"TOWARDS A NUCLEAR-WEAPON-FREE WORLD"

STATEMENT OF THE PUGWASH COUNCIL 30 July 1995

The 45th Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs met at the International Conference Center in Hiroshima, Japan, from July 23 to July 29, 1995, under the theme "Towards a Nuclear-Weapon-Free World". The Conference was attended by 137 natural scientists, social scientists, and public figures from 45 countries, as well as by 15 members of Student/Young Pugwash groups. As always in these meetings, the participants took part as individuals, not as representatives of their governments or institutions.



The Conference opened with addresses of welcome by the Conference organizer, Prof. Michiji Konuma, and by the Mayor of Hiroshima, Takashi Hiraoka. They expressed their hopes and those of the people of Hiroshima that meeting in this place a half century after it became the first city to be destroyed by a nuclear bomb would inspire the Pugwash participants to renewed efforts towards a world free of nuclear weapons.

The opening session also featured the reading of messages of greetings and encouragement to the Conference from United Nations Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Prime Minister of Japan Tomiichi Murayana, Speaker of the House of Representatives of Japan Takako Doi, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Japan Yohei Kono, the Russian Duma (signed by its Chairman, Ivan Rybkin), and U.S. President Bill Clinton.

The second plenary session at the beginning of the Conference, which like the first was open to the press and the public, included addresses on "The 50th Anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki" by Pugwash President Joseph Rotblat and by Dr. Shuichi Kato, Director General of the Tokyo Metropolitan Central Library, as well as presentation to the Conference of a special Hiroshima Declaration of the Pugwash Council.

The Hiroshima Declaration calls for nuclear weapons to be "destroyed, their possession forsworn, their production prohibited, their ingredients made inaccessible to those who might seek to evade the prohibition"; and it notes that, because such weapons could be produced anew even after being abolished, lasting safety can prevail only when war itself has been abolished. The Declaration is appended here as Attachment I.

Also presented to the Conference on its first morning was a letter from one of the most senior Manhattan Project scientists, Nobel Laureate Hans Bethe, calling on "all scientists in all countries to cease and desist from work creating, developing, improving, and manufacturing further nuclear weapons -- and, for that matter, other weapons of potential mass destruction such as chemical and biological weapons." Conveyed by the Council of the Federation of American Scientists and endorsed by that group as well as by a number of prominent Manhattan Project scientists in addition to Bethe, his letter is a remarkable document to which the Pugwash Council is pleased to add its own endorsement. The Bethe letter is appended here as Attachment II.

Further plenary sessions later in the Conference addressed the 50th anniversary of the United Nations, steps to be taken towards a more equitable world, historians' views of the U.S. decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the effects of those nuclear weapons, and the 40th anniversary of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto. A special evening session provided an opportunity for dialogue between participants in the Pugwash Conference and the citizens of Hiroshima. This session was addressed, among others, by survivors of the atomic bombings and by the Chairman of the Board and a former Editor of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which was founded by Manhattan Project scientists in 1945 as a forum for discussing the implications of nuclear weapons.

In his closing address to the Conference, Pugwash President Rotblat gave a personal account of the events leading up to the preparation of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto and its call, in 1955, for the meeting of scientists that became the first Pugwash conference. He also elaborated on the relation between the Manifesto's emphasis on the ultimate necessity of abolishing all war and the emphasis in the Pugwash conferences, throughout the long years of the Cold War, on the pragmatic interim goals of reducing nuclear arsenals and avoiding any nuclear-weapon use. He noted that the end of the Cold War has finally made it possible for the attractions of a nuclear- weapons-free world to begin, at least, to be taken seriously by decisionmakers.

In this fiftieth year since the first and only use of nuclear weapons in war, however, the evidence of actual progress toward elimination of such weapons is decidedly mixed. For example:
  • Implementation of the deep reductions in the deployed strategic nuclear weapons of the United States and the former Soviet Union specified in the START 2 Treaty is continuing on both sides. But the treaty still has not been ratified by either the United States or Russia; a budget-cutting U.S. Congress is imperiling funding for the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program to assist the countries of the former Soviet Union in the dismantlement and disposition of surplus nuclear warheads and delivery systems; and there is no sign of movement toward the negotiation of further cuts or toward the participation of the other declared and undeclared nuclear-weapon states in the reduction process.

