Hello friends, it's the Environment Show and welcome.
The Earth Summit has concluded amid rave reviews and those simply
raving what is the new world order?
Who will benefit and who will pay?
Dr. J. Hare of the National Wildlife Federation speaks from Rio.
Also this time the endangered Gunnison River in Colorado, a scenic river or an economic
workhorse and will visit Joan Snyder on her sheep dairy farm from where she says we are
expanding our concept of what healthy food means.
People are beginning to say well wait a minute if it's not good for me, perhaps it isn't
good for the Earth, perhaps it isn't good for the animals so I think it's eroding out
in circles that benefit all of us in terms of long-term agricultural issues and land use.
The Environment Show is a national production made possible by the J.M. Kaplan Fund of New
York and this is Bruce Robertson.
The meeting is over, the United Nations Conference on the Environment and Development
held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil has concluded.
Now the question is, just what was accomplished?
Here as the first such environmental meeting in Stockholm in 1972 was attended by 30 or
so nations, the 1992 Earth Summit drew nearly 200 heads of state and thousands of other attendees,
35,000 in all.
Millions of dollars were spent on the event, billions more are pledged toward future environmental
protection.
But in the end what does it all mean?
The summit was two and a half years in the planning, no doubt we have another two and
a half years at least of analysis.
A few days before the meeting broke up, Dr. J. Hare, president of the National Wildlife
Federation held a press conference speaking to reporters by satellite from Rio.
Dr. Hare opened the conference with a brief statement.
It's a rainy day here and I'm delighted to have a chance to summarize some of the important
events that are happening at the Earth Summit.
Let me start by saying that the Earth Summit, the United Nations Conference on Environment
Development, in my opinion, is the most important meeting ever convened in the history of
humankind.
Regrettably though, President Bush in the White House are treating it like a side show
at a circus.
The dream that was the Earth Summit has hit the reality of Rio and no one except the
Bush administration can be blamed for its failure to achieve all that it could have
been.
Hare was asked whether he felt the summit was as a whole a success or a failure and if
it was a failure, how are we to proceed now?
Well, clearly the Earth Summit is not a failure.
It's a very serious disappointment in President Bush and the United States failure to provide
leadership.
But the Earth Summit is where the new world environmental order really began.
This is the place where the world, not the United States, is saying there is no such thing
as traditional superpower.
We must develop new ways of having partnering relationships because when it comes to sustainable
development, environmental protection, there is no us and them.
It's only us.
And the way that's going to happen, the way that dream is going to become a reality is
when each and every individual in a developing world commits themselves to the achievement
of global, economic and environmental sustainability.
They are the twin goals of the future.
They are inextricably linked and that begins with each and every one of us.
And that's the hope because now we for the first time have brought the world's community
of non-governmental organizations together and they now have a network that has never
been in place before.
That's not going to change.
That's only going to improve with great Britain's commitment to reconvene an NGO forum in
England in 1993 with a commitment to have a major commission on sustainable development
at the United Nations.
Those are all very significant positives.
The negative is and the sadness is that there was so much more.
It could have been achieved at this unique time.
There was a Bush and his administration simply failed to do that.
That's a tragedy for America.
It's a tragedy for the world.
We shouldn't let their failures dampen our enthusiasm as individuals to get involved.
There were two major conventions or treaties signed.
The biodiversity convention, a legally binding treaty requiring nations to protect endangered
species and prepare a detailed study of their plant and animal kingdoms.
The United States did not sign this treaty.
The other major treaty was the Global Warming Convention.
Though legally binding, it does not require nations to cut back on so-called greenhouse
gas emissions.
Rather, there is only a recommendation to do so.
Furthermore, at the insistence of the U.S. delegation, the convention does not set any
timetables by which such reductions would be achieved.
With these modifications, the U.S. did sign the convention.
Also accepted at the summit was a nearly 1,000-page document called Agenda 21.
Well, in the weeks and months leading to the summit and certainly at the summit itself,
the question of how to pay for environmental protection worldwide was widely debated.
The United Nations has proposed each wealthy nation contribute 0.7 percent of its gross
national product in economic aid to poorer nations.
The 6-7 billion dollars pledged so far does not come close to paying for cleanup costs
worldwide, which some analysts say could cost as much as $125 billion a year each year for
the rest of the decade.
The United States was nearly alone in opposing massive increases in aid, citing the difficulty
of monitoring how that money would be spent.
I asked here whether environmental protection is a money issue or a question of attitude.
Yes, it is more than money.
It is that attitude no change.
But I think the developing world understands for the first time that much of the world's
financial capacity, which has historically gone to creating a false sense of natural security
through the production of military armament and might, now has an opportunity to be
reallocated.
