Chirac Calls for New, Tougher UN Environment Body
Date: 05-Feb-07
Country: FRANCE
Author: Francois Murphy
Speaking to a meeting of scientists, environmental campaigners, foreign officials and business leaders, Chirac said the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) had insufficient power and should be overhauled and upgraded.
"The ecological crisis knows no borders. Yet we still act, too often, in a dispersed manner," said Chirac, who is 74 and approaching the end of his second term.
"Our aim must be to transform (the UNEP) into a fully fledged United Nations organisation. This United Nations Environment Organisation will carry the global ecological conscience," he said, suggesting the new body's name.
Earlier on Thursday, the world's top climate scientists said global warming was man-made. They predicated more droughts, heat waves, and rising sea levels if action is not taken.
The European Union backs Chirac's proposal but UN heavyweights like the United States, Russia and China do not.
Critics of the UNEP, which is separate to, and overlaps with the UN Climate Secretariat, say it lacks power because its business is handled by environment ministers, who are often low-ranking members of their home governments.
"Faced with this emergency, now is not the time for half measures. It is the time for a revolution, in the true sense of the term," Chirac said, calling for the United Nations to pass a universal declaration of environmental rights and duties.
He added companies must be environmentally responsible.
Unlike the meeting in a neighbouring district of Paris that issued the climate report, Chirac's conference was not sponsored by the United Nations. It was called at his initiative.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the world needed a more coherent system of environmental governance but stopped short of endorsing Chirac's plan.
Chirac, who has also called for a carbon tax on imports from countries that have not signed the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, is due to present the conference's findings on Saturday.
(Additional reporting by Jacques Clement)