  • This year's Non-Proliferation Treaty Extension Conference led to a decision that this treaty should be indefinitely and unconditionally extended; both the result and the process by which it was achieved, however, left a residue of dissatisfaction among a number of countries. The primary cause of concern is that the unconditional character of the extension will be taken by the declared nuclear-weapon states as a license to maintain their exceptional status for as long as they like.

  • The declared nuclear-weapon states all certified, before and during the NPT Extension Conference, that they were willing to conclude a comprehensive ban on nuclear-weapons testing by the end of 1996; subsequent to the decision to extend the NPT uncondition-ally, however, China has conducted a nuclear test, France has announced its intention to conduct a series of tests in the South Pacific, and various of the nuclear-weapon states have publicly floated the idea that a "comprehensive" ban could be interpreted to allow nuclear explosions up to a few hundred tons of TNT equivalent, or even more. These developments place at risk the possibility of achieving a test ban at all; indeed, they imperil the entire nonproliferation regime.
    • Notwithstanding the opportunity opened by the end of the Cold War, the road toward diminution and eventual elimination of the world's nuclear arsenals evidently remains a bumpy one. Traversing it successfully will require political leadership and staying power in considerably greater measure than displayed in this effort up until now.

    Much of the work of the Conference in addressing the many challenges of moving towards a nuclear-weapon-free world was conducted in working groups that met in parallel sessions during the week. There were six such groups, focused on the following topics: (1) agenda for a nuclear-weapon-free world; (2) reducing proliferation risks; (3) monitoring, controlling, and reducing arms trade, transfer, and production; (4) global governance; (5) security in the Asia- Pacific region; and (6) energy-environment-development interactions.

    The following statement on the issues addressed at the Conference draws on the working-group and plenary-session discussions, but its formulation is the responsibility of the Pugwash Council alone. We have not attempted to be comprehensive -- many important points discussed at the Conference are not mentioned here -- and our statement has not been reviewed or endorsed by the other participants. Summaries of the discussions in the Working Groups have been prepared by the Rapporteurs in consultation with the Convenors of these Groups and will become part of the published Proceedings of the Conference, along with the texts of the major speeches from the plenary sessions.

    * * * * *

    AGENDA FOR A NUCLEAR-WEAPON-FREE WORLD

    Although, certainly, the danger of nuclear war is currently far less than was the case during most of the five decades since the explosion of the first nuclear bombs in 1945, this is nonetheless no time for complacency about nuclear weapons or delay in the work of shrinking both their numbers and their role in international relations. It is important, instead, to make as much progress as possible while the political climate is favorable. The argument that, because the future is uncertain, countries possessing nuclear arsenals should be cautious in shrinking them is exactly backwards: If international relations in the future again take a turn for the worse, then everybody will be better off, all else being equal, the fewer nuclear weapons there are in the world at the time.

    It should also be understood that "hedging" against a future worsening of political relationships by retaining large and diverse nuclear forces could well increase the chance that the worsening will occur. Retaining such forces in today's world is a provocative, tension-building act, immediately recognized as such by potential adversaries and certain to generate similar behavior in response. The resulting pattern of mutual "hedging" may end up being hard to distinguish from the nuclear arms competitions of the earlier era, and can hardly fail to encourage the view among non-nuclear-weapon states that the countries possessing these weapons continue to regard them as key elements of their national security postures; this perception, in turn, cannot fail to raise the question in some non-nuclear-weapon states as to why they should not change this status, in order to obtain the same supposed security benefits that the weapon states seem so desperate to retain.

    The apparent failure of the nuclear-weapon states to appreciate the implications of a "do as we say, not as we do" approach to the future of nuclear weaponry can only be seen as a remarkable lapse in the application of logic to international affairs. This lapse would be likely to be corrected if the nuclear-weapon policies of states possessing these weapons were subjected to open public debate under the fullest access to information about nuclear arsenals and doctrines that is consistent with nonpropagation of detailed weapon-design information, weapon locations, and war plans. National leaders should be obliged to explain just what needs they regard nuclear weapons as serving in the post-Cold-War world, how their country's nuclear forces and doctrines meet those needs, and what effects they believe their country's assertion of the right to meet the needs in these ways will have on the behavior of other countries. We hereby call for such public debates in all states that possess nuclear weapons.

    We believe that the result of such debates would be a compelling public consensus, in every state that possesses nuclear weapons, in favor of the obvious next steps toward a nuclear- weapon-free world, namely:
    Achieving the major reductions that are desirable and that should be possible in the START 3 negotiations is virtually certain to require recommitment to preserve the ABM Treaty according to the existing, agreed interpretation, without modification or "clarification" to allow deployment of "theater" missile defenses that would have substantial capability against strategic ballistic missiles.

