"Tomorrow will be too late": Fidel Castro's speech on the Environment and Development, June 12, 1992

Fidel Castro's speech at the UN Conference on Environment and Development, Rio De Janeiro, June 12, 1992. It remains powerfully relevant today. (A new translation from the Spanish)

Mr. President of Brazil, Fernando Collor de Mello;

Mr. Secretary-General of the United Nations, Butros Ghali;

Excellencies,

An important biological species is at risk of disappearing due to the rapid and progressive liquidation of its natural living conditions: humans.

We are now becoming aware of this problem when it is almost too late to prevent it.

It is necessary to point out that consumer societies are fundamentally responsible for the atrocious destruction of the environment. They were born from former colonial metropolises and imperial policies that, in turn, engendered the backwardness and poverty that plague the vast majority of humanity today. With only 20 percent of the world's population, they consume two-thirds of the metals and three-quarters of the energy produced in the world. They have poisoned the seas and rivers, polluted the air, weakened and perforated the ozone layer, and saturated the atmosphere with gases that alter climatic conditions with catastrophic effects that we are already beginning to experience.

Forests are disappearing, deserts are expanding, billions of tons of fertile soil are washing into the sea each year. Numerous species are becoming extinct. Population pressure and poverty are leading to desperate efforts to survive, even at the expense of nature. This cannot be blamed on Third World countries, colonies once upon a time, nations exploited and plundered today by an unjust global economic order.

The solution cannot be to prevent development for those who need it most. The reality is that everything that contributes to underdevelopment and poverty today constitutes a flagrant violation of the environment. Tens of millions of men, women, and children die each year in the Third World as a result—more than in each of the two world wars. Unequal trade, protectionism, and foreign debt harm the environment and promote environmental destruction.

If we want to save humanity from self-destruction, we must better distribute the wealth and technologies available on the planet. Less luxury and less waste in a few countries so that there is less poverty and less hunger across much of the Earth. No more transfers to the Third World of lifestyles and consumption habits that ruin the environment. Make human life more rational. Implement a fair international economic order. Use all the science necessary for sustained development without pollution. Pay the ecological debt, not the foreign debt. Eliminate hunger, not humanity.

When the supposed threats of communism have disappeared and there are no longer any pretexts for cold wars, arms races, and military spending, what is stopping us from immediately dedicating these resources to promoting the development of the Third World and combating the threat of ecological destruction of the planet?

Let selfishness cease, let hegemonism cease, let insensitivity, irresponsibility, and deceit cease. Tomorrow will be too late to do what we should have done long ago.

Thank you.

(Ovation)