State Dept. Assesses Global Environment

Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright marked Earth Day by issuing the State Department’s first annual assessment of the global environment, a gloomy catalog of problems in the world’s air, oceans and forests that she said threatens security of the American people. Publication of the 32-page report puts into official form a foreign policy initiative developed by Albright’s predecessor, Warren Christopher that enshrines environmental concerns at the forefront of the national security agenda. “Competition for scarce resources is an ancient source of human conflict,” Albright said at a State Department briefing. “In our day, it can still elevate tensions among countries or cause ruinous violence within them. . . . By definition, the global environment deeply affects our own people.”