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UN Secretary-General Names Five Key Areas
Where Johannesburg Summit Can Make a Real Difference
Water and sanitation, Energy, Health, Agriculture, Biodiversity: these are the
five key areas where concrete results can and must be obtained at this August's
World Summit on Sustainable Development, according to United Nations
Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
These five areas could be remembered by a simple acronym ? WEHAB ? Mr.
Annan said today as he launched a new campaign to raise awareness for the
Summit. "You might think of it like this: we inhabit the earth.
And we
must rehabilitate our one and only planet." The Secretary-General
added
that he hoped this acronym would become "something of a mantra"
between now and the opening of the Summit in Johannesburg on 26 August.
By concentrating on these five areas, Mr. Annan said, in a speech at the
American Museum of Natural History, the Summit could produce an ambitious but
achievable programme of practical steps to improve the lives of all human beings
while protecting the global environment.
"These are five areas," he said, "in which progress would offer
all human
beings a chance of achieving prosperity that will not only last their own
lifetime, but can be enjoyed by their children and grandchildren too."
The World Summit on Sustainable Development, which will be held in
Johannesburg, South Africa, from 26 August to 4 September, will bring world
leaders, citizen activists and business representatives together to work on
an agenda for ensuring that planet Earth can sustain a decent life for all
its inhabitants, present and future.
All too often that issue is overshadowed in the policy-making process by
more immediate problems, such as conflicts, globalization, and most
recently, terrorism, the Secretary-General said. But the Johannesburg
Summit offers humanity "a chance to restore the momentum that had been felt
so palpably after the Earth Summit." "[held at Rio de Janeiro in
1992].
New efforts are needed, he added, because the present model of development,
which has brought privilege and prosperity to about 20 per cent of humanity, has
also exacted a heavy price by degrading the planet and depleting its resources.
Yet, according to the Secretary-General, "at
discussions on global finance and the economy, the environment is still
treated as an unwelcome guest."
High-consumption lifestyles continue to tax the earth's natural life
support systems, research and development are under-funded and neglectful of the
problems of the poor, and developed countries "have not gone far
enough," he said, to fulfil either of the promises they made in Rio ? to
protect their own environments and to help the developing world defeat
poverty.
The issue, the Secretary-General said, is not environment versus
development, or ecology versus economy. "Contrary to popular belief,"
he
said, "we can integrate the two."
Mr. Annan summarized the progress he hoped to see in the five areas "areas
in which progress is possible with the resources and technologies at our
disposal today" as follows:
· Water - Provide access
to at least one billion people who lack clean
drinking water and two billion people who lack proper sanitation.
· Energy - Provide access
to more than two billion people who lack modern energy services; promote
renewable energy; reduce over-consumption; and ratify the Kyoto Protocol to
address climate change.
· Health - Address the
effects of toxic and hazardous materials; reduce
air pollution, which kills three million people each year, and
lower the
incidence of malaria and African guinea worm, which are linked with
polluted water and poor sanitation.
· Agricultural productivity
- Work to reverse land degradation, which
affects about two-thirds of the world's agricultural lands.
· Biodiversity and ecosystem
management- Reverse the processes that have destroyed about half of
the world's tropical rainforest and mangroves,and are threatening 70 per cent of
the world's coral reefs and decimating the world's fisheries.
"In Johannesburg, we have a chance to catch up," he said.
"Together, we
will need to find our way towards a greater sense of mutual responsibility.
Together, we will need to build a new ethic of global stewardship.
Together, we can and must write a new and hopeful chapter in natural?and
human?history."
Additional media materials can be found at: www.johannesburgsummit.org.
For more information about the World Summit on Sustainable
Development:
Klomjit Chandrapanya, tel. (212) 963-9495
Pragati Pascale, tel. (212) 963-6870
Gavin Hart, tel. (212) 584-5031
E-mail: mediainfo@un.org
Issued by the United Nations Department of Public Information
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