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As prepared remarks by Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott before the Environmental Issues in American Foreign Policy Seminar at the National Foreign Affairs Training Center, Arlington, Virginia, September 10, 1996.
Thank you, Tim, not just for that kind introduction, but for all that you've done on behalf of the cause that brings together everyone here today. And thanks also for being such a good colleague and friend to me.
I hope you will permit me to strike a personal note here at the outset of my remarks. As long as I've been interested in world affairs and in American foreign policy - which is as long as I can remember - I've been fascinated by the topics you will be discussing in today's seminar: from the allocation of scarce natural resources to the pressures of population growth to the environmental challenges posed by economic development.
In telling you this, I'm acknowledging a debt to my father. He is here today not, I'm sure, because of the speaker but because of the topic: he's a lifelong environmentalist. He raised his four children in the woods of Ontario, in the lakes of Northern Minnesota, in the high country of Wyoming, in the tundra of Alaska, and in another beautiful wilderness area: the fields, forests, marshes and streams in and around our hometown, Cleveland, Ohio. No wonder my brother Kirk, who is also here, became an environmental lawyer with the World Resources Institute and has devoted himself to helping countries in Africa and Asia protect their natural resources.
My own career has been more checkered. But in January 1993, I joined an Administration that has given special priority to environmental issues. In the earliest days of his campaign for the Presidency, Bill Clinton called for "a new covenant for environmental progress," and in a defining moment both for his candidacy and his presidency, he chose as his running mate Al Gore, who has argued that saving a planet at risk must become the "central organizing principle for civilization."
My boss, Warren Christopher, has undertaken to move environmental issues into the mainstream of American foreign policy. During the transition four years ago, he created the position of Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs. It is from that office -- "G," as we all it -- that Tim, working with Eileen Claussen and other Assistant Secretaries, has so effectively advanced our national interests.
This past February, on a tour of Latin America, Secretary Christopher visited Manaus and personally inspected the Brazilian rainforest. That event has already entered Foreign Service lore because the Secretary appeared in public in a tropical downpour, without his suit jacket and tie and - get this! -wearing sneakers. The outing may have been a radical departure from the Secretary's sartorial habits, but it also underscored a strong, consistent, personal commitment to making environmental activism part of the day-in, day-out work of the Department of State. The rationale for doing so is simple: it's because the health and welfare of Americans are bound up with the quality of the land, air, and water everywhere in the world; the extinction of species in the tropics, the spread of pollutants through acid rain, the decline of stocks of fish in our oceans. All these are apparent in tangible, troublesome ways here at home. But struggles over land, water, and other natural resources affect our national interests overseas as well, since they can lead to instability in regions of critical importance to the United States.
Because threats to the environment are so often international in scope, no nation can, on its own, achieve lasting solutions. In the past twenty-five years the United States has made important progress toward putting its own environmental house in order, but even our best efforts will be insufficient if our neighbors do not or cannot do the same. The State Department, as the agency of the U.S. government responsible for relations with other countries, obviously has a crucial role to play.
The U.S. Foreign Service has been involved in the negotiation of every major global environmental accord now on the books, from protecting the oceans to stopping trade in endangered species. That has been true under both Republican and Democratic Administrations.
But we in the Clinton Administration believe that the end of the Cold War gives us a special opportunity, and a special obligation, to move further and faster, more systematically and more boldly in the right direction. Under Secretary Christopher's leadership, the Department of State has, over the past 31/2 years, achieved important agreements, from further helping protect the ozone layer to saving international fisheries.
Then, this past April, Secretary Christopher launched a major new environmental initiative in a speech at his alma mater, Stanford University. Among other provisions, it mandates an annual report on global environmental challenges and commits us to help American business gain the lion's share of the $400 billion worldwide market for environmental products.
In addition to implementing the specific provisions of this initiative, the Secretary hopes to insure that a new, sustained emphasis on the environment will permeate the way we do business at the State Department across the board, throughout the building, and around the globe.
No single issue demonstrates the transnational nature of the challenge we face quite as much as global climate change. The buildup of heat-trapping greenhouse gases is the result of the burning of fossil fuels, deforestation, and industrial activity all over the world. All nations are vulnerable to the effects of global climate changes - from heat waves and rising sea levels to altered precipitation patterns and increased storm intensity.
Just as the causes and effects of climate change are global, so too must be the solutions. In July, we announced an ambitious framework for negotiations that began one year ago and will conclude late next year in Kyoto. This will be a complex and difficult process, requiring that we marshal the full measure of our diplomatic capabilities and engage all six of our regional bureaus.
Let me now refer to some specific areas of the world and how environmental concerns obtrude on our political, economic and security interests - and should obtrude more on both our analysis of what is happening there and on our diplomatic efforts to shape events in a way that will serve our interests.
I'll start, predictably perhaps, with the former Soviet Union. When Reactor Number Four at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant blew its top ten years ago, it was more than an isolated accident; it marked the beginning of the meltdown of the USSR. That one disaster helped catalyze the policy of glasnost in Moscow and the independence movement in Ukraine. The death - more accurately, the murder - of the Aral Sea and the befouling of Lake Baikal fanned grass-roots outrage against the obtuseness of Kremlin rule. In short, Soviet ecocide was, to an extent few of us realized at the time, the beginning of the end of the Soviet regime, the Soviet system and the entire Soviet empire.
