UNESCO Courier articles from November 1991

UNESCO Courier archives from November 1991

UNESCO's First 45 Years
November 1, 1991... 1950 General policy * Meeting in Florence, the General Conference defines a "basic programme" of 120 activities grouped under 10 major tasks. * The first UNESCO expert is sent into the field as part of the UN technical assistance...

Jacques-Yves Cousteau
November 1, 1991... The French oceanographer Jacques-Yves Cousteau is internationally renowned as a marine explorer and defender of the oceans. A pioneer of undersea investigation, he has sailed all over the world on oceanographic expeditions and has also written...

A Partnership with Nature
November 1, 1991... Five centuries ago, the discovery of the New World proved that the Earth is round. And therefore finite. Paradoxically, the immense extent of the lands thus revealed enabled human beings to persist until our own times in the mistaken belief...

The Citizen and the Environment
November 1, 1991... The scientific community today produces a flow of reports, hypotheses and observations which show that our constant assaults on the environment are jeopardizing the world's potential for development. It is even said that the survival of the...

Rwanda: Land of a Thousand Hills
November 1, 1991... SITUATED in the heart of Africa, Rwanda is a relatively small country (26,338 square kilometres), yet with nearly eight million inhabitants it has the highest population density of any nation in Africa south of the Sahara. The relief of the...

Energy for a Sustainable World
November 1, 1991... THE concept of sustainability is a highly complex one, particularly where energy matters are concerned. We can only hope to approach anything like absolute sustainability by the use of renewable energy resources such as hydro-electricity; but...

Hungary: The Pitfalls of Growth
November 1, 1991... AT the end of World War II, Hungary found itself politically and economically attached to the Communist bloc. From the beginning of the 1950s, a system of central planning and management was gradually developed. Companies came into State...

A World Fit to Live In
November 1, 1991... BUILDING a more environmentally stable future clearly requires some vision of that future. If not fossil fuels to power society, then what? If forests are no longer to be cleared to grow food, then how is a larger population to be fed? If a...

What Future for Amazonia?
November 1, 1991... Many people in the industrialized countries would like Amazonia to be preserved exactly as it is, and transform it into a vast nature reserve. Some of these advocates of the non-development of Amazonia attach the highest priority to...

No Room in the Ark
November 1, 1991... 'THE scale of the human economy has grown so large that there is no longer sufficient room for all species in the Ark." These recent words from a World Bank official are striking warning that the world is becoming so full of human beings and...

The First Earth Summit
November 1, 1991... TWENTY years after the first World Conference on the Environment, held in Stockholm in 1972, the international community is faced with a serious dilemma. On the one hand it is more necessary than ever to increase economic activity in order to...

Time to Act
November 1, 1991... ENVIRONMENTAL problems have been a major international preoccupation ever since the United Nations Conference on the Environment was held in Stockholm in June 1972. That Conference took place in a climate of optimism and determination to act....

The Stones of Aachen
November 1, 1991... AACHEN cathedral, which incorporates the Palatine Chapel of Charlemagne, is the most beautiful surviving example of Carolingian architecture. On 31 March 1978 it became the first German monument to be inscribed on UNESCO's World Heritage List....

Interview with Federico Mayor
November 1, 1991... * The current session of UNESCO's General Conference is taking place at an exceptional moment in world history. In the last two years we have seen radical changes in the order established by the victors of the Second World War. Are UNESCO's...