Chemicals provide important benefits to society and play a vital role in the global economy, but they also carry risks for the environment and human health, with greater risks to vulnerable social groups. Chemicals can contaminate soil, air and water and can damage biodiversity, and human exposure to chemicals is …
THE NAIROBI-based United Nations Environment Programme has been asked by its governing council to focus less on monitoring the global environment and more on advising and helping developing countries. This new responsibility, termed capacity building in UN parlance, means UNEP will promote environmentally benign technology and "skills" to developing countries …
THE GLOBAL Environment Facility (GEF) meeting in Beijing recently marked the beginning of the first year after Rio. And it set the tone for the green world order of tomorrow -- a world in which Southern governments are conciliatory but persistent with their demand for more green funds; in which …
THE FIFTH meeting of the members of the Global Environment Facility, held in Beijing in May, ended with the South getting some assurance on additional finance, and many conditions on how the money would be spent. Also under discussion were the governance structures of the GEF. With the "pilot" phase …
IT IS SAD that the World Health Assembly did not accept the suggestion of AIDS campaigner Jonathan Mann, that the candidate for the director-generalship of the World Health Organisation take part in a globally broadcast debate on health issues. Mann, a candidate himself, was interested, of course, in pursuing his …
DID YOU know the total UN budget for 1992 was just US $5.2 billion? That's less than the cost of two Stealth bombers, but still enough to pay for all the UN programmes to care for children, feed the hungry, promote development and preserve the peace. A 11-member group convened …
A SRI LANKAN research team has dismissed as "biased" and "rushed" a UN study that claims the country is among the world's top five dolphin- catchers. The release of the team's report this month is keenly awaited by Colombo, which fears that if Sri Lanka continu6s to be identified with …
BETWEEN 1986 and 1990, the total consumption of ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) by industrialised countries dropped from 971,342 tonnes to 636,588 tonnes -- a fall of 34 per cent. The industrialised countries' halon consumption, too, has fallen from 198,609 tonnes to 151,700 tonnes. Meanwhile, the CFC consumption of developing countries, which …
THE TRAGEDY of Somalia, whose people are starving to death by the hundreds each day, is being worsened by pitiless warlords who have reportedly signed multimillion-dollar contracts with Swiss and Italian firms to use the East African country as a dumping ground for vast quantities of toxic wastes. The UN …
THE EARTH Summit was over three months ago, but its decisions may already be coming apart. Africa's victory in securing support for the negotiation of a desertification convention may have been run into the sand, says a Panos Institute report. Even if the next session of the UN General Assembly …
UN SECRETARY general Boutros Boutros-Ghali's suggestion that the North and South should share equally the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the UN Commission for Sustainable Development (UNCSD) leadership has failed to enthuse Europeans and Americans. Mustafa Tolba (?), enjoying the support of UNCSD secretary general Maurice Strong, is virtually …
THE WORLD Meteorological Organisation (WMO) has gone on record officially that oilwell fires in Kuwait have had no global effect on the atmosphere. At WMO's recent meeting in Geneva with representatives of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) scientific papers were presented that showed the massive amounts of carbon and other …
PRODDED by fears that the ozone layer is being depleted at a much faster rate than reported initially, representatives of 56 countries met in Geneva recently and largely agreed on a proposal to bring forward the date for phasing out use of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) from 2000 to the end of …
SOME 3.6 billion ha of the world's drylands -- about a third of the total -- are today lying in a state of degradation. The world would earn some US $42 billion every year in extra income if these lands were nursed back to health. Most of this income loss …
ECONOMICS is going green. According to a growing band of experts, now labelled "green economists", sustainable development can only be achieved if economic theory can be utilised to determine sustainable natural resource use patterns. Oscar Wilde once alleged that while economists may know the price of everything, they know the …
HOW DO you value a tree? Do you account only for the timber and fruit that a tree bears or are there other intangibles that have a value, for instance, the carbon dioxide that the tree fixes, the oxygen that it releases, the soil erosion that it checks or even …
Norwegians now maintain regular "resource accounts" for energy, minerals, fisheries, forests, agriculture, land use and air emissions. Each account contains information on the state or quality of the resource at the beginning and end of a time period, together with information explaining any change that has taken place. Energy forecasting …
You won the 1991 Lok Sabha elections with a thumping majority. This must have raised local expectations. What are your future plans? While the barrage has solved the problem of water, other problems have emerged. The easy availability of water has encouraged sugarcane cultivation. Now we have too much sugarcane …
WESTERN governments have touched the panic button because of the recent evidence of ozone depletion over the Arctic and large parts of the high and middle latitudes. The ozone hole is no longer confined to the atmosphere over the South Pole. Temporary depletion of ozone over the northernmost parts of …
