UN General Assembly
1989

The environment can be protected only if hunger and poverty are eliminated, A world in which poverty is endemic is likely to suffer ecological disasters. Debt-servicing and the drop in commodity prices have obliged many developing countries to over-exploit their natural resources to maintain their export earnings. Debts they cannot pay have led those countries, which depend above all on the export of commodities, to over-exploit their soil, and as a result they have turned arable land into desert. It is essential to find solutions to alleviate the debt burden that represent a more equitable distribution of responsibilities between creditor and debtor countries. The pursuit of an environmental policy compatible with the objectives of lasting development is practical only within the framework of a rationale economic order, because the present system perpetuates underdevelopment. It constitutes the principal source of pollution. It pollutes through hunger and the exploitation of the weakest.