2
Introduction
You know how important to me is the dissemination of environmental
information. It is indeed indispensable to understand in order to act, to understand
before acting so as to avoid the double pitfall of indifference and "catastrophism".
This seems to me the best way to carry out a coherent and rational policy.
I know that in a few minutes you will participate in an important event. I refer to
the Ceremony granting the "Albert Einstein" science Award to the well-known
American scientist, Professor F. Sherwood Rowland and the "Jose Vasconcelos"
education Award to the great Australian mathematician, P. Joseph O'Halloran.
It is a great honor for all of us to be privileged to welcome to this Conference
Professor Rowland, one of the very first to have studied and pointed out the
reduction of the ozone layer. His work again illustrates the importance and the
need for obtaining numerous and reliable statistical data to apprehend the evermore complex phenomena we have to face.
Indeed today, environmental problems result more and more from the formidable
development of industrialization and urbanization and after the Cairo Conference
on Population and Development, we are reminded that this mutation also is
inseparable from the demographic explosion.
Just one figure to illustrate this phenomenon: where it took humanity more than
two million years to reach a population of five billion people (in 1987), it will take
only 44 years to go from five to ten billion at the present growth rate.
The great challenge awaiting us is indeed to find a balance between man and his
Environment. This balance concerns us all. It is, to my mind, one of the major
issues at the start of the 21st century, and the Rio Conference stressed the
importance of what we call sustainable development.
This global framework is particularly justified by the fact that the environment
knows no borders. I should like to give you two examples: global pollution and
the pluridisciplinary approach required by the Environment.
1
ENVIRONMENT: A GLOBAL PROBLEM
Environmental problems have an increasingly global impact, in particular with
regard to questions concerning the general balance of our planet such as climate,
in its broad sense, i.e. exchanges between earth, atmosphere and oceans or again,
biodiversity.
I have the feeling that in only a few years we have gone from a local view of
pollution in a static milieu to a far more dynamic version of the Environment.
Satellite observation has enabled us to understand that air masses, like water
masses, circulate all over the Earth. We must, therefore, consider the Earth System
as a whole and have, for certain polluting factors, a global approach.
Introduction
You know how important to me is the dissemination of environmental
information. It is indeed indispensable to understand in order to act, to understand
before acting so as to avoid the double pitfall of indifference and "catastrophism".
This seems to me the best way to carry out a coherent and rational policy.
I know that in a few minutes you will participate in an important event. I refer to
the Ceremony granting the "Albert Einstein" science Award to the well-known
American scientist, Professor F. Sherwood Rowland and the "Jose Vasconcelos"
education Award to the great Australian mathematician, P. Joseph O'Halloran.
It is a great honor for all of us to be privileged to welcome to this Conference
Professor Rowland, one of the very first to have studied and pointed out the
reduction of the ozone layer. His work again illustrates the importance and the
need for obtaining numerous and reliable statistical data to apprehend the evermore complex phenomena we have to face.
Indeed today, environmental problems result more and more from the formidable
development of industrialization and urbanization and after the Cairo Conference
on Population and Development, we are reminded that this mutation also is
inseparable from the demographic explosion.
Just one figure to illustrate this phenomenon: where it took humanity more than
two million years to reach a population of five billion people (in 1987), it will take
only 44 years to go from five to ten billion at the present growth rate.
The great challenge awaiting us is indeed to find a balance between man and his
Environment. This balance concerns us all. It is, to my mind, one of the major
issues at the start of the 21st century, and the Rio Conference stressed the
importance of what we call sustainable development.
This global framework is particularly justified by the fact that the environment
knows no borders. I should like to give you two examples: global pollution and
the pluridisciplinary approach required by the Environment.
1
ENVIRONMENT: A GLOBAL PROBLEM
Environmental problems have an increasingly global impact, in particular with
regard to questions concerning the general balance of our planet such as climate,
in its broad sense, i.e. exchanges between earth, atmosphere and oceans or again,
biodiversity.
I have the feeling that in only a few years we have gone from a local view of
pollution in a static milieu to a far more dynamic version of the Environment.
Satellite observation has enabled us to understand that air masses, like water
masses, circulate all over the Earth. We must, therefore, consider the Earth System
as a whole and have, for certain polluting factors, a global approach.