Tag: Gro Harlem Brundtland

Categories
Norway

August 26, 1991- We cannot delay says Brundtland

Thirty four years ago, on this day, August 26th, 1991, the Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland lays it out

Speaking to the industry at the international Environment Northern Seas Conference (sic.) in Stavanger in 1991, the prime minister stressed the danger of global warming:

“We cannot postpone dealing with global warming. We have enough scientific evidence about causes and probable effects to know that the costs of not acting will be very high and that a further delay of action will increase these costs even more”

.29 ; “Brundtland key note speech,” Environment Northern Seas International Conference and Exhibition, Stavanger, 26-30 August 1991,

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 355ppm. As of 2025, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.

The broader context was that Brundtland had been the poster-child for “development” as we then called it, in the 1980s. The “Our Common Future” process and report had popularised the term “sustainable development.”

The specific context was that the negotiations for a climate treaty were deadlocked because the United States wanted them to be – they were determined that whatever was (or wasn’t) signed in Rio the following year (i.e. June 1992) would be weak, and not place any commitments on the US.

What I think we can learn from this We knew 35 years ago that time was short.

What happened next – the Americans got their way – the UNFCCC contained no time tables or targets for reductions by rich countries. Meanwhile, Norway got rich exporting fossil fuels. Go figure. 

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.

Also on this day: 

August 26, 1970 The Alkali Inspector’s report… 

August 26, 1973 – Sir Kingsley Dunham points out the C02 problem

August 26, 2003 – Australian “plan” to save biodiversity

August 26, 2006 – First “Climate Camp” begins

Categories
International processes

April 27, 1987 – “Our Common Future” released.

On this day, April 27 1987, Our Common Future also known as the Brundtland Report, was released, giving the world the term “sustainable development”, (which actually had been used in the Global 2000 report released in April 1980. But that was attached to the Carter Administration, by then regarded as a bunch of hopeless losers). 

The United Nations had created the World Commission on Environmental Development in 1983. And the commission was chaired by Norwegian politician, Gro Harlem Brundtland. The point of the Brundtland Report was to imagine that environmental development and ecological protection were not mortal enemies that you could have when win-win situations.

There was some stuff in there on climate (but not as much as there would have been if it had been published two years later! – they took information that had been produced for the 1985 Villach WMO/UNEP/ICSU conference and shoved it in a chapter.  

Our Common Future - Wikipedia

Why this matters. 

If you’re an apocalypse geek like me, it matters.

What happened next?

The Earth Summit, the WCED proposed for 1992 kind of sort of got overtaken by the climate issue. But biodiversity was also still in the mix, as was “Agenda 21”, which called for all sorts of participatory bottom-up democracy processes which ran into the sand. But the idea is too useful, politically, to be abandoned, so it is constantly rebranded as the Millennium Development Goals, and then the Sustainable Development Goals etc etc

Meanwhile, the UK called its first climate white paper “Our Common Inheritance.” Droll.

And Brundtland decided to throw in her lot with the technocrats rather than the deep ecologists. There’s a good article about that here.  Despite this, she remains a hate figure for the far-right (one world government etc etc).