    In the longer run, defining and traversing a path to a nuclear-weapon-free world will entail grappling with a set of difficulties deeply rooted in assumptions about deterrence, verification, and the inevitability of conflict. Thus:
  • A state of "minimum deterrence", in which the only purpose foreseen for a residual arsenal of nuclear weapons is to deter others who possess them from using theirs, is generally regarded as a logical way-station between the current postures of the nuclear-weapon states and a future world in which nuclear weapons are not needed at all. But the minimum- deterrence way-station is not attractive, for two reasons. First, this form of deterrence, with small arsenals, entails the deliberate targetting of civilian populations with weapons of mass destruction (arguably illegal under international law, and certainly reprehensible). Second, each country that retains or acquires a minimum deterrent serves as an incentive for others to do so, too, until the logical end-state when every country has a nuclear deterrent and the world has become a very dangerous place indeed.

  • Obviously, in a nuclear-weapon-free world, the capacity to verify that no country has concealed even a few nuclear weapons becomes very important. It is highly questionable whether current national and international means of monitoring would be adequate to this task. The solution generally advocated is "societal verification", which entails establishing a global norm that scientists and other citizens have a duty, transcending loyalty to their own country, to report suspected violations of the nuclear-weapon ban to international authorities. Establishing such a global norm and developing confidence in it will not be easy.

  • Most "realistic" observers of human affairs regard large-scale armed conflict as an inescapable feature of the human condition. One must hope that this assumption is incorrect, however, because even a temporarily successful global ban on nuclear weapons could be broken by a desperate combatant's building them anew - and as long as there is war there will presumably be combatants desperate enough to do this. It is difficult to escape the conclusion, stressed by the Russell-Einstein Manifesto, that a permanently successful ban on nuclear weapons will require a permanently successful ban on war. That seems a distant prospect.

  • These difficulties were discussed at length, and some approaches to dealing with them were suggested, in the recent Pugwash book Toward a Nuclear Weapon Free World. They were also discussed at some length at this Conference. Here we will only stress two crucial points. First, while it is easy to question, on various grounds, the feasibility of a nuclear-weapon-free-world, it must be remembered that the alternative is not acceptable. In a world where nuclear weapons continue to exist, they will eventually be used, and that is an outcome that cannot be tolerated. Second, although the exact conditions for and character of a nuclear-weapon-free world cannot now be discerned, this uncertainty is not a sound reason to refuse to move in that direction. Human beings have often been faced with the need to embark on journeys in which the characteristics of the destination are not completely clear at the outset. What is important is to recognize when a departure from the status quo has become essential, and to know the right direction in which to travel.

    • REDUCING PROLIFERATION RISKS

    The measures discussed in the first part of the preceding section, that is, the obvious next steps toward a nuclear-weapon-free world, are also among the most important measures for reducing proliferation risks. An important part of the "demand side" of nuclear proliferation, after all, is the set of messages about the usefulness of nuclear-weapon possession that are being sent by the failure of the nuclear-weapon states to embrace deeper reductions, a truly comprehensive test ban, and so on. (Another part of the "demand side" is the specific set of security threats that countries may perceive to be emanating from their immediate neighbors or from potential adversaries at greater remove. Some ways to reduce threats of this character other than the wholly counterproductive approach of acquiring nuclear weapons are discussed under subsequent headings.)

    A Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), discussed briefly above, would be a very important antiproliferation measure with both demand-side and supply-side elements. On the demand side, the CTBT is widely regarded as the most important single measure expected of the nuclear-weapon states in fulfillment of their obligations under Article VI of the Non-Proliferation Treaty -- a point stressed in the resolutions adopted at the NPT Extension Conference. Concluding a CTBT would also signify a disavowal, by the nuclear-weapon states, of the proposition that nuclear weapons have military uses toward which their design requires continuing refinement. On the supply-side, adherence to a CTBT by non-nuclear-weapon states would place a substantial obstacle in the way of such countries' acquiring nuclear arsenals of their own.

    The other crucial supply-side antiproliferation measure that needs urgently to be pursued is improved materials protection, control, and accounting (MPC&A) for all the world's stocks of directly weapon-usable fissile materials. We include under this heading the fissile materials -- plutonium and highly enriched uranium (HEU) - in deployed and reserve nuclear weapons, which at least for the most part are relatively well protected and accounted for, as well as HEU and separated plutonium in military and civilian stockpiles, which in some cases are not well protected and accounted for at all. The military stockpiles include HEU naval reactor fuel as well as HEU and plutonium in the weapon-production complexes. The civilian stockpiles include certain kinds of research-reactor fuel as well as a limited amount of mixed-oxide (plutonium-uranium) civilian reactor fuel and separated plutonium stockpiled following reprocessing of civilian reactor fuel.