And I think there is a real growing sense of the importance of the United Nations as
a body.
We saw it first being enacted in the Persian Gulf War and rallying the world's nations
towards that particular nation.
There are also something that there may now be an opportunity to do that to fight the
ultimate battle of the world and that is to say the Earth.
However, let me go back to the Bush administration.
Yes, the United States does provide leadership in a number of areas.
But we damn well should.
We also pollute more than any other country in the world.
And quite frankly, it rings a little hollow when the United States is pointing its fingers
at companies like Brazil to implement a forestry convention that we have systematically destroyed
and mined the ancient forests of the Pacific Northwest.
We are, as a nation, destroying critical habitat for the protection of the major species,
it rings a little hollow when President Bush.
And his administration says that we are doing wonderful things in the United States to
conserve biological diversity.
The proof is just simply not there in many cases.
Eric concluded his conference from Rio with this reminder.
The National Wildlife Federation has this slogan, Earth Day every day, you can make a world
of difference.
I have twisted that a little bit to say, Earth Day every day, we can make a different world.
And that is the challenge coming out of Rio.
That is the road from Rio.
How do we take the people, the individuals, those who really do understand the link between
environmental protection and economic development and the sustainable future, getting those
people to take actions to truly make a difference?
I am very optimistic that people will do that.
Dr. J. Hare, President of the National Wildlife Federation, speaking to us by satellite from
Rio de Janeiro.
British Prime Minister John Major has called for a reconvening of non-governmental organizations
to meet in Great Britain in June of 1993.
Stay tuned for more reports on the Rio Summit next time.
This is Bruce Robertson.
Now that the Earth Summit has concluded, with treaty signed and money spent, the question
could be asked, so what?
Well, here were some thoughts is environmental writer Joel MacHauer.
In some ways, the Earth summit is a distraction.
A smoke screen of sorts diverting us from the daily environmental problems that face nearly
every community.
It is here on the local level, not in Brazil that the solutions will have to take place,
where the inspiration and ingenuity will inevitably need to originate if anything substantive
is going to be done.
The Earth Summit makes for a seemingly frustrating paradox.
It is a dramatic demonstration of international leadership on environmental matters that the
actual solutions have to come from each of us at home.
But that is exactly how it should be.
Even the greenest of world leaders can only do so much.
With luck, a good leader provides inspiration and empowerment.
They create a future by showing us what we must learn, not by reinforcing what we already
know.
They can't recycle our discards, change our driving habits, or oversee our birth control
methods.
They can only offer a vision, and we must do the rest.
It has been said that to be a good leader, you must also be a good follower.
You must tap into the grassroots ideas and innovations providing nurturing and support
and helping those ideas to flourish.
These so-called leader followers view their constituencies not as a group of people to
be governed, but a series of collective visions, each needing a driving force in order to
come to pass.
Good leaders become that driving force.
In most countries, including the United States, that vision and inspiration remains sadly
lacking.
Our leaders are by and large timid on the environment, shrinking from the challenges
rather than embracing them.
They seem to fear the future and the changes that must inevitably come if individuals and
businesses are to create the kind of sustainable future that is essential, themit or summit.
In fact, that's the real lesson of Earth Summit.
Don't count on all these self-celebrated world leaders to solve our environmental problems
for us.
We must do it ourselves.
Day by day, one small change at a time.
For us to be the masters of our own fate, we must find ways in our own homes and communities
to make a difference.
That's what we need to get us out of this mess.
Not globally televised speeches.
Not photo opportunities on the campaign trail.
Not brave new buzzwords like sustainable development.
Not more big wigs sitting around talking.
What we need is to act, and each of us must do our part at home, at work, in the marketplace,
at the voting booth, because no one else is going to do it for us.
Remember that classic Earth Day slogan, think globally, act locally?
It still makes sense now more than ever.
Joel MacKauer, co-author of the popular book The Green Consumer, an author of the recent
book The Green Commuter, an editor of the monthly Green Consumer Letter.
He is also president of Tilden Press in Washington, D.C.
This is Bruce Robertson.
Some call Western Colorado's Gunnison River.
One of America's ten most endangered rivers, a number of different interests, want the
rivers water for agriculture, hydropower, distant cities, and recreation.
Others want to protect the Gunnison and its spectacular black canyon from further development.
For more than a decade now, local and environmental groups have been working to gain wild and scenic
river designation for the Gunnison.
As Becky Rumsy reports, two new plans, a congressional bill and a multi-agency water contract
could determine the future of this Western Colorado River.
