Thatcher Seeks U.N. Environmental Pact

British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher called today for the drafting of a “good conduct guide for all nations” to protect the environment.

“I believe we should aim to have a convention on global climate change ready by the time the World Conference on Environment and Development meets in 1992,” she said in a speech to the U.N. General Assembly. “That will be among the most important conferences the United Nations has ever held.”

In an address devoted entirely to environmental concerns, she said, “The most pressing task which faces us at the international level is to negotiate a framework convention on climate change--a sort of good conduct guide for all nations.”

Thatcher also announced that Britain, which has some of the leading experts in the field, will establish a Center for the Prediction of Climate Change “which will lead the effort to improve our prophetic capacity.”

The center, providing advanced computing facilities, would be open to experts from all over the world, especially from developing countries.

Delivering her first U.N. speech since 1985, Thatcher cited the threats posed by over-intensive cultivation, the destruction of forests, the laying bare of mountainsides, the burning of fossil fuels that produce so-called greenhouse gases and the pollution of rivers and seas.

Every year an area of forest equal to the whole surface of Britain is destroyed, she told the Assembly.

It was no good squabbling over who was responsible or who should pay, she said. Whole areas of the planet could be subject to drought and starvation if the pattern of rains and monsoons were to change as a result of the destruction of forests and the accumulation of greenhouse gases.