The Common Thread: William Ruckleshaus, the Garbage Gangster
On December 19, 1983 the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted Resolution A/RES/38/161. Process of preparation of the Environmental Perspective to the Year 2000 and Beyond . The resolution called for the creation of a Special Commission to develop the Environmental Perspective. The formal name of the commission was the World Commission on Environment and Development. Informally, it was called the Brundtland Commission after the Chairwoman, Gro Harlem Brundtland of Norway.
William D. Ruckelshaus, first Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) when it was created in 1970, was re-appointed to be the fifth Administrator of the EPA in 1983. He represented the United States on the Brundtland Commission.
The United Nations General Assembly adopted the Brundtland Report (Our Common Future) on August 4, 1987, A/42/427. The Secretary General’s Note states, “the report of the special commission should in the first instance be considered by the Governing Council of use as basic material in the preparation, for adoption by the Assembly, of the Environmental Perspective to the Year 2000 and Beyond.
On December 11, 1987, a framework document titled, Environmental Perspective to the Year 2000 and Beyond was adopted by the General Assembly as resolution A/RES/42/186 . On the same day, resolution A/RES/42/187 was adopted calling on all governing bodies to make full use of the Brundtland Commission Report, Our Common Future. It called for all governments to “ask their central and sectoral economic agencies” to ensure that their policies, programmes and budgets encourage sustainable development and to strengthen the role of their environmental and natural resource agencies in advising and assisting central and sectoral agencies in that task; to address the problems of population growth and of conserving and enhancing the resource base, reorienting technology and managing risk, and merging environment and economics in decision-making and more.