Most people who see the black canyon see it from here, one of the overlooks in the black
canyon of the Gunnison National Monument.
From here they see the near vertical dark toned rock walls and 2,000 feet below the brown
thread of the Gunnison.
We've seen a lot of canyons, but that's different.
It really is.
We love it.
We think it's beautiful.
Oh, it's fabulous.
If you're talking about right out here.
Fabulous, just fabulous.
The black canyon is the work of the Gunnison River.
Over the course of 2 million years it cut down through an ancient mound of crystal and
rock.
Downstream from the monument, the canyon opens up into a bureau of land management area
known as the Gunnison Gorge.
Here, ooze-als, birds known as dippers, feed in the same waters that host a gold metal
trout fishery.
Altogether, 26 miles of the Gunnison flowing through the monument and the lower gorge
are eligible for wild and scenic designation.
But in 12 years, several attempts to gain that designation have failed in Congress.
I think they were done a little bit hastily without all the input necessary to make a good
bill that is acceptable to everybody.
Fred Wetloffer is a member of Western Colorado Congress.
The Montrose-based Environmental Group supports a new bill introduced by Congressman Ben
Knighthorse Campbell.
The bill's a package deal.
It designates a wild and scenic river and a wilderness area in the lower gorge.
It maintains multiple use in BLM lands surrounding the gorge and for businesses that want to
boost tourism, it renames the National Monument as a National Park.
Campbell's bill is a result of over five years of negotiations among local groups and
federal agencies.
Since that groundwork was done, I think this bill has a much better chance of getting on
through with some revisions.
Revisions are what national environmental groups like the Wilderness Society and the Sierra
Club want before they'll support the bill.
Sierra Club spokeswoman Tina Arapkola says the bill would set a dangerous national precedent.
It doesn't really do what it sets out to do.
It talks about the magnificent canyon and it sets aside all this land and designates
a wild scenic river, but it denies the protection for the water that has created each of those
spectacular resources.
Wetloffer says a federal water right with a 1992 priority date would be toothless in
Colorado.
These contract negotiations, on the other hand, are dealing with a water right that has a
1933 priority date the same as the designation of the National Monument.
And that carries some weight in Colorado.
Proponents of Campbell's bill are counting on a contract negotiation beginning this summer.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation plans to design a water agreement with the National Park
Service, the BLM, and the Colorado Water Conservation Board.
It's an ambitious undertaking that evolved partly because no one has determined how much
water the Black Canyon is actually entitled to under its 1933 Federal Water Right.
That issue could be mired in Colorado Water Courts for years.
In the meantime, additional proposals to divert the Gunnison's water spurred the agencies
to come up with a plan that would balance environmental protection of the Gunnison with
a multitude of competing interests.
Steve McCall is an environmental officer with the Bureau of Reclamation.
This particular contract is, we think, fairly unique.
The contract process could take three to five years.
Even so, citizens groups and the agencies say it's the best short-term route towards protecting
the 26 Canyon miles of the Gunnison.
The contract will go forward with or without Congressman Campbell's Wild and Scenic Bill.
But if the bill passes, it could add congressional weight to environmental protection in the contract
negotiations.
For the High Plains News Service, I'm Becky Ramsey.
The High Plains News Service is a production of the Western Organization of Resource Councils
in Billings, Montana.
Questions about the long-term effects of chemical fertilizers increasingly are being asked.
For one organic farmer, though, there is no question.
Kathy Rae visited with dairy sheep farmer, Joan Snyder, who sees a vital and exciting
connection between organic farming and health, not just for human beings, but for the land
as well.
The first sheep I ever saw was at the Columbia County Fair.
And they were so beautiful, they were all fluffy and white and everything.
I didn't realize that those were sheep that had some special grooming for the event.
Joan Snyder's perception of sheep has completely changed since then.
A former investment banker in New York City, Snyder turned her weekend retreat into her
full-time livelihood three years ago.
She now runs a sheep dairy farm.
And they are the greatest of the coin that you came empty handed.
Basically, they have nothing to say to you ever, then they're the most...
Let me crawl a little bit.
The lambs crowd around, nibbling our pants and fingers, looking for the bottle that usually
accompanies anyone who enters the pen.
In the next year, many of them will join the current flock of 300 sheep at Hollow Road
Farms in Stivocent, New York.
While sheep cheeses like Rokfert and Pecorino Romano are common in the U.S., sheep derries
are not.
There were perhaps seven compared to nearly 3,000 in France alone.
Snyder's Wheaton Business School education and background in finance support her land
and farming ethic.
At U.S. duets of the land, and that you're not entitled to sort of farm it to its maximum
potential in order to make short-term profits.
