Technology is an essential instrument for the achievement of sustainable and environmentally sound development. But it is also through the application of such technology that Man has most impact on the environment.

The time is ripe to step up and expand current efforts to understand the great interlocking systems of air, water, and minerals, that nourish the Earth. This is essential for a reliable assessment of the opportunities for enhancing food production on land and sea. Moreover, without vigorous action towards that goal, nations will be seriously handicapped in trying to cope with proven and suspected threats to ecosystems, and to human health and welfare, resulting from alterations in the cycles of carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, sulphur, and related materials.

World models are still in the early phases of development, and the majority of the ones built so far do not deal with the resources and environment sectors adequately. Of the models available, only the Leontief input-output model considers these two sectors in some detail. Even then the results should be taken as ordersof-magnitude guesses rather than as figures that can be used in an operational sense. Furthermore, the Leontief model suffers from a basic defect: it is a pollution abatement model. From the resources and environmental standpoint, it would be much more preferable to consider this as a sector within an overall management framework in which pollution control could play an important part.

Modelling of world problematique is still in an early stage of development, and much work remains to be done to improve its basic structures, underlying assumptions, and data availability. Because of the difficulties—both conceptual and practical—many important areas are not considered in the resources and environment fields, or, if considered, are dealt with only superficially. An example is the consideration of the extent of recycling, conservation, and materials substitution, as prices of individual resources increase—owing either to economic market forces or man-made factors. While the general direction of the main thrusts are known, it is still difficult to define limits and determine interlinkages with any high degree of confidence. Much further work will be necessary to establish these interrelationships, the components of which will also need to have an adequate data-base.

The International Symposium on Science and Technology for Development, held in Singapore from 22–26 January 1979:

(1) Demonstrated that cooperative action could be taken by international nongovernmental organizations which are concerned about the role of science and technology in the UN Conference on Science and Technology for Development (UNCSTD);

(2) Caused a coalescing of these concerns in a commitment to bring the resources of science and technology to bear on Third-World problems;

(3) Resulted in a strengthened commitment to revitalize the patterns of cooperation of nongovernmental scientific and technical (S&T) organizations to expand their ties to intergovernmental agencies; and

(4) Led to an advised framework of action involving four groups, proposing: a) a network of institutions in developing countries to identify problems from the perspective of the developing countries themselves; b) a ‘switching mechanism’ in the nongovernmental sector to link the less developed countries (LDCs) with the resources of scientific and technological talent in industrialized nations; c) a multiplication of the collaboration of donor institutions; and d) a revitalization of the UN system for due application of S&T to development, accompanied by a more active working partnership with international nongovernmental organizations.

The Outer Continental Shelf Environmental Assessment Program (OCSEAP) is a multidisciplinary environmental study that is designed to provide timely inputs which are needed for decisions on off-shore oil and gas development. Approximately 100 projects in the Program address six tasks that are universal to environmental prediction and assessment. These include determination of predevelopment contamination, anticipation of future contaminants, transport of contaminants through the environment to receptors, location and character of biological populations, and the effects on organisms of exposure to a contaminant. The sixth task identifies and characterizes the various physical hazards which the environment poses to human safety, installations, and oil and gas operations.

With an ever-increasing world population and the resultant pressure to grow more and more food, marginal areas in many Third World and other countries are coming under intensive pressure towards expanding agricultural production. The ecosystems of marginal areas are often fragile, and thus particular care has to be taken in developing such lands for farming or grazing.

Scientific research funds appear to be distributed according to The Cesspool Hypothesis: ‘All research can be done in environments directly impacted by human activities or managed for human designs’. This is a misleading thesis; several important reasons exist for research in natural areas. Four of these are outlined as (1) natural areas may function as reserves of ‘miners' canaries’, giving advance warning of danger while escape or remedy should still be possible, (2) natural areas will be essential for testing and examining the effects of development and other human activities, (3) natural areas provide dependable data on nutrient and hydrological cycles in ecosystems, and (4) natural areas provide the only mechanism possible for ecosystems to retain a reasonably diverse reservoir of wild genes.

The U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and its successor the Energy Research and Development Administration (now the Department of Energy), has acknowledged these reasons. In a slow but steady progression of land-use landuse decisions, four large National Environmental Research Parks, totalling 530,000 ha, have been added to the 2,096,000 ha of areas previously dedicated for research.