, Paris: OECD. Environment Directorate background/issues paper for the Environment Policy Committee, raising issues related to improving the Committee’s efficiency and and influence, and examining its relationship to outside “actors”. Contains mandates of EPOC’s Levels 2 and 3 Working Parties and Working Groups. OECD (1997), Guiding the Transition to Sustainable Development: A Critical Role for OECD, November, Paris: OECD. 146

The report of the High-Level Advisory Group on Environment to the OECD SecretaryGeneral. Highlights past accomplishments and future challenges.

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Annex 5: Bibliography

OECD (1992), Environment and Economics: A Survey of OECD Work, Paris: OECD. Includes a comprehensive bibliography. OECD (1992), The Polluter Pays Principle, Paris: OECD Environment Directorate (OCDE/GD(92)81). Reviews developments with respect to the PPP during the 20 years since its adoption in 1972. OECD (1990), The Economics of Sustainable Development: A Progress Report, Paris OECD. Describes OECD’s philosophy and approach to Sustainable Development. Contains schedule of major international meetings on the topic along with bibliography of related OECD documentation. OECD (1989), Accidents Involving Hazardous Substances, OECD Monograph No. 24, Paris: OECD. Describes creation of OECD work programme of accidents involving hazardous substances, including February 1988 Ministerial Conference on the subject and its immediate follow-up. OECD (1986), OECD and the Environment, Paris: OECD. Describes the work programme of the OECD Environment Directorate during the first half of the 1980s. Contains Council Acts on the environment since the early 1970s and an extensive bibliography of OECD environmental publications from 1964-1985. OECD (1985), Environment: Resource for the Future, Paris: OECD. Selected statements and documents from the meeting of the OECD Environment Committee at Ministerial Level, Paris, 18-20 June, 1985. OECD (1982), Economic and Ecological Interdependence, Paris: OECD. Compilation of issues papers on an array of major international environmental problems, including climate change, chemicals, biological diversity and bilateral development assistance. Highlights of relevant work underway in OECD are presented in an Annex along with the activities of other international institutions. OECD (1981), The Environment: Challenges for the ‘80s, Paris: OECD. Proceedings of a Special Session of the OECD Environment Committee, 1 April 1981, on “OECD and Policies for the ‘80s to Address Long-term Environmental Issues”. OECD (1979), Transfrontier Pollution 1975-1978: Measures Related to OECD Recommendation C(74)224 on Principles Concerning Transfrontier Pollution, Paris: OECD. Overview of national follow-up actions to C(74)224, with emphasis on the benefits accruing to Member countries. Excellent bibliography. OECD (1979), OECD Information, June, No. 56, Paris: OECD.

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Special section of this periodical devoted to the operation and activities of the Environment Directorate. OECD (1979), The Environment Directorate, Paris: OECD. Selection of articles published in OECD Information bulletin during March, April, May and June 1979 (Nos. 54, 54, 55, 56). Contains descriptions of programmes of the Environment Directorate plus pictures of staff. OECD (1976), OECD and the Environment, Paris: OECD. Describes achievements of the Environment Directorate during its first six years of operation. Contains a compilation of Council Acts on environment; and a bibliography of some 120 OECD environmental publications since mid-1960s. OECD (1972), OECD Activities in the Environment Field, Note by the Secretary-General [ENV(72)20], restricted, May, Paris: OECD. Report on environmental activities conducted in the OECD, other than by the Environment Committee. OECD(1971), International Aspects of Environmental Affairs [ENV(71)22], September, restricted, Paris: OECD. Report by Sub-Committee of Economic Experts of the Environment Committee on foreign trade issues in relation to environmental policies. OECD (1971), Science, Growth and Society – A New Perspective, Paris: OECD. The report presents trends which show a decline in preoccupation in OECD Members with defense, national prestige and quantitative aspects of economic growth, and a new awakening about quality-of-life, including environmental protection. OECD (1971 and 1975), Meetings of Ministers of Science of OECD Countries [Press/A(71)48] and (Press/A(75)26]: OECD. OECD (1970), Mandates of Sector Groups {ENV(70)17], Note by Environment Secretariat, November, restricted, Paris: OECD. Sets out mandates of Sector Policy Groups of the Committee for Research Co-operation that were taken over by the new Environment Committee. OECD (1970), Bibliography of OECD Documents and Reports on Environment, Environment Committee, Note by the Secretariat (restricted); Paris: OECD. Earliest OECD bibliography of environmental literature, covering water, air, transport, pesticides, urban, nuclear and others. OECD (1970), Activities of the Organisation Concerning Environmental Problems and Policies [C(70)110], Note by the Secretary-General, June, restricted, Paris: OECD. 148