    We stress that the key distinction in characterizing plutonium is not between so-called "weapon-grade" (or "military") and so-called "reactor-grade" (or "civilian") plutonium, but between separated and unseparated plutonium of any type. (The separation referred to here is between the plutonium, on the one hand, and the fission products and low-enriched uranium with which plutonium is intimately mixed when it is produced in reactors, on the other.) Although the contrary is still sometimes incorrectly asserted by people who should know better, the fact is that civilian plutonium can be used to manufacture highly sophisticated nuclear weapons. Separated plutonium, whether of military or civilian origin, should be protected and monitored with approximately the same degree of care as is customarily accorded to intact nuclear weapons.

    Stocks of separated military plutonium in both the United States and Russia are currently growing at the rate of 1500-2000 bombs' worth per year as a result of the dismantlement of nuclear warheads rendered surplus by recent treaties and unilateral arms-reduction commitments. We agree with the recommendation of the two-volume study of plutonium disposition issued by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in 1994 and 1995 that the United States and Russia should move as expeditiously as possible to increase the physical barriers against re-use of this plutonium in weapons and, more specifically, to bring it to a standard of protection equivalent to that associated with the larger quantities of plutonium that now reside in the unreprocessed spent fuel from commercial nuclear reactors. This is important both to reduce the direct danger of theft of this material and to certify to each other and to the world that the two countries have no intention of re-using the plutonium in new nuclear weapons - a political signal of the highest importance for nonproliferation and for the prospects of further nuclear-arms reductions.

    The "spent-fuel standard" of security refers to the barriers of bulk, mass, intense radiation field, and intimate mixing with fission products and uranium that would have to be overcome by anyone wishing to steal or divert spent reactor fuel and extract the plutonium from it. The NAS study indicates that this standard could most rapidly be achieved for the excess weapons plutonium by either producing mixed-oxide fuel from it and using this for electricity generation in a limited number of reactors of currently operating types, or by vitrifying it with high-level radioactive wastes in glass logs of a type already planned to be produced as the means of stabilizing the high-level wastes accumulated in the U.S. weapons-production complex. The NAS argues that both approaches should be vigorously pursued, in part through joint U.S.-Russian projects, until at least one of the approaches reaches the point of full deployment in each country. We concur with this recommendation.

    A variety of other U.S.-CIS cooperative programs for improving MPC&A in civilian and military facilities on both sides have been initiated in the past few years, entailing collaboration at the government-to-government, agency-to-agency, and laboratory-to-laboratory level. Published reviews of these programs have indicated that progress has been slowed by bureau-cratic and economic obstacles, although some important strides have been made. It is our view that all of the levels of collaboration in this effort are essential and that they deserve to be implemented with higher priority and greater funding than has been accorded to them so far. This work to improve the protection of very large quantities of directly weapon-usable material represents by far the most cost-effective investment currently available in the area of reducing proliferation risks. It must not be allowed to become the victim of petty politics within either country or between them.

    The greatly expanded MPC&A agenda presented by the need to manage the nuclear- materials legacy of the Cold War, together with continuing worldwide growth of civilian nuclear- energy activities, naturally calls attention to the existing and prospective role of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in the needed monitoring and verification activities. That the monitoring and verification of MPC&A efforts should have at least an international overlay - even if not always primary international responsibility - is clear, as is the fact that the IAEA is the principal existing international institution with the expertise and orientation appropriate to these kinds of tasks. It needs to be emphasized, however, that the powers and resources that have been provided to the IAEA until now have not been adequate even for the narrower tasks with which that agency has been burdened. These discrepancies would need to be addressed even if the IAEA's responsibilities were not expanded from its current ones. Thus it should be clear that a very major expansion of IAEA powers, personnel, and funding will be required if the agency is to be able to fulfill not only its current responsibilities but also a significant monitoring and verification role in the wider MPC&A agenda that is now before the world.

