In a verse reflecting the (colonial) attitudes of his time, Kipling once wrote, ‘Oh, East is East, and West is West; and never the twain shall meet’.Although written in 1889, the underlying sentiment might equally describe the bipolar geopolitics prevalent at the height of the Cold War. Indeed, by the time of the Soviet Union’s invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968 to suppress intended liberal reforms, to many, the ideological chasm between the Eastern and Western blocs appeared insurmountable. Notwithstanding these divisions, key political leaders (particularly in Europe, the United States and the Soviet Union) sought strategies to promote greater stability and predictability in international affairs. To this end, they pursued more cooperative East–West relations, recognising that collaboration on environmental issues might help to defuse Cold War tensions. The apparently non-political nature, and seeming objectivity, of environmental issues contributed to their becoming, by 1975, a central pillar of détente between the East and the West.

On 1 May 1990, during the 18th Special Session on international economic cooperation, the General Assembly passed a resolution supporting a ‘Declaration on International Economic Co-operation, in Particular the Revitalization of Economic Growth in Development of the Developing Countries’. The overarching framework of the Declaration is the ‘strong commitment to a global consensus to promote urgently international economic co-operation for sustained growth of the world economy’ and the revitalisation of economic growth in developing countries after the 1980s, ‘a decade lost to development’. The Declaration was the product of a ‘long and arduous negotiations’ and ‘protracted … discussions’ which, after its adoption, was celebrated as a ‘pioneering landmark in the annals of international economic co-operation’. In retrospect though, it has been all but forgotten.