This Congress through CAHS calls upon the federal and each state and territory government to develop sustainable ecological policies, provide appropriate habitat protection for all endangered species, and immediately end all logging and clear felling in old growth forests.

IHEU Regional Congress, Australia, November 2000

The conditions in the biosphere, with its extremely thin skin around the Earth, have changed in geological times, allowing different forms of life and exterminating some of these forms is later periods.

Humans must avoid being themselves the cause of alterations in conditions in the biosphere that will make present forms of life impossible.

Humanists accept the full responsibility for their own life style and the influence they have on their environment, including fellow humans and other forms of life, now and for the future.

We, participants of the Tenth Humanist World Congress of the International Humanist & Ethical Union, who have assembled at Buffalo, NY (July 31 - August 4, 1988),

* Reflecting on "Building a world community: humanism in the 21st century" and "The Need for a New Global Ethic",
* Remembering that on August 6, 43 years ago, the first nuclear bombs fell on Japanese cities,
* Referring to the IHEU Declaration on Nuclear Weapons of 1983,

The International Humanist & Ethical Union, assembled at its 8th World Congress in Hanover, Federal Republic of Germany, August 1-5, 1982, conscious of the fact that we only live on through our descendants, feels the obligation to leave behind an earth that actually offers the next generations room to live, water, air and nourishment. Conservation of the natural environment and restoration of the disturbed natural surroundings are for us essential conditions to be able to offer a future to the young.

The plenary session of the International Humanist & Ethical Union being held at Amsterdam on the 9th August 1974 unanimously passed the following motion proposed by the Board:

* Yearly millions of birds of passage take care of the disappearance of big surpluses of insects in Europe and Northern Africa, thus maintaining the ecological equilibrium.

A liveable world is and remains one of the great goals of the world community. As a condition of its achievement, the people of the world must give continued and serious attention to creating and preserving a humane environment. Among the requirements for securing such an environment is the development of decent living conditions on the globe, the limitation of population (in this connection we call attention to the IHEU resolution of August 1972 in favour of effective birth control, voluntary sterilisation and the right to legal abortion) so that we do not crowd ourselves off the planet or force ourselves into conditions of scarcity of resources. The relationship between problems of population and pollution is, by now, very clear. Therefore, the IHEU welcomes the forthcoming World Population Conference to be held in 1974.

The IHEU supports all organisations fighting pollution and working to restore and preserve a healthy world environment. The IHEU is opposed to the continued testing of Atomic and Nuclear weapons in the atmosphere and condemns the recent French detonation of bombs in the Pacific in the face of opposition of world opinion and of those countries directly affected by the explosions.

Board of Direct

Ethical Humanists often have had the vision to seek leadership and were given leadership in the International Bodies that were being born to assist in the advancement of the well-being of mankind. We acknowledge with pride the fact that:

Julian Huxley was the first Director General of UNESCO

Brock Chisholm was the first Director of the World Health Organisation

Sir John Boyd Orr was the first Director of the Food and Agriculture Organisation

The Board of the International Humanist & Ethical Union welcomes the guideline being prepared for the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, especially as these emphasise the moral and ethical implications of the new concepts of environment and resources which need to be accepted.