Markets
Need to Work With Earth’s Life Support Systems
to Achieve Development Goals
Nairobi, 15 June 2006 --The
new head of the United Nations Environment Programme
(UNEP) took up office today with a call to all
nations to put the environment at the heart of
economic policies.
Achim Steiner, the 45 year-old
former Director General of IUCN-the World Conservation
Union, said:” For too long economics and environment
have seemed like players on rival teams. There
have been a lot of nasty challenges and far too
many own goals. We need to make these two sides
of the development coin team players, players
on the same side”.
“We then have a chance to achieve
the fundamental shift of values and reach a new
understanding of what really makes the world go
round. Until recently the goods and services provided
by nature have been paid only lip service by traditional
economic accounting. Thus the land, the air, the
biodiversity and the world’s waters have been
frequently treated as free and limitless,” he
added.
Mr Steiner said a whole stream
of reports over the past year or so, including
the UNEP supported Millennium Ecosystem Assessment,
were underlining the “enormous wealth of nature’s
services”.
“They also underline that far
too many are becoming limited as a result of abuse,
poor management and over-exploitation,” he added.
Mr Steiner said one of his main
challenges over his coming first term as UNEP
Executive Director was to end this “antagonism
between economic and environmental policy”.
He said he would be focusing
on how markets and economic incentives and international
treaties and agreements can be made to work in
a way which is “pro environment, pro poor and
thus pro sustainable development”.
“Economic issues that touch
on the environment are all too often pushed out
of environmental conventions. Meanwhile, environmental
issues are generally left standing on the touch
line, little more than spectators and rarely asked
to play a real role in the great economic game.
Everyone, not just those in the developing but
also those in the developed world stand to lose
out if this continues,” said the new UNEP Executive
Director.
Mr Steiner, the organization’s
fifth Executive Director since it was set up in
the early 1970s, said there was every reason to
be positive: “There is a real tide of opinion
that is now running in the direction of environmentally
sustainable economies upon which we must and should
sail”.
“A new mood that increasingly
recognizes that, while money may make the world
go round, what makes money go round is ultimately
the trillions of dollars generated by the planet’s
goods and services—from the air cleaning and climate-change
countering processes of forests to the fisheries
and the coast line protection power of coral reefs”.
He said among his many targets,
aimed at making UNEP even more relevant to the
challenges of the 21st century, was that of achieving
stronger and more streamlined ties with other
UN organizations, civil society and the private
sector.
”The challenges are so immense
that, only by working together in mutual self
interest, can we realize internationally agreed
goals and deliver a stable, just and healthy planet
for this and future generations,” said Mr Steiner,
a Brazilian-born German national whose previous
experience includes being Secretary-General of
the World Commission on Dams based at the time
in South Africa.
He described the UN Secretary
General’s High-level panel on UN system-wide coherence
in the areas of Development, Humanitarian Assistance
and the Environment and the UN General Assembly’s
informal consultations on the institutional framework
for the UN system’s environmental activities-
chaired by ambassadors from Mexico and Switzerland-
as “real opportunities that we must all seize”.
“For the first time in two decades
environment and the institutional architecture
are receiving the highest levels of attention.
We have a golden chance to reform the institutions
and structures that deliver global and regional
environmental policy. It is a chance we must not
let slip away,” said Mr Steiner.
He said he was delighted to
be taking the helm of an African headquartered
organization: “My self and my family are no strangers
to this wonderful Continent with its diverse history
and culture and hospitable people and beautiful
landscapes. So I am delighted to be returning
to live here. I believe that Nairobi in East Africa
is an excellent location for a global environment
agency”.
“I am fully committed to ensuring
that UNEP’s headquarters becomes ever more a world
class facility on a par with cities like New York
or Geneva. Africa and the developing world deserve
nothing less,” said Mr Steiner.
“I also want to ensure that,
at the end of my first four year term, UNEP becomes
an ever brighter beacon of intellectual leadership,
scientific assessment and an energetic catalyst
for the deep and meaningful policy reforms and
revolutions so urgently needed world-wide,” said
Mr Steiner.
Notes to Editors
Achim Steiner was elected by the United Nations
General Assembly on 16 March 2006 to be Executive
Director of UNEP.
He succeeds Klaus Toepfer of Germany who stepped
down after just over two terms and eight years
as UNEP ED on 31 March 2006
Mr Steiner’s biography and other resources can
be found at www.unep.org
