You have heard many eloquent arguments in favour of disarmament, but the deliberations of this Assembly have served to show the watching world that in 1982 we are still where we were in 1978—facing the same stark choice of survival or annihilation.

Modern weapons have the deadly capacity not merely to wipe out cities, industries, and even entire populations, but also to destroy the life-giving systems on which we all depend. I am convinced that the need to preserve our shared environment provides the most persuasive argument for nations to stop this dangerously escalating spiral of the arms race.

Conservation policies adopted in the Provinces of Tirol (Austria), Salzburg (Austria), Bavaria (West Germany), and Südtirol–Alto Adige (Italy), reflect the specific constitutional settings, management fields, and regional planning strategies, of these four regions in the eastern European Alps. Despite differences in historical–political heritage, their conservation programmes exhibit a number of similarities:

1. Early conservation efforts by local communities were justified on the basis of perceived economic benefits, while those of organized conservation groups were directed towards establishing reserves with the objective of strict preservation.

2. Government involvement in conservation increased in the 1970s, when comprehensive legislation covering Nature protection and regional planning was enacted by provincial authorithies.

3. Much of the land in projected and existing parks or reserves remains in private ownership, and long-held traditional land-use rights are upheld.

4. Reserves are established under individual legal ordinances which specify prohibited practices, allowable uses, and permit approval procedures. A land-use zoning approach is used only in the management of National Parks.

5. Provincial legislation requires the integration of Nature protection into regional planning policies and programmes (e.g. the Bavarian Recreational Landscape Plan). Efforts to integrate government programmes on an international level have been limited to discussion and consultation.

The controversy surrounding the proposed Hohe Tauern National Park (Austria) illustrates that, within a setting of long-established vested interests, it is difficult to reach agreement between provincial governments (with their power-utility corporations), local communities (with their economic self-interest), and environmental groups (with their often strict preservation philosophy).

The Author's method of evaluating a natural park system is based on that devised and used some 10 years ago by the National Park Service of the USA (i.e. exactly a century after the institution of the first national park of that country and of the world, Yellowstone). In the American evaluation of 1972, serious gaps and inadequacies were identified in the national park system of the USA, which until then did not grow as a ‘system’ but rather as an aggregation. However, that system and its features are not described or commented on, but only the method itself is described.

Then the method is applied to a much smaller (Italian) region—Piedmont—in which the ‘natural parks and reserves system’ has only recently been planned and is beginning to be set up—generally with good individual choices, but apparently without any other sound criterion. The Author finds that the method is still meaningful and useful and, after a brief description of Piedmont in so far as the method requires it, he expounds his main conclusions about the inadequacies of the system and the possible remedies.

Finally, the method is briefly examined in a general way and some remarks are made about it, in order to point out its main merits, which are its synthesizing capacity and its simplicity: so appealing are they, that it is felt necessary to give some warnings about its limitations, which include lack of consideration of sizes of areas, their number, and their distribution.

Implementation of a conservation policy of preserving representative samples of all the natural ecosystems in the country has led to the establishment, from 1974, of two high-foresi national parks, namely the Bia and the Nini-Suhien, of an area now totalling 252 square kilometres or 0.3% of the original high-forests of Ghana. Continuing pressures to permit logging and other forms of exploitation for short-term cash benefits suggest that, unlike the national parks in the savanna zone, the need for high-forest national parks is yet to be fully appreciated.

High-forest national parks are vital as:

– A reference-base for scientific studies and for comparison with forests that have been modified through logging, sylviculture, and farming; they may thus provide data for decisions on the most desirable future management of high-forest areas;

– A genetic bank for the most important timber trees and for rare and endangered species and other taxa of fauna and flora;

– A focal point for the breeding and spreading of wild animals which are widely exploited for meat throughout Ghana;

– As a tourist and recreational asset; the high-forest itself is the chief tourist resource within the high-forest zone, providing a unique atmosphere for relaxation and outdoor recreation; and

– As an educational, cultural, ecological, and scientific, heritage of the greatest importance.

Internally, therefore, the policy of creating and maintaining high-forest national parks needs to be strengthened against political and economic pressures, with pursuit of a vigorous effort at educating decision-makers and the general public to an understanding of the many intangible values of natural forests. Externally, a common habitat-conservation policy for the West African subregion is urged—not only to prevent smuggling of protected, rare, and endangered, species across national borders, but also because the environmental consequences of the abuse of Nature recognize no such national frontiers.

A wide legislative base is available to conserve Environmentally Significant Areas in the vast Northwest Territories of Canada. However, existing conservation reserves have been designated in an ‘incremental’ fashion, without reference to a guiding plan. Intensive industrialization through hydrocarbon development and increased harvesting of renewable resources are threats to the integrity of many ESAs.

