Entering the 1990s, environmental issues have increasingly become a focal point of public concern and urgently need to be settled in North-South relations. Thus these issues of international finance and economic relations, and the factors maintaining the great inequality, in income and wealth between the South and the North, are increasingly important to address. As for the debate on the balance between environment and development, two clear-cut rival positions have emerged and no resolution of the difference has been attained. The immediate needs and long-term concerns clearly differ. Looking toward the future, this difference remains acute.
Developed countries attach importance to environmental equity and equality between generations.
They argue that the environment and natural resources belong not only- to our generation, but also to future generations who will need them to provide the basis for human subsistence and development. We cannot, then, claim, destroy the environment in our pursuit of development and, as a result, deprive future generations of their rights to sound environmental and natural resources. However, the environmental protection advocates of the developed countries of the North neglect equity and equality within the current generation. They are unwilling to take responsibility for improving existing conditions of subsistence in the developing countries. By contrast, the developing countries of the South hold that, although inter generational equity, and equality is important, the compelling problem human society faces is the current inequality within this generation.