ABSTRACT
The essence of the philosophy of the World Commission on Environment and Development can actually be found on the very first page of the Brundtland report. This report, the Commission says:
We cannot in this book go into the history of how the UN system created the World Commission on Environment and Development. Nevertheless, let us briefly recall here the context within which the Brundtland Commission emerged. It is the context of the New Cold War and the re-emerging EastWest conflict at the beginning of the 1980s. It is against this threat to 'our common security' - highlighted by the debate about the Eurornissiles, as well as by the nuclear winter theory - that the Brundtland Commission was created. Not surprisingly, the title of the Brundtland report, Our Common Future, is very similar to the title of the Palme report, Our Common Security, whose main concern was the nuclear threat. 2 As a matter of fact, the Brundtland report devotes an entire chapter to a quite radical critique of the arms race, to conclude that 'the nations must turn away from the destructive logic of an "arms culture" and focus instead on their common future' . 3 We also note that
the Brundtland report actually remains the only document in the entire UNCED process that explicitly deals with the military as a problem. This can be explained by the fact that the Brundtland Commission was born in the context of the Cold War.
