United Nations Environment Programme Annual Report of the Executive Director 1988

Since my first Annual Report, in 1982, I have regularly tried to characterize the year under review in a single word or phrase. Thus, I described 1982 as "disappointing" in that commitments and resources failed to match the words and declarations at the commemorative session of the Governing Council ten years after the Stockholm Conference; 1983 was the year in which the International Community took a "fresh look at the environment" and called for an Environmental Perspective to the Year 2000 and Beyond; 1984 was a year of special "outreach" efforts to spread concern about the environment to a wider public; I described 1985 as a year of "inventory and stock-taking"; I saw 1986 as a year of "crises", with the nuclear explosion at Chernobyl, chemical poisoning and pollution of the Rhine by the Sandoz accident at Basel, and the financial crisis of the United Nations; and, finally, I characterized 1987 as a "milestone" year, with the adoption by the General Assembly of the Environmental Perspective to the Year 2000 and Beyond, the unanimous welcome accorded to the report of the World Commission on Environment and Development, agreement between two superpowers to reduce their nuclear weapons, and the signing of the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer.