Wind of change
IF YOU can't have a summit you can always have a conference. This penny has dropped with the Organisation for Eco- nomic Co-operation and Development, which is rather on its mettle at the moment. Its top job (secretary-general) is coming up and people have started asking questions, such as: what is OECD for? Well, it is an international agency, left over from the Marshall Plan, housed in an elegant Paris château, possessed of diplomatic status, paying its staff free of tax, with ambas- sadors from its 24 member countries accredited to its court. Yes, but? Well, mandarins and ministers meet there, and it maintains a hard knot of economists who write reports on member countries, often good enough to cause annoyance. And? And it has a directorate for education, employment and social affairs, and another one for the environment, and we can never have enough of these, now, can we? Their answer is in view in Germany, where they have been staging a conference all week. One director says that a north-south dia- logue is now under way and that upgrading of science and environment programmes should make it possible to develop system- atic approaches to problem-solving. The other director stresses the need to raise environmental awareness among students and boost international co-operation in this field to achieve grass-roots support. The World Bank at its windiest could not beat this. I would like to think that a new secre- tary-general (Britain's candidate is Nigel Lawson) will prune the OECD back or even dig it up. He would run into stiff resis- tance, though. Think of the unemployment.
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