Eco-Watch

4/12/94

Earth-Keepers
by Bert Lindler

How about something of the same for the environment? Hare-brained, probably, by current standards that are keyed to keeping people from hurting each other, but the day will come... The day I am thinking about would see an international earth-keeping force, organized like the peace-keeping ones, that would be dispatched to parts of the globe that are being despoiled. This force would perhaps be more like forest rangers than like soldiers. They would keep an eye on the rain forests, the invading deserts, the rising oceans, the cities that are becoming dangerously overpopulated.

Ah, you say, governments are already doing this on their home turf; how could you even have a reverie about international forces in the territory of independent entities?

One of the lessons of Agenda 21 (proposals for sustainable development adopted at the Rio summit) is that there is no independent entity when it comes to environment, that the most hermetic of kingdoms affects or is affected by what is happening elsewhere in the world. It is that principle that should encourage all of us to behave internationally with respect to these matters. The force could wear nice green uniforms, and one of the main tasks it could accomplish would be to make known, loudly in public forums, what governments would either like to keep quiet or argue about defensively.

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