Thanks Henrik, Really interesting. I have no doubt, like you, that there were a number of motivations and factors that came together that provided the general impetus for the conference (and I don't think anyone, including me, argues acid rain was "the" cause of the Stockholm Conference, rather the question is how much, if at all, did the issue play a part in Sweden's enthusiasm for the conference). Regardless, it's really great to get further details about the specific activities of Swedish diplomats and their understanding of Swedish motives (and apologies if you've written about this and I hadn't seen it). Great stuff. If anyone has further information about internal government deliberations, that would be interesting - though I'm sure something to pursue offline and not on the list. And, yes, I absolutely agree that many aspects of the conference and coalescence of country priorities and positions evolved significantly once Strong took over from Moussard and the real agenda setting and politics etc. started to unfold.
Best and thanks, Steven From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Henrik Selin Sent: Wednesday, February 13, 2013 4:59 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [gep-ed] Re: Lead countries behind the Stockhol conference In the fall of 1967, a UN committee proposed (yet another) conference on the peaceful utilization of nuclear power. The committee, however, had also briefly looked at the environment as another possible conference topic. This was noted by a Swedish delegate (Inga Thorsson who had a strong focus on disarmament issues). She/Sweden wanted to avoid yet another expensive nuclear-focused conference promoting mainly Western/US industry interests (this was during the Vietnam War and the Swedish social democratic government was a bit skeptical of many US interests...). On December 13, 1967, another Swedish UN diplomat (Börje Billner) spoke in UNGA instead proposing an environment conference. Sweden continued to work on the issue throughout the spring of 1968 and got it onto the ECOSOC agenda in May 1968 and introduced a memorandum (Sverker Åström). December 3, 1968, the UNGA approved the conference. In May 1969, Sweden offered to host the conference and this offer was accepted by UNGA in December 1969. The Swedish conference proposal was motivated by a desire to avoid another nuclear conference, as well as gain global recognition of the environment as an important transnational issue (having much to do with Rachel Carson, population growth, natural resource consumption etc). It was also hoped that the inherent cross-sectoral character of environmental issues could help tear down counterproductive barriers within the sectorally rigid UN system, as well as serve to strengthen a UN that was plagued by tensions between East and West and grappling with the complications of decolonization. The Swedish acid rain debate in a sense started to develop with Oden's October 24, 1967 newspaper articles but emerged separately from the UN conference idea. It took a while for the acid rain topic to take off publicly and was more linked to the activities of the newly created Swedish EPA. It was also initially not at all clear what the Swedish international political response should be (i.e., the initial response was not "let's organize a global UN conference with 130 member states and also host it!"). The Swedish political response did not start to mature until the conference preparations were under way under the leadership of Maurice Strong. Surely, there were overlaps between the conference and the acid rain issue going back to the early 1970s as the two topics started to merge. There is always a possibility that I'm wrong, but I don't think there were any substantive links at the very beginning when the Swedish UN mission started pushing the issue in UNGA and ECOSOC. As social scientists, we are trained to look for connections. Sometimes they are mainly the result of coincidences, rather than strategic government planning and action. Henrik On 2/13/2013 10:48 AM, Steven Bernstein wrote: Hi all, At the risk of sticking my neck out with interview data that slightly contradicts Henrik's - please see the note below I just sent him offline. The gist is that while acid rain was not a big national issue in Sweden until after the 1968 ECOSOC and UNGA resolutions proposing a conference (and, yes, Sweden was the major mover as far as I know though other western countries were supportive), it had started to percolate into the public consciousness and, at least according to some accounts and interview data, was being discussed within the Swedish government. The early theory of acid rain came from a Swedish scientist, Svante Oden, who published it first not in a scientific journal, but in a newspaper, the October 24, 1967, issue of Dagens Nyheter. So, it may be that acid rain was in the minds of people in the Swedish government even if there were multiple motives in proposing the conference (and, there was also a context of a variety of other UN activities around the environment leading up to 1968). More broadly, there is a quite detailed account