PRESIDENT'S COUNCIL ON SUSTAINABLE DEVLOPMENT (PCSD)
Sustainable Agriculture Highlights of First Organizational
Meeting
When: Tuesday, July 20, 1993
Where: Thomas L. Kimball Conference Center, 1400 16th
Street, NW, Washington, DC
As guests of National Wildlife Federation
PARTICIPANTS:
Special Guests:
% Vice President Al Gore
% Katie McGinty, Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of
the White House Office of Environmental Policy
Council Members:
% Jonathan Lash (Co-Chair), President, World Resources Institute,
Washington, DC
% David T. Buzzelli (Co-Chair), Vice President and Corporate
Director of Environment, Health & Safety and Public Affairs, Dow
Chemical Co., Midland, MI
% Richard Barth, President, Chairman and CEO, CIBA-GEIGY Corp.,
New York City
% Carol Browner, Administrator, U.S. EPA
% Benjamin F. Chavis, Jr., Executive Director and CEO, NAACP,
Baltimore, MD
% A.D. (Pete) Correll, President and CEO, Georgia-Pacific Corp.,
Atlanta, GA
% Judith Espinosa, New Mexico Secretary of Environment, Santa Fe,
NM
% Jay D. Hair, President and CEO, National Wildlife Federation,
Washington, DC
% Samuel C. Johnson, Chairman, S.C. Johnson & Son, Inc., Racine, WI
% Fred Krupp, Executive Director, Environmental Defense Fund, New
York City
% Hazel R. O'Leary, Secretary, U.S. Dept. of Energy
% Michele Perrault, President, Sierra Club, San Fransico, CA
% William D. Ruckelshaus, Chairman and CEO, Browning-Ferris
Industries, Inc., Houston, TX
% John Sawhill, President, The Nature Conservancy, Arlington, VA
% Timothy Wirth, Under Secretary for Global Affairs, U.S. Dept. of
State
Not attending:
% Michael Espy, Secretary, U.S. Dept. of Agriculture
% Bruce Babbitt, Secretary, U.S. Dept. of Interior
% Thomas Donahue, Secretary-Treasurer, AFL-CIO, Washington, DC
% Alida Rockefeller Messinger, Rockefeller Family & Associates, New
York City
Also attending were a twenty-one member liaison committee,
fourteen other invited guests and over 150 members of the press
and the general public.
Of the fifteen Council members in attendance, twelve were white
and eleven were men. Benjamin Chavis addressed this issue during
the first question-and-answer period: sustainable development, he
said, depends on community and grassroots input from a vast range
of sources, and an important first step would be for the Council and
its staff to reflect this diversity. Judith Espinosa touched on the
same themes during a roundtable discussion period moderated by
John Ehrmann, Senior Vice President of the Keystone Center in
Colorado, and William Ruckelshaus pointed out that equity is
included in at least one operating definition of sustainable
development.
SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE HIGHLIGHTS:
Sustainable agriculture, as a subset of issues within the sustainable
development movement, got very little attention during this hearing.
This was the first PCSD meeting, so perhaps it is not surprising that
there was a preoccupation with process and what Co-Chair David
Buzzelli called "housekeeping". Still, once the Council got around to
the issue agenda at hand, there appeared to be less interest in
sustainable agriculture specifically than, for instance, energy,
greenhouse gases, and population/consumption control.
The first member of the Council to recognize this apparent oversight
was John Sawhill. During the roundtable discussion just before
lunch, Mr. Sawhill pointed out that agriculture is an explicit sector
to be addressed in the process towards a sustainable economy. Co-
Chair Jonathan Lash agreed.
When evaluating the day's accomplishments during the wrap-up
section, Jay Hair posed the question: who are the Council's
"customers", i.e. for what audience is the Council producing its
"product"? Mr. Lash answered that the customer, in the formal
sense, is the President; Richard Barth argued that the Council's
actual audience varies from sector to sector, depending on who
benefits when the President follows through on the pledges he has
made (at Tokyo, etc.). Mr. Barth used the agricultural sector as an
example: if the council affects agriculture policy, then they are in
fact affecting farmers, consumers, resource providers, etc. Mr. Hair
insisted that this is too nebulous and that the Council must define its
audience more clearly if it hopes to accomplish anything.
The exchange described above illustrates a tension that was present
throughout the meeting. On the one hand, the need was recognized
to define goals and principles before proceeding blindly and without
focus; on the other hand, there was an urge to take action, to build
the case for sustainable development quickly through meaningful,
noticeable results. In his closing comments, Mr. Lash recognized
this potential conflict and postulated the Council's "willingness to do
several things at once"; the Council thereupon settled on a
compromise, whereby subcommittees would be set up to work on
both principles and goals and on substantive areas of emphasis,
demonstration projects, etc.
(The proposed organization chart, with a number of subcommittees
to be formed out of both the Council and the liaison committee and
with members to switch subcommittees later in the process, was
very difficult to follow. A more precise, detailed version should be
available soon.)
Another theme of the meeting was working towards sustainability
through incentive and disincentive; the presence of business and
industry was strongly felt in this regard, and this was certainly by
design. Again, sustainable agriculture was not specifically
mentioned, but the relevance is obvious: an overhaul of the methods
by which tax incentives (or, in the case of agriculture, farm
subsidies) are given and taken away is a vital element in creating a
sustainable economy. Samuel Johnson argued that an
environmental policy that is based on incentives, rather than
penalties, would do much to improve the relationship between
business and government that is all to often adversarial. Later,
Timothy Wirth warned that since incentives and subsidies represent
a form of government intrusion, the Council should be careful about
placing government influence into certain sectors while withdrawing
it from others.
Al Gore and Katie McGinty were both in attendance (Mr. Gore for
only a few minutes) to reaffirm President Clinton's commitment to
strong environmental policy and to emphasize the importance of the
Council's role in creating that policy. Mr. Gore emphasized the need
to lay to rest the myth (still widely believed) that economic growth
and environmental protection are irreconcilable. While the Clinton
Administration has taken the important steps of signing the
Biodiversity Treaty and establishing new national strategies for
greenhouse gases, energy efficiency and pollution, the U.S. must be
bolder in fulfilling its environmental pledges and in leading the
world towards sustainability.
Mr. Gore also outlined in more detail the economic benefits of
sustainable devlopment, describing the need to link the huge
emerging markets in developing nations with the "environmental
revolution" in product manufacturing.
The PCSD's next two meetings were scheduled for October 18, 1993
and January 13, 1994 in an effort to maximize members'
attendance. Mr. Lash believed that by January it would not be
unreasonable to move the meetings out of Washington, and the
possibility of a satellite-broadcast town meeting was discussed.
For the final half hour, the floor was opened up for members of the
audience. Various speakers mentioned the need to incorporate the
youth, elderly and immigrant communities into the sustainable
development process. Linda Elswick asked for cooperation between
the Council and NGO's like her own, and she offered the support of
the World Sustainable Agriculture Association and the Citizens
Network for Sustainable Development, which has been active since
before the Rio conference in bringing grassroots input to the debate
on sustainable development, to the Council's efforts.
-Isaac Kaufman
Intern, WSAA
July 21, 1993