All creatures on Earth have moral considerability, perhaps even moral equality. This is simply not a declaration in the UN mold. From the 1972 Stockholm conference to the 1992 meeting in Rio, the UN conferences and official reports on the environment have been dominated by the developing nations, who mean to keep developing themselves out of poverty. No environmental document that recommends actions that might impede development stands a ghost of a chance of gaining official recognition. These countries see Western environmentalism as a form of neocolonialism, and the fear that ecological concerns will be used to keep the poorer nations in permanent subordination leaps off the pages of UN documents.
Environmental programs are to serve human needs, and that is their whole point.
The UN s view is, in short, firmly, resolutely, uncompromisingly anthropocentric. Always, people first. The contrast between the two viewpoints is particularly vivid on the matter of population growth. It is an article of faith among the Earth Charter group that the planet is overpopulated and getting worse, and that serious efforts to limit our numbers are in order. Delegates from the developing parts of the world, again suspicious that the West wishes to curb their growth, and convinced by recent UN figures that birth rates are falling nearly everywhere anyway, regularly stymie efforts of the population controllers to write their anti natalist opinions into UN documents.