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Greening up

Revitalisation was the catchword at the United Nations Environment Programme (unep) right from the outset of the recently concluded 18th session of its Governing Council. "It is now time to turn words into action. It is now time to approach environmental issues in an integrated manner, in a way that meshes with the real world," said Elizabeth Dowdeswell, executive director, unep, in her opening speech on May 22 at the Nairobi meet.

The catalyst for unep's dramatic transformation is a plan to tackle 4 principal environmental challenges: sustainable management and use of natural resources, sustainable production and consumption, a better environment for human health and wellbeing, and globalisation trends and environment. "For the first time unep has presented a very comprehensive programme -- which is finely tuned to the organisation's priority areas," says a long time unep watcher in New Delhi.

Other key decisions include a call on all countries to review the draft programme of action to be adopted at the upcoming Intergovernmental Conference on Protecting the Marine Environment from Land-Based Activities, to be held from October 23 to November 3 this year at Washington dc.

Perhaps the biggest recent setback to unep is a dramatic slashing of its budget from us $150 million for 1992-93, to just us $90 million for 1995-96. Dowdeswell struck a disillusioned note as she observed that unep's modest budget proposal of us $105 million had been dramatically curtailed to us $90 million.

But Maurice Strong, the first executive director of unep and secretary general of the 1992 Earth Summit pointed out that private investment accounted for the principal flow of financial resources to developing countries, and that it was imperative to effectively moniter it for sustainable development.

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