Word: oecd
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...incalculably dangerous radiation. The environmentalists fear that radioactive wastes will be improperly disposed of, thus posing a threat to mankind for thousands of years to come. There is also widespread worry that atomic weapons will be fashioned from plutonium obtained from nuclear-energy plants. Says Pierre Strohl of the OECD's Nuclear Energy Agency: "Peaceful application of nuclear energy seems to be inseparable from the nightmarish images of the atomic bomb." Many people, especially the young, regard the nuclear reactor as a symbol of a "hopelessly technocratic, centralized, hierarchical society implacably destructive of natural resources and human values...
...Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has been forced to scale down growth forecasts for its 24 member nations, which make up most of the non-Communist industrialized world. Assuming no change in policy, and without allowing for the deadening impact of an oil-price rise, the OECD is predicting growth of 4.3% for the first six months of next year, v. its earlier forecast of 5.3%. For all of 1977, the OECD sees the U.S. economy growing by only 4%, well below its earlier projection of 6%, while expansion in other industrial nations will be even slower...
...multinationals are frequently blamed for using secrecy to control vast networks of companies that have different names but belong to the same shadowy combine. The OECD would end all that. In the future, corporations would be required to make public complete descriptions of the activities of their principal affiliates in major areas of the world. Among other things, the multinationals would also have to list the number of their employees, report local sales and profits and disclose the amount of money invested in research and development...
...code is expected to be adopted at the next OECD conference of foreign ministers, scheduled for June 21. The question is: Will the code make any difference? The OECD has no power to enforce its injunctions. Furthermore, the code is written in such turgid bureaucratese that many of the 29 commandments are vague and imprecise...
...OECD'S purposes in drafting the code was to head off a possible effort by the developing countries to ram through the United Nations their own tougher strictures on the multinationals. Nonetheless, the code does perform a useful service as the first major statement by the industrialized nations about how they expect their corporations to behave elsewhere. The code may also inspire some developing countries to enact up-to-date business legislation that would outlaw exploitative business practices-just as they have long been forbidden in the nations where the multinationals were born...