SUNS  4367 Thursday 4 February 1999

Environment: UNEP urges members to pay up



Nairobi, Feb 2 (IPS/Judith Achieng) -- Operating on a shoe-string budget, the UN Environmental Programme (UNEP) has urged its members to pay up their subscriptions to enable the UN body deal with new and emerging environmental challenges.

Delivering his policy statement at the opening session of UNEP's 20th Governing Council in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi this week, UNEP executive director, Klaus Toepfer, said "the organisation is faced with increasing global environmental challenges which requires more funding
than it currently gets to enable it meet its obligations."

UNEP estimates its budget needs at $119.4 million for the next two years, $60 million higher than its previous budget. "The proposed budget of 119.4 million dollars, before the council for approval, has been made in the context of the immense challenges and expectations of UNEP," Toepfer told over 600 delegates on Monday.

Later, Toepfer told journalists that the budget he requested presents only "modest increase in the current biennium, based on what governments agreed to in 1997."

"This sum is, in my view, the minimum financial level that would enable UNEP to regain the effectiveness, critical mass and operating capital that is essential to the execution of the programme of work," he said.
"I don't believe that an extra $60 million a year for the global environmental voice is too much to ask for, especially when you consider the increased demands on the organisation with our expanded
mandate."

The funds, which UNEP is urging members to pay up, will be used for funding a range of activities like the fighting of the forest fires in Asia and floods in parts of Africa and the Caribbean which led to at least $90 billion damages last year.
The extensive and widespread fires which engulfed parts of South East Asia in 1997 and 1998 resulted in health problems among tens of thousands of people who were exposed to high levels of fire-produced gases for weeks, according to a new UNEP report.

The report, titled, 'Wildland Fires and Environment: A Global Synthesis', said the fires ravaged mainly Indonesian Kalimantan, Sumatra and Java forests, and to a lesser extent Brazil, Canada, France and Mexico.

In his message to the council, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan stated that early warning of environmental disasters could help even in  averting conflicts in many countries. "UNEP's assessment and early-warning capabilities can make an indispensable contribution to the UN's peace building efforts, since environmental degradation and natural resource issues can be precursors of conflict," he said.

During the five-day meeting, which began on Monday, environment ministers from 58 countries who form the UN body's governing body will set a new global environmental agenda in the face of the new environmental problems faced by the UN body.

One key issue the participants are expected to debate is the development of a monitoring and early warning system for UNEP to help avert environmental disasters such as the current earthquake effects in Colombia and the 1998 Indonesian wild fires.

The Council is also expected to discuss the recent economic and financial shocks in the global economy, which according to UNEP, have increased the risk of short-term financial crisis resulting in the roll back in gains made earlier in environmental policies in most countries.

"Governments are being compelled to address the issues of increasing unemployment and social impacts," Toepfer said, adding that, "in a world which is increasingly becoming borderless, we must create new global boundaries, through procedural legal and institutional mechanisms to take advantage of forces of liberalisation and globalisation."