Kathmandu, June 5: On the occasion of World Environment Day, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, in a message, said “We may be at the dawn of a new millennium but the environmental problems we face are painfully familiar. They may even be getting worse. Despite the Earth Summit, and despite success stories like the Montreal Protocol to protect the Ozone Layer, human beings continue to plunder the global environment.” Unsustainable practices remain deeply embedded in the fabric of our daily lives, the UN chief said. “We are failing to protect resources and ecosystems. We are failing to invest enough in alternative technologies, especially for energy. We are failing even to keep the debate alive,” Kofi Annan observed.

These are deeply troubling trends. I recommend four priorities for reversing them, he stated.

First, we need a major public education effort. Understanding of the challenges we face is alarmingly low. Corporations and consumers alike need to recognise that their choices can have significant consequences. Schools and civil society groups have a crucial role to play, the UN chief said.

Second, environmental issues must be fundamentally repositioned in the policy-making arena. The environment must become better integarated into mainstream economic policy, and the surest way is through green accounting, he added.

Third, governments must not only create environmental agreements, they must enforce them. They can, for example cut the subsidies that sutain environmentally harmful activities each and every year. They can also devise more environment-friendly incentives for markets to respond to, he said.

And fourth, we need sound scientific information. This is the only basis for effective policy, yet large gaps in our knowledge remain, Annan pointed out.

“Technological breakthroughs that are unimaginable today may well solve some of the environmental challenges we face. But it would be foolish to count on them and to continue with business as usual,” the UN chief said. The theme for this year’s World Environment Day says it best: the year 2000 begins the environment millennium: the time to act is now. There will be no easy solutions. Unpleasant ecological surprises lie ahead. But the start of the new century could not be a more opportune time to commit ourselves — peoples as well as governments – to a new ethic of conservation and stewardship, Kofi Annan stated.

Likewise, in a message to mark the World Environment Day, UNEP Executive Director, Klaus Toepfer, said “Every year on 5 June we celebrate World Environment Day – an occasion when people the world over come together to demonstrate their commitment to the protection of the environment.”

With the theme, 2000 – The Environment Millennium — Time to Act, this year’s celebrations take on a special significance. This is the first World Environment Day of the Third Millennium, he pointed out.

On January 1 of this year millions of people on every continent celebrated the dawn of this new millennium. Even those who do not observe the Roman Christian calendar joined in. The millennium celebrations seemed to capture a global mood, a realisation that we are all connected, no matter how far apart we live geographically, culturally or economically, he said.

In our daily lives, it is not always easy to recognise how closely we are interconnected with our fellow human beings. Increasingly however, we are recognising that what connects the street child in Rio, the farmer in Kalimantan or Kenya, the factory worker in Germany and the stockbroker in New York is the global environment, Toepfer pointed out.

More and more we are realising that what we do has far reaching ramifications — even if the connections are not immediately obvious. In fact, the ramifications are already being felt in every corner of the globe.

Some of the more pressing issues the planet faces are severe water shortages. About 20 per cent of the planet’s people lack access to safe drinking water and 50 per cent lack adequate sanitation. Weather events worldwide are becoming more frequently extreme. Land fertility is declining. Land degradation is increasing. The rapid growth of urbanisation is causing massive air pollution. Nitrogen pollution is compromising terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, as well as contributing to global warming. Over 80 per cent of the planet’s forests have been destroyed or degraded, a quarter of the world’s mammal species are at serious risk of extinction, and biological diversity is disappearing at an alarming rate.

The world’s population has now passed six billion, and the majority of these people live in poverty. Meanwhile, the share of the planet’s resources being used by the affluent minority is also growing. These two issues – the poverty of the majority and the excessive consumption of the minority – are driving the forces of environmental degradation, he pointed out.

It is essential to reverse these trends, but time is running out. In the new millennium, we need global cooperation that promotes sustainable development. Global agreements that ensure trade the environment policies are mutually supportive must succeed in helping the poorest of the poor in the world. They must also succeed for the sake of the environment, he added.

The global community must implement an integrated approach to environmental management. This approach must be underpinned by the need to involve the various actors in the civil society in the formulation and implementation of policy measures.

We are at a watershed. We have the knowledge and the technology to solve many of the environmental ills facing our planet. What we need now is more political will to bring about change. Now is the time to act.

I take heart in the growing engagement of people around the world in addressing our pressing environmental needs, especially when I see this engagement spreading to business and industry and to governments that are increasingly prepared to act I am particularly heartened by the fact that young people are becoming more aware and vocal about environmental issues to ensure that the price they pay for our environmental misdeeds will not be too great.

The imperative need to move from ‘words to action’ does not in any way reduce the importance of ‘words’. Programmes of action—for sustainable development — can only succeed if they arise out of consensus. And consensus is not easily achieved, he said.

“On this World Environment Day let us resolve to reverse the trends of the last thousand years. Let us take the necessary steps, which will lead us into a more sustainable future marked by improvements in our standards of living and in the health of the planet on which we all depend, he stated.