Today, in addition to all the other challenges they face, the people in that vast part of the world have to clean up the mess they inherited from the Communists. Half of Russia's water is undrinkable even after treatment. The health crisis in that country stems in large measure from atmospheric pollution. The economic and human toll of these conditions hinders Russia's attempts to move forward with reform.
The challenge for us is to help the Russians - and the other peoples in the post-Communist world - build systems and societies that treat natural resources and public health as core elements of their national interests. That's why the Gore-Chernomyrdin Commission includes an Environmental Committee that uses classified data from both sides to help scientists and government planners address ecological problems. Meanwhile, the Environmental Protection Agency is helping Russia clean up its drinking water, and the Department of Energy is helping Ukraine safeguard its nuclear reactors.
Environmental issues are equally important in the Middle East and the Gulf, a region of the world that has been especially on our minds of late. We focus on surface-to-air missiles, tanks and artillery, which are a dangerous mix with ancient hatreds and aggressive ambitions. But we mustn't overlook the more mundane ingredient of water, which has immense potential both for good and, in its scarcity, for ill. In no other region of the world are waterways and international politics so intertwined. Iraq, Syria and Turkey share the Euphrates River Basin; Israelis, Jordanians, Palestinians, Lebanese and Syrians all rely on the resources of the Jordan River Basin. That's why the Middle East peace process includes a multilateral working group on water resources.
In this connection, last month Secretary Christopher announced that our embassy in Amman, Jordan, will be among the first of ten "environmental Hubs" that will, by the year 2000, be located in all regions of the world. These hubs are an innovative departure for our Department, because they are designed as an additional inducement to our diplomats in a particular post, as they act locally, to think regionally.
In Central America, we have designated our embassy in San Jose, Costa Rica, as another environmental hub.
In that neighborhood - which is, of course, our own - I've spent some time working with two countries that I'd like to mention. One is Panama. We will, as you know, return the Panama Canal to the Panamanian government and people at the end of 1999. But the path between the seas itself faces a potentially lethal ecological - and economic - threat. Various forms of environmental degradation could close the locks. We are committed to working in partnership with the Government of Panama to ensure that the Canal's protective buffer zones are managed in a way that guards against deforestation, erosion and the buildup of silt.
Another country, even closer to the U.S., where I've spent a lot of time, including in recent weeks, is Haiti. We all know about the legacy of the Duvaliers and the Ton-Ton Macoutes. Political violence is part of the gruesome background to the troubles besetting that country as it tries to consolidate a fledgling democracy. But there's another legacy that is just as hard to overcome and eventually expunge. Deforestation, soil erosion, and water shortages have combined to leave thousands without a livelihood and without much hope for the future.
When President Clinton went to Haiti in March of 1995, he looked out the window of Air Force One as it passed over the Dominican-Haitian border. What most struck him was that you could tell which country was which from high in the air. The Dominican side was canopied with forests, while on the Haitian side, there were mostly bare mountains. The President had been to Haiti in the '70s, with Mrs. Clinton, and he remembered it as a lush, green land. Haiti is an agricultural country which has lost 98% of its forests, as much as 50% of its topsoil, much of it in the last thirty years. No wonder rural incomes are stuck at $50 per year. In the next 30 years, Haiti's population will nearly double, and 13 million Haitians will have to survive on an island with even less arable land than it has now. Democracy, like Haiti's crops of rice, corn and sugarcane, needs arable land in order to grow and survive.
That's why the President asked the Peace Corps to get a team of volunteers down there as quickly as possible and set them to work promoting reforestation and soil conservation. Tim Wirth has been down to Haiti to help in this cause. So has Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt.
If we are to improve Haiti's prospects for the future - and to prevent future crises like the one that has made Haiti such a preoccupation over the past several years - we will need to marshal and concert the energies of organizations and individuals like those in attendance here today: experts on developing agriculture and protecting forests, social scientists who understand how property rights relate to sustainable land use, and business leaders who can help restore productive enterprise to the streets of Port au Prince.
It was in this spirit that Secretary Christopher, in his Stanford speech, called for a New Partnership for Environment and Foreign Policy designed to forge new relationships between experts who might not otherwise see the common interests they share.
Let me stress what the Secretary's Initiative is not. It's not about creating a new, separate, self-contained, and therefore by definition self-marginalized bureaucracy that will be off in a corner somewhere worrying about the fate of the earth while the rest of the foreign-policy machinery grinds on doing its traditional thing. Rather, it's an attempt to integrate a concern for - and a can-do attitude toward - environmental issues into the way we approach virtually every major task.
For the professionals working the issues, it's a question of mindset, of worldview, and of personal experience. Most of us who got into the business of understanding and trying to have an impact on the world during the Cold War, myself included, concentrated on the classic syllabus of international relations. With this education, we went out and got our jobs, either in the conduct of diplomacy or, in my case for 21 years, in what I now realize is the somewhat easier task of reporting on it.