Proposal to the OECD Council for adapting the Organisation’s structures to ensure proper co-ordination of environmental activities.

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Annex 5: Bibliography

OECD (1970), Economic Policies and Prospects in the OECD Area: A Economic Policies and the Problems of the Environment [C(70)70], Note by the Secretary-General, May, restricted, Paris: OECD. Note for meeting of OECD Council at Ministerial Level, May1970, with proposed orientations of the work of the Organisation in the field of environment. OECD (1969), Problems of the Modern Society [C(69)123], September, restricted, Paris: OECD. Examination of key future problems for societies under the following headings: Environment; The Human Factor; The Role of Science; and the Role of Economic Policy. Aspects covered: Major Problems; Work Done and in Progress in the OECD; and Suggestions for Future Work. OECD (1969), Problems of Modern Society – Economic Growth, Environment and Welfare, publicly-available report, Paris: OECD. Argues for the need for greater qualitative content of work on economic growth, giving due weight to considerations of welfare and protection of the environment, and suggests how the OECD might contribute. OECD (annual), The Programme of Work and Budget of the OECD, Paris: OECD. Presents annually a description of the programme activities of each of the components of the Organisation, including the Environment Directorate, with accompanying budget and staff-month tables, plus organigrams. OECD (annual), Bodies of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Paris: OECD. Annual compilation of the mandates of major OECD Committees and their subsidiary bodies. Provides basis for tracking structural changes in the Organisation, as well as programme trends. OECD (annual), The Annual Report of the OECD, Paris: OECD. The annual reports, beginning in 1970, contain chapters on “environment”, with the highlights for each year. Environmental activities also are often found in other chapters on, e.g., Agriculture and Fisheries; and Science and Technology. Also included are lists of publications issued each year, arranged by subject matter. OECD (periodically), Summary Records of the Meetings of the Environment Policy Committee, restricted. The Summary Records contains: lists of national delegates to the Committee; names of Chairs and Vice-Chairs; records of debates on agenda items; and decisions on programme and budget matters. Smets, H. (1982), Legal Principles for Environmental Policy Adopted by the OECD Council, Environment Directorate staff paper (November), Paris: OECD. Discusses the main principles that emerged from OECD’s environmental work during the decade of the ‘70s, covering general principles of environmental policies; legal aspects of transfrontier pollution; and applications in specialised sectors, e.g., water, waste, air, energy and noise.

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Sullivan, S. (1997), From War to Wealth: 50 Years of Innovation, Paris: OECD. Fifty-year anniversary commemorative volume, tracing the history of the OECD. Contains annexes on: the OECD’s Secretaries-General, Deputies and Assistants since 1948; and the Permanent Representatives of Member Countries to the OECD (and the OEEC). Tolba, M., et al. (1992), The World Environment 1972-1992: Two Decades of Challenge, London, Glasgow, New York, Tokyo, Melbourne, Madras: Chapman & Hall Publishers. The authors’ perceptions of OECD’s contributions in the field of environment are embedded in this review of two decades of progress in international environmental affairs. World Wildlife Fund International (1998), “The OECD, Foreign Investment and Sustainable Development: Reorienting OECD Policy Work and the Multilateral Agreement on Investment”, April, Gland, Switzerland: WWF International Discussion Paper. WWF discussion and position paper which describes and evaluates past OECD policy and strategy vis-à-vis environment and investment, and sustainable development.