And that's, I think, an analogy that came from business which is inappropriate.
People can depreciate machines because you can replace them.
And that's really, in most cases, a fairly sensible strategy for a corporation that's
trying to increase its revenues.
It's not a sensible strategy for a farmer because you can't replace the land and damage
done with intensive kinds of farming to create more volume is very damaging.
Snyder understands the economic necessity that compels many farmers to work the land
intensively, using pesticides and fertilizers.
She doesn't see it as a good long-term investment, however.
So at Hollow Road Farms, they raise the animals organically.
Oh, there's no choice.
You can't choose chemical farming if you're saying, you know, you just can't.
I mean, you look at what's having people not even sort of focused on rainforest, God,
I wish they'd look at the farmland situation.
I mean, it is pitiful what's been done in terms of intensive grazing.
You ruin the land.
You just ruin the land.
And every year you require more chemicals.
And it's a very simple cost equation, you know, from a farmer's point of view because
if he finds that his yields are going down, he adds more chemical.
And now what he's figured out is that his chemical bill is probably bigger than every other
billionaires in the farm.
And that's, and farmers are really becoming very aware of that.
And if you're a consumer, you know, it's very hard for consumers to say, well, I'm in
favor of sustainable organic agriculture and then do anything about it because they don't
have, I mean, it's not exactly an issue that you vote over.
And everybody is trying to make a decent living.
And if you're a farmer and think, well, I can make more by turning out more product,
you obviously try and find the way that works.
And what everybody's realizing now, both consumers and farmers, is that that's fine for the
short term.
But it's not for the long term.
And it turns out that the long term is here now and that what we've done over the last
20 years has been to sort of increase yields at the expense of the land itself, which
is not inexhaustible.
Another ethic on which they base their farming practices is that big is not necessarily
better.
Small farms, however, have difficulty getting into a wide distribution network.
To make small, more economically feasible for herself and others like her, she and farm
co-owner Ken Klein-Peter created a subsidiary distribution company called the American Family
Farm.
There are two refrigerator trucks, deliver sheep cheeses and yogurts, cow's milk, eggs,
meat and seasonal produce directly to New York City's specialty stores and restaurants,
pariahle and sign of a dove are among them.
They also drop off orders to the homes of about 60 individuals.
The service provides more than just convenience.
They love the connection to the farmer.
More than anything, they love knowing whether food came from.
Semon Caden said, well, you know, how are the chickens slaughtered?
I want to make sure we say, well, here's the name of the farmer, caller.
Sheep's milk is higher in fat than cow's milk.
It's calcium and protein levels also measure higher though, and it can be consumed by many
people who can't tolerate cow's milk.
Snyder feels that a concern for the origins of our food reflects larger definitions of
the concept of health.
I think people are much more conscious of how they eat from a health perspective now,
and I think that health blissfully has finally turned out to be something other than fat.
I mean, concerned about how much fat you're eating, which is obviously very good for you,
but that was a single focus obsession for a long time now.
People, I think, are moving away from that saying, well, wait a minute.
Health means how it was grown, as well as how much fat or what the nutritional components
are.
And from that, people are beginning to say, well, wait a minute, if it's not good for
me, perhaps it isn't good for the earth, perhaps it isn't good for the animals.
So I think it's rating out in circles that benefit all of us in terms of long-term agricultural
issues and land use.
Jones Snyder, co-owner of Hollow Road Farms, sheep dairy in Stuyvesant New York.
With their recently awarded USDA grant, they'll be exploring such issues.
They'll also continue to breed dairy sheep, which under current regulations can't be
imported from Europe and the Middle East.
Despite its relative obscurity right now, Snyder sees a future in the sheep dairy industry.
Despite the difficulties for farmers, she also sees a future for farming.
Is it something that you think you'll do until you're 60 or 70 years old?
90, I would have thought, till I'm 90.
And Hollow Road Farms, this is Kathy Ray.
Well, that's our report on the environment show this week.
The environment show is a program about the environment, the air, water, soil, wildlife,
and people of our common habitat.
If you know of something happening in your area that you think we ought to know about,
or if you have a question about this week's or any week's environment show, do drop us
a line, address your questions and your comments to the Environment Show 318 Central Avenue,
all in the New York 1-2-2-06.
For a cassette copy of the program, call 1-800-767-1929.
Ask for the environment show number 129.
The environment show is a presentation of national productions solely responsible for
its content.
Dr. Alan Shartock, executive producer, and this is Bruce Robertson.
The environment show is made possible by the JM Kaplan Fund of New York.
CC BY-NC-SA 4.0