of the politics around the Stockholm conference in the Compromise of Liberal Environmentalism, pp. 31-49 and 139-144. (Apologies for the self-promotion - and I'm sure Henrik has more details than me on decision-making within the Swedish government as I did not look at that in detail, but focused more on the politics in the run-up to the conference and North-South dynamics in particular). Best, Steven Steven Bernstein Associate Chair and Graduate Director Dept. of Political Science University of Toronto 100 St. George Street Toronto, ON M5S 3G3 Tel: +1 416-978-8493 Fax: +1 416 978 5566 From: Steven Bernstein Sent: Wednesday, February 13, 2013 10:20 AM To: '[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>' Subject: RE: [gep-ed] Re: Lead countries behind the Stockhol conference Henrik - this is very interesting. One thing that came up in my interviews about the Stockholm conference was the role of Svante Oden, one of the early researchers on Acid Rain, who also happened to have a popular television show. One of my interviewees said Oden first published his theory of acid rain (presumably a preliminary version) in a Swedish newspaper in 1967, a year before he published a scientific article in Ecology Committee Bulletin (1968). People assume acid rain was not on the agenda before 1968 - but the timing of the newspaper article suggests it could have been. I can't verify that the newspaper article or Oden's personal lobbying was "the" or even a major impetus for the conference, by at least one person I interviewed who was involved in the scientific meetings around Stockholm and knew Oden claimed Oden did a lot to publicize the issue and had the ear of some people in government. So, whether or not acid rain was in the initial resolution in 1968 (I'd have to go back and check - but I think the original resolution was very general, i.e., "air and water pollution", "soil erosion", noise pollution, etc. without identifying specific causes or issues), there is at least some evidence that it was in the minds of people in the Swedish government when they proposed the conference. Does this fit with any interviews you've done? Steven From: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Henrik Selin Sent: Wednesday, February 13, 2013 10:03 AM To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Subject: [gep-ed] Re: Lead countries behind the Stockhol conference If you look at the two international and domestic timelines, it is clear that the Swedish UN mission first raised the issue of the conference BEFORE acid rain took off as a national Swedish issue. Not by much (less than a year), but getting acid rain on the international agenda was NOT the main reason for proposing the UN conference (or even a reason at all). This has also been confirmed by personal interviews with the people who were at the Swedish UN mission at the time (Sverker Åström and Lars-Göran Engfeldt). They came up with the conference idea more or less on their own and then sold the idea to the Swedish government/PM without being concerned by acid rain. As diplomats from a "neutral" country, they were much more interested in bridging Cold War political gaps within the UN and start dealing with the environment broadly as a means to do that, than tackle acid rain specifically. Of course, once the conference came around, Sweden happily used it to talk about acid rain... Henrik On 2/13/2013 9:46 AM, Radoslav Dimitrov wrote: I read somewhere that Sweden had an ulterior motive to organize the conference. After the conference began, they put the acid rain issue on the table. The issue had not been on the official agenda, and delegates from other countries (UK, for instance) felt somewhat ambushed into pre-negotiations. Would be interested to hear confirmations or refutation - anyone? Radoslav S. Dimitrov, Ph.D. Associate Professor Department of Political Science University of Western Ontario Social Science Centre London, Ontario Canada N6A 5C2 Tel. +1(519) 661-2111 ext. 85023 Fax +1(519) 661-3904 Email: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> On 2013-02-13, at 6:53 AM, Kirsten Worm wrote: Dear gep-eds, This year I am once more teaching global environmental politics at the University of Copenhagen, Department of Political Science. Inspite of reading several textbook on the Stockholm-Rio process including the excellent 5th edition of Chasek, Downie and Brown: Global Environmental Politics, one question remains: Who were the lead countries behind the Stockholm conference in 1972. Chasek et al. mentions that the conference was supported by the US, but was the US lead state? I wonder about that. Does anyone have an answer? Maybe someone out there with even more grey hair than mine even attended the conference? Thank you in advance. Kirsten Worm, M.A.; Ph.D University of Copenhagen Department of Political Science -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "gep-ed" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "gep-ed" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "gep-ed" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>. 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