President of the Amici della Terra (Friends of the Earth, transl.) Association.

Environmentalists should relinquish yesterday's localism. The EC should adopt a political vision that go beyond its own borders.

ABSTRACT: "Whatever happened to the environmental issue?". There are diverging answers to this question. The Rio summit marked the beginning of a new stage, "which tends to base the environmental issue on the policies of the states and of the international bodies". The question is in fact a "binomial: environmental and...sustainable development". There's a limit that weighs on the prospects of development: "exporting our way of producing and consuming to the poor areas of the planet could jeopardize...the environmental estate". Thus, an effort in the direction of "environmentalist innovation" is needed. Therefore, Rio has not been a "failure", but the U.N. lacks the means to enforce its decisions. In comparison the EEC is an "island" of progress. But the advanced community environmental law is only a "privilege" of few developed countries. Immediately outside the EEC customs there are huge problems, which its institutions are not taking care of solving.

(1994 - IL QUOTIDIANO RADICALE, 19 November 1993)

Whatever happened to the environmental issue? What remains of the ambitions of environmentalism?

See from Italy, the issue seems to be reduced a second-rank role, among the debris of the great political crisis. Outside of Italy, the scenario provides contrasting answers. With the long negotiation which has lead to the Rio summit, the U.N. opened a new stage that tends to base the environmental issue on the policies of the states and of the international bodies.

The issue, in fact, has become a binomial: environment and development: in other words, "sustainable development". "Misery" - read the documents of the Rio conference - "generates disasters compared to which the environmental damage produced by the industrial revolution in the West is a trifle; but they also stress that development prospects are thwarted by a limit: exporting our way of producing and consuming to the poor areas of the planet could irreversibly jeopardize the environmental estate. An effort in the direction of an environmentalist innovation is therefore needed to make realistic a prospect of "sustainable development". Those who say Rio was a failure are making a mistake. Rio was a beginning, it started a process, it traced a system of objectives, leaving the burden of defining time requirements, resources and instruments to the diplomacies and the states. The shadow of a possible failure looms: here the "Agenda 21" (i.e. the agenda that looks to the 21st century) risks reducing itself to a us

eless list of desires. The U.N. lacks the force: the way it is structured today, the international law prevents any progress. There are no binding laws towards the states, no sanctions to punish infractions. The United Nations lacks the force to guarantee them, and courts to prosecute the crimes. Without all this, the international community can only passively witness the violence and the environmental crisis...

But perhaps not even strengthening the international law is sufficient, if it is not accompanied by the necessary cultural, civil and therefore political maturity. Take the European Community, for instance.

Today the European Community represents, for the environmental policies, an "island" of progress. Whereas the U.N. is linked to the evanescent diplomacy of the treaties, the EEC represents an actual supranational system of environmental government. But strong and penetrating as it is, this community law is - ultimately - the privilege of few developed countries.

Outside the borders of the Twelve member states it does not generate an international policy or role of the community. At the best this remains a sort of large Switzerland.

All the environmental, civil and political crises of the old continent press at its borders: it does not manage to move a finger even for the thirty potential Chernobyl disasters that could explode in Eastern Europe. And not even in Rio did the EEC play a role, as it remained overwhelmed by its single member states or reduced to a additional element, almost as if it were a 13th partner.

What does this EEC lack? It lacks something that could be brought about only by a policy apt to address the totality of problems. It lacks political capacity, force and actions that are free from nationalism and apt to guarantee the institutions and the supranational rules as autonomous subjects of initiatives.

With a U.N. devoid of juridical and enforcement means, with a juridically strong U.N. but devoid of a policy, the future of the environmental issue is doomed to remain precarious or, even worse, secondary. Environmentalists should draw the necessary consequences: there can be no environmental policy in a single county, and acting locally is simply not enough. Today's priority is "acting globally", if we really want to go ahead with the agenda of the 21st century.