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. Population limitation policies belong exclusively to the nations concerned, and only when they would enhance development.
People are the ultimate resource.
In short, anthropocentrism remains firmly in control here, too. There are occasional exceptions to this focus in isolated sentences, which those sympathetic to the Earth Charter have sometimes lifted out of context as evidence of UN support for their cause. These exceptions are really internal contradictions that get into the documents because this is committee writing, not Holy Writ, and every group wants its say, including the anti anthropocentrists. These odd sentences and that is all they are are just inserted into sections whose main point always is to stress the need to manage resources to meet the needs of a growing human population. The development issue, for one, has been rescued from obscurity.