Our earth is vulnerable today because of our collective negligence during the last half century. We show greater urgency here today because we have been unable to muster the political will required to deal with chronic global problems such as rapid industrialization, urbanization, toxic pollution and over-exploitation of finite natural resources.

The sectoral issues we address today are sustainable development and environmental protection on a global scale. The parallel political and personal challenge that we face is that of our responsibility as leaders—our obligation to act forcefully for the sake of future generations, regardless of the immediate financial costs or the political pressures that we may encounter.

Address to the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development
Rio de Janeiro
June 2, 1992

Our earth is ailing. In its own language, it tells us that we must act together in a sustained and coordinated effort to help it heal. It seems self-evident that we should initiate or expand domestic strategies that lead to coordinated regional and global efforts.

Address to the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development
Rio de Janeiro
June 2, 1992

Our goal is to ensure that environmental protection becomes as deeply embedded in our national psyche and in our human spirit as our existing commitments to balanced development, pluralism, human rights, and regional peace based on justice and international law. We are deeply committed to this goal, despite the severe constraints of political, economic and demographic pressures on our country. We and many others in the developing world, however, could implement more effective environmental protection policies, and maximize the possibilities for successful sustainable development, in the context of mutually beneficial partnerships between North and South.

We know that a comprehensive cost-benefit analysis of our environmental protection policies will confirm that we must bear the short-term costs. There is no other realistic option if we seek to reap the longer term benefits of the opportunity to achieve sustainable development. We shall willingly pay this cost, and endure the associated burdens—for we would be morally, politically, and perhaps even criminally negligent if we were to place financial profits and material comforts above the goal of the integrity of our earth, the welfare of our people, and the life prospects of our children and grandchildren.

Address to the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development
Rio de Janeiro
June 2, 1992

The threat to the environment is unique in recognizing no borders. Although long seen as a menace to our well-being, pollution was treated in the past as a mere political pawn useful in winning arguments through apportioning blame on a range of industrial and economic disputes.

Nowhere is the threat to natural resources more real than in the Middle East, where water shortages and creeping desertification threaten the development of the whole region. competition for water is a major contributor to regional tension, to the extent that analysts have accurately predicted, for decades, that this strife has been a major cause of Arab-Israeli water wars. How much wiser it would be to treat this common adversity as a further incentive to peace, so that cooperation can replace competition, and all nations can share this most precious of resources, in a manner more beneficial for all.

Address at the University of Ottawa
Ottawa, Canada
October 11, 1989

Jordan itself is a beautiful country. It is wild, with limitless deserts where the Bedouin roam, but the mountains of the north are clothed in green forests, and where the Jordan River flows it is fertile and warm in winter. Jordan has a strange, haunting beauty and a sense of timelessness. Dotted with the ruins of empires once great, it is the last resort of yesterday in the world of tomorrow. I love every inch of it.

p. 4, Uneasy Lies the Head, 1962