Foreign Relations of the United States, 1977–1980, Volume II, Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs

347. Memorandum From the Chairman of the Task Force on Global Resources and Environment (Speth) to President Carter¹

Washington, September 22, 1980

SUBJECT

• Global 2000 Follow up: Problem Areas Needing Priority Attention

When you established the Task Force on Global Resources and Environment to recommend policy and program responses to the Global 2000 Report, you requested from it an early identification of “problem areas needing priority attention by the Task Force.”

We now have completed this initial task, drawing on the views of all affected Federal agencies, and on consultations with informed members of the public and the Congress. In our priority selection process we have attempted to identify areas in which there is a convergence between key problems of global significance and viable opportunities for the United States and other nations to initiate new and effective remedial measures.²

Over the next several months the Task Force proposes to concentrate its efforts in the following general problem areas, with a view toward developing a series of policy and program recommendations to address specific problems in which immediate and long-term action is necessary and possible.

• Rapid Population Growth

• World Food Supply (including agricultural land conservation)

• Energy Conservation and Alternative Sources

• Tropical Deforestation

• Species Extinction and Loss of Genetic Diversity

• Environmental Contamination

• Water Supply

• Conservation of Coastal and Marine Resources

• Underdevelopment and Poverty

Responding to the Global 2000 Report also requires addressing two other issues that cut across the range of population, resource and environmental problems, and that will greatly influence our ability to cope with them successfully over the long term.

• The Government’s Capacity for Long-Range Forecasting and Analysis

• U.S. and International Institutional Capabilities and Arrangements for Addressing Global Problems on a Priority Basis

The Task Force is mindful of the need to keep in the forefront of its analyses and subsequent recommendations a principal theme of Global 2000: the close interrelationships and interactions which exist among the population, resource and environmental problems, and the collective challenge they pose for sustained economic and social development. In this context the Task Force intends to draw on a variety of recent reports and studies which impinge on Global 2000, in particular the Brandt Commission Report,³ the World Hunger Commission Report,⁴ and the World Bank’s World Development Report, 1980.⁵

1. Source: National Archives, RG 59, Central Foreign Policy File, P800149–0022. No classification marking. Sent for information only. Attached to Pickering’s October 24 briefing memorandum to Muskie, printed as Document 348.
2. During a campaign trip to California, the President referenced the report in his remarks delivered at the San Jose City Hall on September 23, following an energy and technology briefing: “Our goals have been spelled out very clearly in the Global 2000 Report, which indicates to us the challenges to the world society unless we address these issues directly and take action to prevent the catastrophes which could occur from a burgeoning population throughout the Earth, constant depletion of our reserve supplies of oil, coal, and other fossil fuels, and a failure to move forward on technology that gives us renewable supplies of energy derived directly or indirectly from the Sun.” (Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, September 29, 1980, pp. 1897–1898)
3. See footnote 4, Document 274.
4. See footnote 3, Document 272.
5. Part I of World Development Report, 1980 outlined economic policy choices, and Part II emphasized human development and efforts to reduce poverty. (New York: Oxford University Press, published for the World Bank, August 1980)