The degradation of the human environment is a worldwide problem which has increasingly led to worldwide concern. All countries, whether rich or poor, young or old, irrespective of political and economic institutions, are finding that they must understand and improve the relationships between man's activities and the total environmental system. The recognition that the planet's resources and its capacities to absorb waste are definitely limited raises important questions as to how to approach solutions in a way that not only safeguards legitimate national interests but in the long run protects and enhances those resources essential to the future welfare of all states.

Interest in the field of ecology, which is centered in the developed countries, has recently increased due to the sudden discovery of a possible imbalance between man and earth. Resulting from the population explosion and the misuse of existing and newly developed technologies, this potential imbalance could bring about an environmental crisis menacing the future of mankind. In several countries the emergence of an interest in ecological problems has not been confined to the realm of the scientific community. It has aroused public concern which has expressed itself, although sometimes vaguely, in such initiatives as Earth Week, celebrated in the United States in April 1970, and the mushrooming of a specialized literature.

Environmental problems are currently a matter of international interest and concern for a wide variety of reasons ranging from those which are rather general and even vague to others which are concrete and sometimes very pressing.1 There are, hopefully, more than a few people who are concerned about the welfare of their fellow man wherever he may be; moreover, there is an evident feeling of “one-worldness” resulting from an increasing degree of interdependence in several spheres, including the economic and the cultural. Further, the developed countries feel that they can learn useful lessons from one another about how to cope with environmental problems which are quite similar from country to country. These problems usually result from high population densities combined with large and rapidly growing per capita production and consumption which are often brought about by the use of technologies that generate large amounts of destructive residual materials. There is also an almost universal absence of satisfactory institutions for collective management of a number of “common property resources” including the air mantle, watercourses, and other large ecological systems.

In the industrialized northern hemisphere we are assaulted daily with evidence of the deteriorating quality of the human environment: Rivers are closed to fishing because of dangerous levels of contamination; the safety of important foods is challenged; the foul air that major urban areas have been forced to endure is now spreading like an inkblot into surrounding areas. Lack of early concern about the implications for the environment of the widespread application of modern technology has allowed the problem to grow rapidly into a critical domestic and international issue.