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Annex 6: List of Acronyms

Annex 6

List of Acronyms APEC BCSD BIAC CCEET CEC CEE CERI CFCs CIME CITES CoE COMPASS COP CRC DAC DAEs DAFFE DNMEs EAP EC ECMT EDRC EIAs EMAS EMEF EMEP ENEA EPA EPOC EPR EU FAO GATT GEEPI GEF GEP GESAMP GHG HLAGE IBP

OECD 2000

Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation Council Business Council on Sustainable Development Business and Industry Advisory Committee (OECD) Centre for Co-operation with European Economies in Transition (OECD) Commission of the European Community Central and Eastern European Countries Centre for Education Research and Innovation (OECD) Chlorofluorocarbons Committee on International Investment and Multinational Enterprises (OECD) Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species Council of Europe Comparative Assessment of the Environmental Implications of Various Energy Systems (OECD) Conference on the Parties Committee for Research Co-operation (OECD) Development Assistance Committee (OECD) Dynamic Asian Economies Directorate for Financial, Fiscal and Enterprise Affair (OECD) Dynamic Asian Economies Environment Action Plan for Eastern and Central Europe European Community European Conference of Ministers of Transport Economic Development Research Committee (OECD) Environmental Impact Assessments Eco-Management & Audit Scheme Emerging Market Economy Forum (OECD) Programme for Monitoring and Evaluation of Long-Range Transportation of Air Pollutants in Europe European Nuclear Energy Agency European Productivity Agency Environmental Policy Committee (OECD) Extended Producer Responsibility European Union Food and Agriculture Organisation General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs Group on Economic and Environment Policy Integration (OECD) Global Environment Facility Group on Environmental Performance (OECD) Group of Experts on the Scientific Aspects of the Marine Environment Greenhouse gas High-Level Advisory Group on Environmen (OECD) International Biological Programme (UNESCO)

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International Environmental Issues and the OECD 1950-2000

IEA IGY ILO IMO IOMC IPCC IPCS ISO IUCN LTRAP MAB MAD MAI NAFTA NEA NGO NIS OECD OEEC OPEC PCBs PIC POPs PPP PRTR SAEP SCOPE SMIC TDS TEP TUAC UNCED UNCSD UNCTAD UNDP UNECE UNEP UNESCO UNFCCC UNGA UNGASS UNIDO UNITAR USSR WBCSD WHO WMPG WMO WPEEPI WTO WWF

International Energy Agency International Geophysical Year International Labour Organisation International Maritime Organisation Inter-organisation Programme for the Sound Management of Chemicals Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (OECD) International Programme on Chemical Safety International Standards Organisation International Union for the Conservation of Nature (now known as the World Conservation Union) Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution Man and the Biosphere Programme (UNESCO) Mutual Acceptance of Data Multilateral Agreement on Investment North American Free-Trade Agreement Nuclear Energy Agency (OECD) Non-governmental organisation Newly Industrialising States of the Former Soviet Union Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Organisation for European Economic Co-operation Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries Polychlorinated biphenyls Prior Informed Consent Procedure Persistent Organic Pollutants Polluter Pays Principle Pollutant Release and Transfer Registers Senior Advisors to ECE Governments on Environmental Problems Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment Study of Man’s Impact on Climate Territorial Development Service (OECD) Technology and Economy Programme (OECD) Trade Union Advisory Committee (OECD) United Nations Conference on Environment and Development United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development United Nations Commission on Trade and Development United Nations Development Programme United Nations Economic Commission for Europe United Nations Environment Programme United Nations Educational and Scientific Co-operation Organisation United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change United Nations General Assembly United Nations General Assembly in Special Session United Nations Industrial Development Organisation United Nations Institute for Training and Research Union of Soviet Socialist Republic World Business Council on Sustainable Development World Health Organisation Waste Management Policy Group (OECD) World Meteorological Organisation Working Party on Economic and Environment Policy Integration (OECD) World Trade Organisation World Wildlife Fund

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OECD 2000

OECD PUBLICATIONS, 2, rue André-Pascal, 75775 PARIS CEDEX 16 PRINTED IN FRANCE (97 2000 01 1 P) ISBN 92-64-17171-1 – No. 51065 2000