UN General Assembly
1988

Recent events have made us realise that we are all ecologically connected; events occurring in one part of the world can have ecological consequences on the far side of the world. Plastic bags thrown into one ocean choke sea creatures in another ocean; fumes from industrial pollution in one country cause acid rain to kill forests in another country thousands of miles away; deforestation the world over can not only cause erosion and floods miles from where it occurs, but is occurring on such a large scale that it threatens to change the climate of the entire world for ever. It is certainly Ironic that just as we saw developments that give us reason to believe that we may be able to avoid the nuclear holocaust we have all feared for years we begin to realise that we may have irrevocably sown the seeds of destruction for this Earth in many other ways and that it may be too late to reverse much of the damage already done.