Foreign Relations of the United States, 1977–1980, Volume I, Foundations of Foreign Policy

155. Statement by Secretary of State Muskie¹

New York, August 25, 1980

Securing the World’s Common Future

I welcome this opportunity to address the U.N. special session on economic development. I intend to speak frankly. And I will suggest some specific obligations of the world’s nations—including my own—to secure our common future on a fragile planet.

We meet because we are in the midst of a world economic crisis. We cannot escape it. We must respond to it. Millions of our fellow humans are starving, and millions more are malnourished, on what can be a bountiful planet. Soaring oil prices have crippled the developing world; even the strongest industrial economies are struggling. Infectious recession and inflation touch us all. Nations in desperate need of growth and development instead face worsening trade deficits, deeper debt, and diminishing prospects for meeting the needs of their people.

The work ahead is substantial. The time is short. But if we take an ambitious view, seasoned with realism, we can accomplish our main purposes at this special session. We can adopt a realistic international development strategy that will help improve development prospects. And we can agree on procedures and an agenda for a new round of global economic negotiations—serious work aimed at concrete progress where the need is urgent and consensus appears within reach. My country will participate constructively in these proceedings. Progress is essential for the world’s interest and also our own.

We are encouraged that progress is possible because progress has been made. The fact is that over the past decade many people in developing nations have attained better lives. Per capita income in the Third World has risen by some 3% per year. Exports have increased by 8.7% annually. Manufacturing output is higher. Life expectancies and literacy rates have improved. Infant mortality rates have declined. Striking progress has been made, much of it recently, in adjusting the system to improve Third World prospects.

• The flow of aid to poorer nations has steadily increased. More than $100 billion in replenishments for the multilateral development banks and their affiliates have been agreed.

• Access to International Monetary Fund resources has been sharply increased. Terms are more flexible. New facilities are in operation. A major quota increase is in process. The World Bank has also launched an innovative program of lending for structural adjustment.

• The common fund negotiations have been completed. We have moved ahead on individual commodity agreements.

• On trade, last year’s multilateral trade agreement will mean an average cut of 25% in tariffs on principal developing-country exports. Preferential tariff systems have been adopted by all Western industrial countries.

• Use by developing countries of world capital markets has increased fourfold—from $11 billion in 1970 to $44 billion in 1978.

• The effort to increase world food supplies has been advanced through the International Fund for Agricultural Development and through the concentration of World Bank resources. In the past 5 years the World Bank committed some $11.6 billion to agricultural projects.

• And in another urgent priority area—energy—the World Bank will be lending well over $10 billion for energy projects between now and 1985.

This partial listing is not the record of a world community frozen in shortsighted self-interest, rigidly divided by ideology or stalemated on methods. Those tendencies do afflict us. Yet in recent years we have also found the common sense and good will to move forward.

But our accomplishments are still far short of our needs. My government has just completed a major study of the world’s population, resources, and environmental prospects for the year 2000—just 20 years away.² Its conclusions remind us again why these debates must move from rhetoric to reality. Our “Global 2000” study begins with a harsh truth. In the year 2000, the world population will be more than half again higher than in 1975. Over the last quarter of this century, more than 2 billion people will be added—2 billion more mouths to feed, bodies to clothe, individual hopes to be fulfilled.

Given this fact, the study tells us what could happen if nations fail to act in time and with reason. Based on current trends, food production should nearly double. Still, the number of people going hungry will rise by millions. Many nations already hungry see their croplands and grasslands drying to desert—a loss each year equal to the size of my home State of Maine.

On energy, from the vantage of a precarious present, we could face a punishing future. Unless trends are changed, oil supplies will be insufficient and, for many, unaffordable. Wood, the main household fuel for over 1 billion people, will be found only at ever greater distances and in dwindling amounts.

We have become accustomed to warnings about the need to conserve nonrenewable resources such as oil. But the “Global 2000” study also points up serious stresses on renewable resources—croplands and forests, fisheries, air, water, and land—resources we have taken for granted as endless.

Another central observation of the study is that protecting the environment and succeeding in economic development are not competing goals but complementary paths. Poverty worsens the most acute environmental dangers, such as the loss of forests and soil. Thus we will not save the environment unless we also solve the problems of the poor and move the global economy forward.

“Global 2000” is not a forecast. It is a projection of present trends. But it is another chilling reminder that our common future depends on our common success, here and throughout the complex of relations known as the North-South dialogue. We must work together to raise food production, to diversify energy sources and to use energy and other resources more efficiently, to protect our common environment, to restrain population growth, to deal effectively and equitably with mounting deficits, and to keep an open system of trade.

