ENVIRONMENT: Towards a Cleaner World

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru

NAIROBI, Feb 10 1997 (IPS) - Spearheading the global effort to clean up the world’s environment is the challenging job assigned to veteran Venezuelan politician Arnoldo Gabaldon.

Gabaldon, former Minister of Environment and Natural Resources in Venezuela, will spend the next two years as president of the governing council of the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) trying to persuade governments to make the world a healthy place to live in.

“In the region from where I come – Latin America and the Caribbean – environment is not at the top of political agenda,” the bespectacled Venezuelan told IPS last week. “And I don’t think that it is a priority within United Nations system.”

Gabaldon, who was elected president of the governing council by UNEP’s Latin America and Caribbean Group at a November 11-12 parley in Buenos Aires, Argentina, said he would persuade governments and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to link the environment to all aspects of human activities.

“It is my particular view that (any) decision that is taken in the economic field, in the social field should contain the environment dimension,” he said. “That’s sustainable development, the harmonisation of economic growth, social policies and the sustainability of the environment.”

Nonetheless, Gabaldon’s tenure comes at a “critical moment” for the UN environmental body, which is facing a serious financial crisis.

UNEP Executive Director Elizabeth Dowdeswell told a conference of environmental ministers which ended here Friday that only 37 percent of the 185 member states contributed to the UNEP’s Environment Fund in 1996.

Their payments totalled 45.1 million dollars, out of the 68.5 million dollars approved by UNEP in February 1995. “That leaves a gap in this biennium of 23 million dollars between what UNEP should be doing and what it is able to do,” Dowdeswell said as she urged members to pay up their dues.

Responding to attacks by some member states, Dowdeswell, a Canadian, complained during the 12-day conference that governments were condemning the only global UN agency based in the Third World to a slow death by under-funding and lack of political support.

Major donors, spearheaded by United States, have called for far- reaching reforms within UNEP before commiting themselves to paying up their dues.

“UNEP suffers from a loss of focus, strategic vision, and influence… Its work plan is disjointed and lacks clear priorities,” U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Eileen Claussen, told the council.

Dr German Garcia-Duran, chair of the Nairobi chapter of the Group of 77, described the developed countries’ attitude to UNEP as unfortunate. “It shows that some countries are not serious about the financial commitments they made,” he told IPS this week.

Dr Garcia-Duran, whose organisation lobbies on behalf of developing countries, said scaling down the budget of UNEP will hurt the poor most. “UNEP is important for the developing world, particularly for Africa,” he said.

Despite UNEP’s budgetary problems, Gabaldon says he hopes that funds will start flowing in to its coffers as soon as member states have been made to realise the importance of the UN agency.

Gabaldon is convinced that if UNEP makes “a strong political statement” before the June 1997 Special Session of the General Assembly of the United Nations in New York, that will make a huge difference in its campaign.

“UNEP has been assigned the responsibility to present to the General Assembly a clear statement of what UNEP thinks should be its role from now on,” he said.

June’s Special Session, in which UNEP will play a leading role, will review and assess the progress made since the 1992 U.N. Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro on the implementation of Agenda 21.

Agenda 21 is an action plan for sustainable development worldwide and the protection of the global environment adopted at UNCED.

June’s meeting will also determine the direction that UNEP will take in executing its projects, which span a wide range of areas of concern.

These include land degradation in Africa, the crisis of timber reserves in Asia, the expected loss of at least 100,000 species from forested areas alone over the next 40 years in Latin America, and excessive energy consumption in the United States.