Collaboration of Comecon Countries in the Protection of the Environment and the Utilization of Natural Resources

In the course of development and intensification of socialist economic integration, the collaboration of COMECON member nations is encompassing more and more new, important spheres. In keeping with the decisions of the Twenty-Seventh Session of COMECON (1973), considerable expansion is envisaged in their multilateral collaboration in environmental protection and the directly associated rational utilization of natural resources and energy resources, and in the investigation and development of outer space and the oceans of the world.

Environmental Protection in Comecon Member Nations

Environmental protection is one of the global problems of modern times. It is a complex of problems and is closely associated with the rational use of natural resources. Economic activity is expanded and intensified in the course of the scientific-technical revolution, and more and more natural resources of all kinds are drawn into production, thereby significantly increasing the strain on the environment.

The Development of the International Infrastructure of Comecon Countries

In our view the international infrastructure can be defined as a system of productive branches (water resources used by several countries, international electric power transmission lines, international transport communications and communications lines) and of branches in the nonproductive sphere that are a necessary condition and base for the development and successful functioning of the international division of labor. (>u>1>/u>) The basic purpose of branches of the international infrastructure is to secure a high degree of economic effectiveness of all types of foreign economic relations. Branches belonging to the productive infrastructure have the mission of expanding foreign economic activity, and hence their development must be relatively more rapid than the growth of the latter.