It falls to us to rewrite the future. It is within our power to do so. But it will require a change not only in the quantity but in the character of our effort. For as fast as we have run in recent years, the challenges still outpace us. Too often, as the Brandt Commission reminds us, we have engaged in a “dialogue of the deaf,” in which “we judge ourselves by our good points and the other side by their failings.³ The result is frustration and deadlock.”

Global Responsibilities

That deadlock must be broken. The demands of our common future require it. They compel a new inquiry. We must ask not only what individual nations can take from the global system but what each nation must bring to it. Without exception, we must recognize that assigning responsibility for the future to others is not an answer but an abdication. Such excuses will not feed, nor clothe, nor heal, nor comfort our successors if we fail. And fail we will, unless all nations are fully engaged.

Industrial Countries. I do not by any means exclude my own country from this prescription. In suggesting what different societies, differently situated, should offer, let me begin with the industrial countries.

• First, we must reduce the rate of our domestic inflation. Spiraling prices restrain growth and make the world economy more vulnerable and less fair.

• Second, we should keep our markets open, particularly to products from developing countries.

• Third, the industrial nations must use energy more efficiently, increase domestic production, spur the development of new energy sources, and cut our reliance on imported oil.

• Fourth, despite the need for budget restraint to control inflation, we should increase our aid to the developing nations. This Administration has said many times to the American Congress and the American people that our present levels of assistance to lower income countries are not enough. I intend to keep doing all in my power to change that condition.

• Fifth, developed countries should continue to accept an increasing role for developing countries in international economic decisionmaking—a role commensurate with their growing importance in the world economy and their willingness to share international obligations.

• Sixth, we must increase the capacity of developing countries to apply science and technology for development. We must accelerate the transfer of information, technology, pollution-control strategies, and other skills.

Most of these steps will entail short-term sacrifice for the sake of long-term returns. I believe the American people will support those investments. But as a former practicing politician, let me speak frankly. The American people will insist that their contributions have an effect—that people’s lives must actually be changed for the better. And we can assure that only if other nations are also prepared to do their part.

Oil-Exporting Nations. The oil-exporting nations have a unique responsibility. In recent years rising oil prices have been a ponderous drag on development and growth and a major cause of inflation. This year the oil-importing developing countries will have to spend—for that single commodity—almost double the amount they will receive from all sources in aid. Thus steps such as these by oil-exporting nations will be vital to our common goals:

• First, they must adopt stable price and supply policies to avoid further trauma to the international economy.

• Second, the oil-exporting countries must increase their aid and recycle more of their surpluses directly to developing countries.

• Third, oil-exporting countries should join with consuming nations in working for rational global energy arrangements.

Developing Countries. Whatever the level, external assistance will always be a secondary factor. The major determinants are internal—the ability to use resources effectively, to encourage innovation, and to share broadly the benefits of growth. Thus, there are responsibilities that developing countries must shoulder.

• First, domestic and external resources must be used efficiently and fairly, with concentration on such priority areas as energy and food.

• Second, serious family-planning efforts are vital. Nine-tenths of the world’s population increase in the next 20 years will be in developing countries. No other single factor does more to darken their future.

• Third, as their economic strength grows, individual developing nations should accept more responsibility for the common management of international economic problems.

• Fourth, as their development proceeds, they must open their own economies to free flows of world trade.

Centrally Planned Countries. The market economy countries have received dominant attention in the North-South dialogue. But the centrally planned countries have global responsibilities as well. Empty bellies will not be filled by polemics. No nation or group of nations has grounds to remain aloof from this struggle. World opinion looks to the centrally planned countries:

• First, to increase their assistance to developing countries;

• Second, to increase their unconditioned purchases of LDC [less developed country] products; and

• Third, to cooperate in international efforts to stabilize commodity markets.

Proposals

For all of us, the principles I have outlined must be the basis for practical action. For our part the United States is prepared to join with others to meet the global challenge.

Our most urgent task is to confront the specter of imminent famine haunting Africa. This summer alone the United States has provided an additional 235,000 tons for emergency African food relief. We strongly urge that all nations able to contribute foodstuffs or funds join under the leadership of the Food and Agriculture Organization to coordinate relief to drought-afflicted regions. I am happy to note that the Director General will convene a meeting of concerned governments and international organizations in the coming weeks.⁴

Targets have been set for annual food assistance in the new Food Aid Convention,⁵ and for emergency food aid through the international emergency food reserve. We encourage others to join us in the effort to reach those targets, to guarantee that food will be available to those in need. Further, we should develop reserves that are adequate to back up donor commitments and assure that food emergencies can be met. My government is working toward a 4-million-ton reserve of wheat to assure our food aid commitments.⁶

Despite efforts to produce more food, many poor developing countries will still have to import substantial quantities over the next decade. We should consider new arrangements to assist those developing countries that are improving their own food production.

