Green agenda in 'pivotal year' for environment

WHAT environmental issues are set to shoot to the top of the public

agenda on the national and international scenes in 1992? That's the

question we put to six environmentalists yesterday: two consultants, the

leaders of two green pressure groups, one politician and a civil servant

specialising in environmental technologies.

There was a general feeling that the environment had slipped down the

UK political agenda in the past two years, even though it remained a

subject of mounting public concern. Nobody thought a dramatic new issue

would burst on the scene this year in the way it did in 1985 following

the revelation of the hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica. One of

the consultants, John Elkington of Sustainability, has just completed a

survey of 350 environmental groups in 50 countries.

He found all the issues they are campaigning about are already well

known. His prediction is that a number of issues already simmering on

various back burners will come to the boil as campaigners press for

action to alleviate the environmental problems associated with them.

PUBLIC TRANSPORT. Four of the six thought that in Scotland the

inadequacy of public transport was moving further up the political

agenda. David Spaven, spokesman for the Scottish Green Party, says he

believes 1992 will see the concern about air pollution resulting from

cars spread from Edinburgh to other parts of the country.

Kevin Dunion, new director of Friends of the Earth (Scotland) sees

mounting dissatisfaction with congestion produced by cars, particularly

in Edinburgh but reckons that until such times as the city can build its

planned metro and urban rail links, it will have to give priority to

buses and a campaign to make them more attractive to motorists.

During 1992 Greenpeace will mount a major campaign on the link between

global warming and the growth of private car ownership.

GLOBAL WARMING. All our commentators predict that global warming will

continue to be the main focus of international environmental concern,

with the Earth Summit scheduled to take place in Rio de Janeiro in May.

However, environmentalists are concerned that Western governments seem

to be playing down the meeting, perhaps because they are afraid that it

will result in pressure on them to cut down on pollution and energy use.

WATER POLLUTION. Dunion of FoE (Scotland) thinks concern over the

pollution of coasts and waterways is set to grow and that a powerful

consensus is developing between environmentalists and tourism bodies on

this subject, particularly over sewage on beaches.

OZONE. Greenpeace's second big campaign in 1992 will concern the

depletion of the ozone layer in the run-up to the next meeting of the

Montreal Protocol in the autumn.

WASTE. Environmental consultant Tom Read predicts that recycling will

become even more a part of our lives as EC directives on packaging and

eco-labelling come into force. But he says this has got to be combined

with the development of new products and markets for recycled materials.

GREEN TOURISM. John Elkington of Sustainability certainly hopes that

green tourism will become a hot topic this year because he has a book on

the subject (Holidays that don't cost the earth) coming out next month.

''Ten years ago people often visited an area only once. Now they tend to

go back several times and they can see how tourism can put an area into

a downward spiral.'' Some of the worst offenders, he said, are

well-heeled tourists going on so-called ''Eco tours'', involving close

contact with nature, often in very fragile and threatened habitats.

BIO-TECHNOLOGY. Elkington also foresees widespread concern about

bio-technology and particularly the controlled release of recombinant

organisms into the environment and the fear that this could result in an

exchange of genes between wild and released organisms with unpredictable

long-term results.

INDUSTRY. Read believes 1992 is the year when Scottish industry will

realise that new European legislation isn't some optional extra and that

if they don't clean up dirty processes they will be closed down by a

beefed-up government inspectorate. He is organising a series of seminars

at Edinburgh University sponsored by a number of bodies including

Scottish Enterprise and the CBI.

John Elkington believes 1992 will turn out to be a pivotal year for

the environment: ''For the last 20 years environmentalists have been

campaigning to get green issues on to the public agenda. They have

succeeded. In the next two decades I think we'll see campaigning

organisations working with industry on implementation and delivery. It's

time for action.''