Now, I'm not for a moment suggesting that that experience or that knowledge is obsolete. Otherwise I, for one, might be unable to find honest work, either in journalism or diplomacy. The well-recognized problems and solutions that arise in the interaction of nation-states are still very much with us, and they will be so for a very long time. History, the last time any of us checked, has not ended. But we are beginning to understand, perhaps for the first time, the sometimes devastating, sometimes promising, always complicating interaction between human history and natural history.
Today, all the national-security agencies of the Government are taking precisely that fact into account. Three years ago, in that big five-sided building 41/2 miles downriver from here, Les Aspin created the post of Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Environmental Security. The first - and current - occupant of that office, Sherri Goodman, is charged with incorporating environmental concerns into the way our armed forces protect the nation. This summer, the Defense Department signed a memorandum of understanding with the Energy Department and the EPA to cooperate in enhancing the government's ability to identify and manage environmental threats.
Meanwhile, ten miles up the Potomac, John Deutch, the Director of Central Intelligence, has drawn on his own considerable scientific knowledge to make better use of national reconnaissance systems in support of our national and international environmental agenda. At very little additional cost and to very good effect, he's putting that critically important capability to use monitoring the spread of deserts and crop yields.
Understanding - and acting on - the importance and interaction of global issues is an imperative for diplomats as well. The institution hosting this conference - the Foreign Service Institute - is to be congratulated, as it (like some of the rest of us baby-boomers) celebrates its 50th birthday, for integrating environmental issues into its core curriculum, from the junior officer orientation course to the Senior Seminar. A nine-month economics course now includes segments on climate change, trade and environment, biodiversity, and sustainable development.
But we as an institution and as a profession need to do more; we need to do it across a broader front and reach more deeply into the system, so that we continue to advance our national security while doing a better job on issues that know no boundaries, from environmental damage to international crime.
As a follow-up on his Stanford speech and his environmental initiative, the Secretary has asked me to use this occasion to affirm and amplify on an important principle: the foreign service officer of the 21st century must have significant experience in global issues. This can be accomplished in many ways, from working in Mexico City on border pollution, or in Beijing on population or energy matters, or here in Washington in a bureau that deals with international crime, terrorism, environment, refugee affairs, or the promotion of democracy and human rights.
I recently sat down with Tony Quainton, the Director-General of the Foreign Service, and Tex Harris and Al La Porta, the President and State Vice-President respectively of the American Foreign Service Association, to discuss with them how we can work together to institutionalize this objective in the personnel system of the Department and the Service. On the Secretary's behalf, I have asked Acting Under Secretary for Management Pat Kennedy to work with Tony and Tex to develop concrete ways to guarantee that the foreign service is prepared for the next century's challenges. They will report to me with recommendations by October 15. I look forward to their plan and to working with them to make this concept a reality.
What I am proposing will increase the extent to which American diplomats understand, and therefore can influence, the world in which they're working. It will also mean that, in their postings overseas, they will be better hosts and managers in dealing with the other U.S. government agencies that use our embassies as platforms from which to combat drug cartels and terrorist groups, slow climate change, and promote sustainable development.
So to all of you here this morning who are part of the Foreign Service, I would ask you, just as I've asked Tony and Pat and Tex and Al: let's make this proposal work, for the good of the country and the planet - and for the good of the Service itself.
To everyone here, whether you're part of the government or the NGO sector, I'd make a final appeal. It has to do with money. We don't have enough. The United States simply cannot provide leadership on any of the issues you will be talking about today without the necessary resources. This is a general problem. It's very close to being a crisis - indeed, a threat to our vital interests. To put it simply, starkly and, I believe, indisputably, the foreign policy of the United States is underfunded - woefully so. The international affairs account of the federal budget has declined over 40 percent over the past decade. Today we are barely able to conduct arms control and peacemaking and peacekeeping, barely able to maintain our foreign-assistance programs, barely able to provide adequate consular services to Americans abroad. Every time a crisis occurs, whether it's in the Middle East or Africa or Latin America, we find ourselves scrambling for the funds necessary to keep a local conflict from becoming a regional one. Very often we have to rob from Peter to pay Paul.
I hope, in the course of your seminar, you will address this issue. As I say, the Congress has tried to put American foreign policy on a starvation diet. And precisely because global issues in general and environmental issues in particular represent a new agenda, a non-traditional enterprise, they are among the most vulnerable targets for financial squeezing and cutting.
Just a few examples:
Obviously, this situation makes all the more important the work of the NGOs here today - and the partnership that the Secretary has called for between what you do outside the government and what we do from inside. But we also need to persuade Congress that the international-affairs budget is a modest and prudent investment in our long-term safety and prosperity. And that means we need to persuade the American people on that score.
Part of Secretary Christopher's environmental initiative is a determination to raise public awareness of the importance of environmental issues to our national interest. We will do a better job of educating the public on this subject if we better educate ourselves. That's exactly what you are doing in this seminar today. For that I thank you - and I wish you well.
[end of document]
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