The environmental policy advocated in the richer nations is designed to protect the high standard of living — resulting from the unprecedented growth in the exploitation of natural resources during the last century — from serious damage by the very processes of such growth. It is of necessity a policy based on a series of DON'Ts. This is inevitable since the aim is to undo some of the damage already done or to prevent further damage along the same lines.

The poorer nations, however, are faced with the desire and need to produce more food and income from hungry soils, more jobs, more clothing and more housing. They are aware that historically a rising standard of living has depended on the ability of agriculture to release manpower to other more industrial pursuits. Hence they naturally wish to develop more industries and to find productive and remunerative employment for their growing population. For them, conditions of poverty and inadequate arrangements for human and other waste disposal may be greater causes of water and air pollution than the effluents from factories or fertiliser from the fields. Since the causes of pollution are by and large different, the solutions will have to be different too and it would be a grave mistake to attempt to copy the policies now being propagated in the developed world.