    MONITORING, CONTROLLING, AND REDUCING ARMS TRADE, TRANSFER, AND PRODUCTION

    As compelling as are the dangers associated with nuclear weapons and with other weapons of mass destruction, notably chemical and biological weapons, the fact is that nearly all the people being killed in the local and regional armed conflicts that rage day-in and day-out around the world are killed by conventional weaponry, above all by artillery, mortars, small arms, and land mines. (The mines, of course, continue to kill indiscriminately even after the conflicts have ended.) The end of the Cold War has greatly reduced the extent to which the United States and Russia are subsidizing and promoting the export of aircraft and other major weapons to allies for foreign policy purposes, and lack of hard currency among the major arms importers has also contributed to a marked decline in the overall scale of international arms transfers. Both latent demand and latent production capacity for the major weapons systems remain high, however, so these flows are likely to grow again, and in the meantime the huge flows and widespread availability of relatively inexpensive small arms and light weapons pose daunting problems.

    Measures to promote transparency and confidence-building currently provide the most promising cooperative approach to increasing security and restraint in relation to major conventional arms and the conventional forces of states. The UN Register of Conventional Arms has gotten off to a promising start, and efforts to strengthen and develop it should be a priority. Most important is to expand the Register to include qualitative information on weapons types alongside the numerical data currently collected, and also to expand it to include military holdings and procurement from domestic production on the same basis as arms transfers. Complementary measures for regional and global transparency in relation to military budgets, military R&D, and military exchanges should also be promoted. Enhancing openness and accountability at the domestic level about all of these matters is important, too, not least as a mechanism for encouraging critical debate and governmental restraint.

    Research on the transfer and use of light weapons, and on control measures for these, needs more attention. Contrary to popular belief, there is much that governments and international organizations could do to tackle the situation, notwithstanding the complexity of the processes associated with the supply and use of light weapons. Possible approaches include strengthened export controls, scrapping stockpiles of surplus light weapons, promoting disarmament and buy- back schemes, and helping governments improve their border and customs controls.

    Production and transfer of biological and chemical weapons are prohibited by international treaties covering these weapons. Verification of compliance with the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) of 1972 requires considerable strengthening. This treaty will have its Fourth Review Conference, which will deal with this problem, in September 1996. Pugwash is preparing recommendations for cost-effective verification measures to be adopted for the urgently needed strengthening of the BWC. We also urge rapid attainment of the 65 ratifications of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) that are required before operation of the organization established to implement the CWC, which contains excellent provisions for the verification of compliance, can commence.

    Finally, an attempt should be made to expand the scope of and adherence to the 1980 UN Convention on Conventional Weapons (Inhumane Weapons Convention), including the addition of a prohibition of anti-personnel land mines as inhumane. Weapons designed specifically to blind people permanently should also be banned as inhumane.

    GLOBAL GOVERNANCE

    Global governance should be understood not as world government but as a cooperative activity of states and nongovernmental organizations to address those questions of global security, development, environment, and resource management that cannot be effectively addressed at the level of individual states or at lower levels. An abundance of current problems in all these categories illustrates both the need for more effective institutions of global governance and the difficulties of creating them and making them work. We focus here on the security category, reserving comments on the others to the section on energy-environment-development interactions.

    The conflict in Bosnia illustrates with depressing clarity the inadequacies of the United Nations as an institution for conflict prevention and resolution, as well as the inadequacies of regional international institutions such as NATO for these purposes - at least in circumstances like those that prevail in Bosnia. Certainly it is apparent that the United Nations, as currently constituted and empowered, cannot prevent violence if one party to the conflict is unwilling to accept peaceful solutions. And it would appear that the reluctance of current governments to suffer casualties in the cause of imposing peace in a place removed from their most central economic and security interests likewise prevents NATO, or narrower coalitions, from taking direct military action no matter how terrible and unjust the local suffering that a conflict such as that in Bosnia may impose.

    It should nonetheless be possible, we think, to distinguish between the war in Bosnia (meaning the organized struggle between armed forces) and the war crimes (as when the military forces make civilians their prime targets or treat prisoners of war inhumanely). While states, individually and collectively, may shy away from taking sides in the war, preferring to stay neutral, there can be no impartiality in relation to the war crimes. We urge the international community to act more consistently, and with greater determination, in defense of international rules, norms, and standards.

    The Bosnian situation, in particular, points to the need for voluntary recruitment to a standing UN force, as proposed by the Commission for Global Governance. Soldiers contracting to work for the United Nations would be committed to save lives. National governments should not and can not claim the same responsibility for volunteers to a UN force as they would claim for national contingents provided by the governments themselves. Universal norms are best defended at the universal level, by the United Nations, through employees owing their loyalties directly to that world organization.

