Chirac issues call for new UN environment body

Paris, Feb 3: French President Jacques Chirac called for thecreation of powerful new UN environment body as he opened a conferenceto discuss his plan hours after a UN panel said global warming wasman-made.

Speaking to a meeting of scientists, environmental campaigners andforeign officials, Chirac said the current United Nations EnvironmentProgramme (UNEP) had insufficient clout and should be upgraded to havemore say in world affairs.

''The ecological crisis knows no borders. Yet we still act, toooften, in a dispersed manner,'' said Chirac, who is 74 and approachingthe end of his second term.

''Our aim must be to transform (the UNEP) into a fully fledgedUnited Nations organisation. This United Nations EnvironmentOrganisation will carry the global ecological conscience,'' he said.

Critics of the UNEP, which is separate to and overlaps with the UNClimate Secretariat, say it does not have enough power because it isdealt with by national environment ministers, who are often low-rankingcabinet members.

Earlier on Thursday, the world's top climate scientists said itwas ''very likely'' that human activities led by burning fossil fuelsexplained most of the global warming of the past 50 years.

In a report released in Paris, the UN panel predicted moredroughts, heat waves, rains and a slow gain in sea levels that couldlast for more than 1,000 years.

''Faced with this emergency, now is not the time for halfmeasures. It is the time for a revolution, in the true sense of theterm,'' Chirac said, calling for the United Nations to pass a universaldeclaration of environmental rights and duties.

Means of production and consumption should be overhauled, he said,adding: ''Companies must weigh their environmental responsibility.'' UNSecretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the world needed a more coherentsystem of environmental governance but stopped short of endorsingChirac's plan, the focal point of the meeting which ends today.

In a recorded message, he said the United Nations would help countries shift towards sustainable development.

''The UN Environment Programme ... has embarked on wide-rangingreforms to ensure it is equal to this challenge. The other parts of theUN family are mobilising all their efforts too. I plan to strengthenthis work further,'' Ban said.

German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel backed the plan.

''We must ... launch a process to upgrade the UNEP to a UN environment organisation, the UNEO,'' he said in a statement.

Chirac, who has also called for a carbon tax on imports fromcountries that have not signed the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, isdue to present the conference's findings today.

Reuters >