What Price - Water Pollution Control?
xxv
perennially debated. Estimates of such debacles vary widely, depending upon who makes
them and for what ends. Yet impartial evaluations are increasingly required in order to
determine the economic consequences of political action. In this area of activity, our
members have a high responsibility for intelligent input, provided they can maintain some
kind of intellectual equilibrium in the modern maelstrom of environmental excitement.
The program this week is illustrative of both the positive and the negative
contributions of which we speak. The workshops cover wide ranges of significant topics.
The public defender, looking over our shoulders, however, might well find it difficult to
discover relevance, to determine priority and to evaluate direct and indirect social costs
and benefits. One might argue, of course, that these determinations are not within the
purview of our assigned purpose or of the disciplines here engaged. The omissions need to
be noted, even if perpetuated, because already rumblings regarding the balancing of
equities may be detected in various quarters.
In many countries, officials, responsible for public and private expenditures, complain
that the lists of research undertakings are not only great in number, but most often
lacking in delineation of relative importance or priority. Hundreds of areas of
exploration are noted, often with the tacit assumption that all the inquiries are of equal
weight and necessity. It is easy to understand why this is so. Every investigator, if he is
worth his salt, has his own set of "articles of faith", whether engineer, biologist, chemist,
or economist. There should be room, somewhere in this assembly, to debate the merits of
short and long range relevance, tangible and intangible costs and benefits, and good and
bad externalities.
One of these contradictions is strongly brought to mind as an immediate consequence
of the Stockholm meetings. Simply stated, the basic questions are whether pollution is in
fact global in nature, whether waters are worse in quality today than 20 years ago, and
whether universal monitoring is necessary or not. Are answers to these salient questions
part of our deliberations this week? One might raise reasonable doubts as to each of these
significant questions. Answers to all of them are already erroneously embedded in the
current political literature.
Global pollution, with some important exceptions, is probably not demonstrable.
Universal deterioration of waters over past decades is likewise subject to considerable
question. Unfortunately, with the exception of recent studies in the United States* and
England,** documentation is rare on this score. The studies need to be widely,
geographically extended.
Of even greater importance to this group is to engage in a realistic appraisal of the
significance of our activities in relation to the problems and policies of the populations of
two-thirds of the world. How far, how fast, and how costly are the research findings
applicable to developing countries? Is universal implementation desirable and at what
price in those countries hungry for moving upward by agricultural and industrial
expansions? Are unadjusted standards and goals, now appropriate to developed countries,
applicable to the rest of the world? Again, the agenda are relatively bare on these pressing
political issues.
*M. Gordon'Wolman. The Nation's Rivers. Jour. Water Pollution Control Federation, 44: 5 (May
1972), pp. 715-737. Science, 174: 905 (November 26, 1971).
**Reportof a River Pollution Survey of England and Wales, 1970, Volume 1. Her Majesty's Stationery
Office, 1971. London, England.
xxv
perennially debated. Estimates of such debacles vary widely, depending upon who makes
them and for what ends. Yet impartial evaluations are increasingly required in order to
determine the economic consequences of political action. In this area of activity, our
members have a high responsibility for intelligent input, provided they can maintain some
kind of intellectual equilibrium in the modern maelstrom of environmental excitement.
The program this week is illustrative of both the positive and the negative
contributions of which we speak. The workshops cover wide ranges of significant topics.
The public defender, looking over our shoulders, however, might well find it difficult to
discover relevance, to determine priority and to evaluate direct and indirect social costs
and benefits. One might argue, of course, that these determinations are not within the
purview of our assigned purpose or of the disciplines here engaged. The omissions need to
be noted, even if perpetuated, because already rumblings regarding the balancing of
equities may be detected in various quarters.
In many countries, officials, responsible for public and private expenditures, complain
that the lists of research undertakings are not only great in number, but most often
lacking in delineation of relative importance or priority. Hundreds of areas of
exploration are noted, often with the tacit assumption that all the inquiries are of equal
weight and necessity. It is easy to understand why this is so. Every investigator, if he is
worth his salt, has his own set of "articles of faith", whether engineer, biologist, chemist,
or economist. There should be room, somewhere in this assembly, to debate the merits of
short and long range relevance, tangible and intangible costs and benefits, and good and
bad externalities.
One of these contradictions is strongly brought to mind as an immediate consequence
of the Stockholm meetings. Simply stated, the basic questions are whether pollution is in
fact global in nature, whether waters are worse in quality today than 20 years ago, and
whether universal monitoring is necessary or not. Are answers to these salient questions
part of our deliberations this week? One might raise reasonable doubts as to each of these
significant questions. Answers to all of them are already erroneously embedded in the
current political literature.
Global pollution, with some important exceptions, is probably not demonstrable.
Universal deterioration of waters over past decades is likewise subject to considerable
question. Unfortunately, with the exception of recent studies in the United States* and
England,** documentation is rare on this score. The studies need to be widely,
geographically extended.
Of even greater importance to this group is to engage in a realistic appraisal of the
significance of our activities in relation to the problems and policies of the populations of
two-thirds of the world. How far, how fast, and how costly are the research findings
applicable to developing countries? Is universal implementation desirable and at what
price in those countries hungry for moving upward by agricultural and industrial
expansions? Are unadjusted standards and goals, now appropriate to developed countries,
applicable to the rest of the world? Again, the agenda are relatively bare on these pressing
political issues.
*M. Gordon'Wolman. The Nation's Rivers. Jour. Water Pollution Control Federation, 44: 5 (May
1972), pp. 715-737. Science, 174: 905 (November 26, 1971).
**Reportof a River Pollution Survey of England and Wales, 1970, Volume 1. Her Majesty's Stationery
Office, 1971. London, England.