    SECURITY IN THE ASIA-PACIFIC REGION

    Security problems in the Asia-Pacific region were, naturally, an important focus of our this Pugwash Conference given its location in Japan. Regional security issues receiving particular attention comprised nuclear nonproliferation (including nuclear-weapon-free zones), nonintroduc- tion of nuclear weapons by nuclear powers, conventional arms buildups and arms trade, and regional confidence-building measures.

    The problem of nuclear proliferation in the Asia-Pacific region is deeply rooted in fundamental regional tensions; it is most urgent in Northeast Asia, most intractable in South Asia, and least problematic in Southeast Asia. China's nuclear force is a major concern for states in the region. The prospects for regional nonproliferation would be greatly improved by China's joining the process of nuclear arms reductions in which so far only the United States and Russia have been engaged; China's engagement in this process is not likely, however, unless the U.S. and Russian reductions continue to levels well below the levels specified in the START 2 Treaty. Meanwhile, increased transparency with respect to China's nuclear forces could build confidence in the region as to China's nuclear intentions.

    The recent Chinese nuclear test and the announced resumption of French testing in the South Pacific have complicated the global effort to achieve a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, as well as hindering attempts to obtain U.S., U.K., and French ratification of the Raratonga Treaty for a South Pacific Nuclear Weapon Free Zone (NWFZ). Cancelling further nuclear tests would be a major step toward establishing this NWFZ as well as toward a CTBT. Formal agreements by out-of-region nuclear-weapons states not to deploy tactical and theater nuclear weapons in the region would also be highly desirable.

    The Asia-Pacific region has emerged as a major arms market since the end of the Cold War, and a substantial and increasing share of arms sales of all kinds is to this region. The rapid buildup of high-technology offensive weaponry in the region is alarming. Creation of a regional institution to restrain arms trade should be considered, along with a regional register of conventional arms trade to supplement the UN register. Economic and other nonmilitary cooperation in the region should supplement military confidence-building measures as approaches to the creation of a foundation for common security.

    ENERGY-ENVIRONMENT-DEVELOPMENT INTERACTIONS

    Energy-environment-development interactions that are potential causes of conflict among nations include the uneven distribution of the fossil-fuel resources on which world energy use mainly relies, the depletion and pollution of so-called "renewable" resources such as fresh water and soils, the potential for increasing scarcity of renewable and nonrenewable resources alike as a result of growth in population and per capita consumption, and the probability of disruptive changes in global climate arising from anthropogenic greenhouse-gas emissions. Major changes will be necessary in current patterns and strategies of resource use and environmental management - above all in relation to fossil fuels and fresh water - in order to attain a prosperous, equitable, environmentally sustainable, and thus potentially peaceful society by the middle of the next century.

    Improved energy efficiency in industrialized and developing countries alike clearly must be a cornerstone of a sensible energy-environment-development strategy. All of the other major energy options - fossil fuels, nuclear fission, nuclear fusion, and renewable energy sources -have considerable potential but are also burdened with important uncertainties and constraints. The renewable options, however, continue to be under-explored in relation to the others; they have the potential to make a major contribution to world energy needs in 2050, while helping to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, supporting the conservation and restoration of natural ecosystems, reducing risks of nuclear proliferation, and creating local income possibilities in rural areas.

    Fresh water deserves much more attention than it has received, as this resource is becoming critically scarce in several areas of potential political instability. Also deserving of greater attention is the Climate Convention, which needs renewed impetus and strengthening if its targets for reduction of carbon emissions are to be achieved. Finally, stronger and more coordinated efforts are required at national and international levels to overcome increasing incompatibilities between long-term environmental and resource-management goals and increasingly short-sighted and narrow-minded decisionmaking by international, governmental, and private institutions.



    The 45th Pugwash Conference was organized by a committee led by Professor Michiji Konuma, Chair of the Japanese Pugwash Committee, in cooperation with the international Pugwash organization's Rome office. Financial support for local expenses and for travel costs of some of the participants from developing countries was provided by
  • Hiroshima City Office
  • Hiroshima Prefectural Government
  • Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs
  • and a number of foundations, private firms, and individuals
    • To the organizers, staff, and contributors - and above all to the people of Hiroshima for their gracious hospitality to all of the Pugwash participants on this most painful anniversary - the Pugwash Council expresses its gratitude.

  • Council Declaration: Dagomys (3 September 1988)
  • Council Declaration in Hiroshima (23 July 1995)
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