We should explore ways to channel more international funds, both concessional and nonconcessional, into food production. We, therefore, support rapid agreement on an equitable replenishment of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). We would also consider further measures to strengthen IFAD.

To help developing countries adjust to oil-driven balance-of-payments deficits, we favor continued improvements in International Monetary Fund facilities, including subsidizing the Supplementary Financing Facility. Such arrangements should receive strong support from those who prosper as oil prices climb. Private capital flows also will continue to play a critical role. We look forward to the Development Committee’s report on proposals for increasing nonconcessional flows to developing countries.

We are committed to the stimulation of energy production worldwide and to the increased use of renewable fuels. The United States strongly supports an expansion of World Bank energy programs, to permit Bank participation in multinational risk-sharing ventures to discover and develop new energy sources. Here, too, as we agreed at the Venice summit, we are open to new institutional and financial arrangements. We will participate positively in the U.N. Conference on New and Renewable Energy Sources.⁷ We urge the U.N. Secretariat and member nations to make every effort to insure its success.

Coal is an attractive alternative to high-priced oil. We will expand our capacity to produce and ship coal, and we are ready to help developing countries establish coal-burning facilities and increase their use of coal.

We support discussions between oil-exporting and oil-importing nations on ways to insure orderly market conditions and on further assistance for non-oil developing countries.

Requests for population program assistance have outpaced the international community’s ability to respond. We are ready to join an international commitment to double, in this decade, the availability and use of family-planning and related health services.

On trade, my country would support a pledge by all countries to restrain protectionism and case adjustment. Such a commitment would provide more assured market access to developing countries. Also, beyond the sharp reductions in tariffs already agreed, we are prepared to increase the benefits of our generalized system of preferences for poorer developing countries.

These proposals reflect the positive approach we believe our common problems demand and this special session deserves.

Let me conclude with this observation. I am persuaded, to the depth of my being, that the challenges ahead are not beyond us. The “Global 2000” report has been described as a reconnaissance of the future. It describes the possibility. I believe it will not be the reality. The vision we share is a vision of opportunity and of peace. It is within our capacity to alter the future to fit that vision. The resources do exist. The solutions can be found. Together we can summon the will. Knowing what is at stake, we must not fail.

1. Source: Department of State Bulletin, October 1980, pp. 76–78. All brackets are in the original. Muskie made the statement before the 11th Special Session of the UN General Assembly. The General Assembly met in special session from August 25 until September 15 in order to discuss progress made in the establishment of the New International Economic Order and actions related to economic cooperation (see footnote 3, Document 99).
2. Reference is to an interagency study commissioned by the President in 1977 on the projected state of the world by the end of the century. The President directed that the Department of State and the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) lead the study. On July 24, the White House released the 3-volume report, entitled Global 2000 Report to the President: Entering the Twenty-First Century. For additional information, see Foreign Relations, 1977–1980, vol. II, Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs, Documents 343, 344, and 346–348.
3. Reference is to the Independent Commission on International Development Issues, chaired by former West German Chancellor Willy Brandt. The ICIDI or Brandt Commission report, entitled North-South: A Programme for Survival, was released in 1980.
4. In an August 4 memorandum to Muskie, Owen indicated that an “extraordinary international effort” would be needed to avert starvation in drought-affected areas in Africa. Owen requested that at the 11th Special Session Muskie announce that the United States would ask Saouma to convene an emergency conference to organize aid relief for Africa. Lake forwarded a copy of the memorandum to Christopher under an August 7 memorandum, indicating that he was to inform Owen that “S/P, the bureaus, IDCA, and USDA” all recommend that Muskie make this announcement. At a September 20 meeting of donor countries and international organizations in Rome, Saouma announced that the United States, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Australia, West Germany, Switzerland, France, and Algeria had made cash or food aid contributions. See Foreign Relations, 1977–1980, volume II, Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs, Document 276, footnotes 3 and 4 thereto.
5. Signatories approved a new Food Aid Convention in London on March 6, which replaced the FAC negotiated in 1971 as part of the International Wheat Agreement (IWA). In a May 9 message to the Senate transmitting the Food Aid Convention, the President indicated that the United States intended to pledge 4,470,000 MT of grains. The complete text of Carter’s message is printed in Public Papers: Carter, 1980–81, Book I, pp. 865–866.
6. See Foreign Relations, 1977–1980, vol. II, Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs, Document 277, footnote 14.
7. The conference took place in Nairobi August 10–21, 1981.