Total ban asked on ozone-killing chemicals; international action on environment accelerates.

Total ban asked on ozone-killing chemicals

International action on the environment picked up considerable speed between April and June. Some 81 nations and the European Community agreed in Helsinki, Finland, to a total banning of certain ozone-killing chemicals by the year 2000 or sooner. The Soviet Union lobbied for a UN centre for emergency environmental assistance. And the United Kingdom spearheaded new action on global climate change.

African ministers and, across the globe, their Latin American and Caribbean counterparts, met to address thorny environmental issues in their respective regions. And an Amazon Declaration for the conservation of the environment in that threatened area was signed in Brazil by the Presidents of the eight States Parties to the Treaty for Amazonian Co-operation.

The Helsinki Declaration on the Protection of the Ozone Layer, unanimously adopted in the Finnish capital on 2 May, goes far beyond the 50 per cent reduction of chloro-fluorocarbons (CFCs) called for in the 1987 Montreal Protocol, which entered into force in January 1989. All 36 countries that have ratified the Protocol joined in the Declaration.

Halon gases, used as fire-extinguishing agents, and other ozone-depleting substances will be phased out "as soon as feasible", the Declaration adds. Development of environmentally acceptable substitute chemicals will be accelerated. CFCs are widely used as coolants in refrigerators and air conditioners.

Developing countries will be helped, financially and technically, in the transition to new chemicals that do not damage the ozone layer.

Reacting to disasters

The United Nations should be able to quickly dispatch teams of experts to environmental disaster areas all over the world, Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze said on 30 April in a letter to the Secretary-General (A/44/264-E/1989/73).

The USSR has suggested creation of a UN centre for emergency environmental assistance to deal with legal problems emanating from transboundary environmental disasters. It could also review feasibility studies for the construction of major new industrial or power projects, especially in "environmentally precarious areas". A special environmental trust fund could also be set up.

No time to wait

Warning that there was "no time to wait", the United Kingdom on 8 May called for the rapid drafting of a broad and simple convention on global warming setting "guidelines for good climatic behavior". Specific details could be dealt with in Protocols to be subsequently approved.

Sir Crispin Tickell, the United Kingdom's Permanent Representative to the UN, told the Economic and Social Council in New York that high-level involvement by the Security Council was needed because rising temperatures could lead to a disruption of life on earth "on a scale hard to imagine".

A "particular horror" would be the emergence of "environmental refugees" over and above the millions of refugees that already exist, he said.

The United Kingdom suggested creation of an environmental committee by the General Assembly.

The United Kingdom, noting the USSR proposal for an environmental centre, preferred that existing institutions such as UNEP, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the World Climate Programme and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, be strengthened.

African efforts

At UNEP headquarters, in Nairobi, Kenya, ministers from 39 African countries at a special environmental meeting (10-12 May), called for faster implementation of the 1985 Cairo Programme of Action for African Co-operation.

Its main objectives are to halt environmental degradation on the continent; enhance food production; achieve self-sufficiency in energy and other resources; and rectify the imbalance between populations and resources.

Despite severe financial hardships, pilot projects have already begun in a number of countries, relying as much as possible on local resources, expertise and grass-roots development experience.

A few weeks later, environment, economic planning and education ministers from 30 African countries sat down in Kampala, Uganda (12-16 June) for the first time with representatives of grass-roots organizations to chart common survival strategies for the continent.

Amazonian Declaration

The eight Amazonian countries--Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela--declared on 6 May that international concern about the environment in that part of the world should be translated into financial and technological aid and promised to give "full political impetus" to the sustainable development of the Amazon region.

Calling for "new resource flows" to environmental protection projects in their countries, and free access to scientific knowledge and clean technologies, the Amazonian Declaration, signed by the eight Presidents in Manaus, Brazil, reaffirms "the sovereign right of each country to manage freely its natural resources".

The Presidents reject "any attempts made to use legitimate ecological concerns to realize commercial profits" and denounce "the grave conditions of the foreign debt" which has transformed their countries into net exporters of capital "at the cost of intolerable sacrifices for our peoples."

They also reiterate their "full respect" for the right of indigenous populations to maintain and preserve their integrity, cultures and ecological habitats, subject "to the sovereignty of each State". The eight countries are parties to the 1978 Treaty for Amazonian Co-operation.

A few weeks earlier, delegates from 32 nations gathered in Brasilia for the Sixth Ministerial Meeting on the Environment in Latin America and the Caribbean (30 and 31 March).

Brazilian President Jose Sarney told the meeting that the deep connection between ecological problems and the unfair world economic and social order could not be denied. "The major barrier to the solution of environmental problems lies in the inequity of the appalling current disparities in the wide gap between the wealthy and the poor", he stated.