An anticipatory and comprehensive policy to conserve Environmentally Significant Areas (ESAs) in advance of industrialization is required, but developing such a policy will be difficult, owing to the complex political and jurisdictional ‘environments’ in northern Canada. Despite these problems, the recently announced Northern Landuse Planning Policy could be a vehicle for the implementation of a comprehensive conservation policy for ESAs, if only the institutional structures and processes that will accompany this policy are adequately designed.

Large numbers of seabirds were killed by both acute and chronic oil pollution in the waters around the Northern Isles of Scotland in 1979. These mortalities closely coincided with the opening of the Sullom Voe Terminal in Shetland, the largest of Britain's North Sea oil-ports, and appeared to stem largely from the illegal discharge of ballast water or tank slops from tankers trading to Sullom Voe. By the middle of 1979, the seabird deaths around Orkney and Shetland had accounted for 85% of the British total of that year.

Public and political concern at these events forced the introduction of a number of non-statutory measures designed to eliminate or reduce chronic pollution offshore. In rapid and novel fashion the local authority and oil industry between them achieved a far greater degree of control than formerly over tanker traffic—through the introduction of such schemes as tanker routing, ‘areas of avoidance’, unscheduled aerial surveillance of all tankers, rigorous inspection of ballast quality and quantity, and the introduction through chartering contracts of the necessity for vessels to carry at least 35% ballast on arrival at the port (so providing a strong disincentive to deballast at sea).

Since the introduction of these measures, pollution, in the form of oil and oiled birds coming ashore, has decreased dramatically, and is now at a level which is tolerable, considering the scale of oil-related developments in and around Orkney and Shetland.

With some 8% of the world's land-surface occupied by absolute desert, and up to another 40% estimated to be covered or threatened by less-extreme deserts or semideserts, it is clear that still-increasing desertification imposes one of the most critical situations and hence important considerations for the future of Man and Nature. All the inhabited continents are involved to varying degrees, with Australia (80% desertified) the worst-hit areally. And yet the area of the world that is affected by desertification, soil-degradation, erosion, and/or recurrent droughts, continues to increase at a rate of 5–7 million hectares annually in the face of ever-increasing overall human population. This survey warns again of foreseeable dangers for the future.

Aridization and more advanced desertification of land result from the combined action of natural tendencies and ecological mistakes made by Man in the course of his manifold activities. Most alarmingly, the velocity of what is mainly anthropogenic aridization is commonly measured in terms of a few years or at most a single human generation. But help should come from the maintenance of rain-fed farming in less arid areas, and especially from the widespread establishment of irrigation systems which now involve some 250 millions of hectares. There are, however, very serious problems engendered by continuing irrigation, which is apt to be wasteful of fresh water. To begin with, river-water resources are becoming increasingly limited and artesian waters are too-easily depleted or become brackish. Worse still, with the high rate of evaporation in arid regions, salinization of the surface and the uppermost soil horizon commonly ensues, and gradually penetrates to lower strata in which plants mainly root. Most existing irrigation systems lack the piping or consistent lining of water-bringing canals and the deep (2.5–3 m) horizontal drainage-ducts that are needed to evacuate excessive soluble salts. The ultimate disposal of the salt, moreover, still causes problems when the sea cannot be used or salt-lakes be created for fish and waterfowl. Meanwhile, revegetation is becoming more and more widely practised and some success is attending efforts to develop salt-resistant crops in USA, India, and USSR.

Small Hydropower Projects (SHPs), defined as including hydroelectric generating facilities with capacities of 1,000 kW or less, have great potential for elevating the standard of living and contributing to the economic growth of isolated rural communities especially in Third World countries. However, construction and operation of an SHP can result in adverse environmental impacts that should be assessed in the initial stages of site-selection and avoided in the development.

Environmental concerns can be factored into a site-selection process both at the screening and feasibility stages. The screening study is the process by which a large number of potential sites are reduced to a much smaller number of candidate sites based on coarsegrained engineering, socio-economic, and environmental, criteria. Although many of the factors determining the suitability of a given site at the screening stage involve basic engineering or economic questions, fundamental environmental issues that should be addressed include an appropriate resource-development strategy to accompany the SHPs, the quality and quantity of water available for all project needs, the presence of near-by protected areas, habitats, or important species, and the adequacy of local support for environmental protection requirements of the project.

The feasibility study is the final stage of site selection, where a relatively small number of candidate SHP sites are examined in proper detail and the best are selected for development. Potential environmental impacts of SHPs range from flow-disruption downstream to the spread of water-borne diseases and parasites, and are related to the design and size of the facility. We provide a check-list of environmental data that should be collected at this stage in order to judge the significance of projected impacts of candidate SHPs.

It is important that site selection and impact evaluation be conducted by competent individuals with formal training and experience in an appropriate environmental field. After compiling relevant information (e.g., through literature searches and contacts with government agencies or universities), the feasibility study team should visit the site of each at all likely-to-be chosen SHP. This will allow the interdisciplinary team's members to identify any previously unanticipated problems, to receive inputs from the local community, and to weigh the various benefits and consequences of SHP development before making their final selection.