TAKING ACTION ON TRADE-RELATED ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION UNEP RELEASES SIX NEW COUNTRY-LEVEL REPORTS
Press Release
UNEP/53
TAKING ACTION ON TRADE-RELATED ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION UNEP RELEASES SIX NEW COUNTRY-LEVEL REPORTS
19991202SEATTLE/NAIROBI, 2 December (UNEP) -- At the third World Trade Organization (WTO) ministerial meeting in Seattle, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) is releasing six new reports that demonstrate how countries can take action to address trade-related environmental degradation.
"These reports clearly demonstrate how individual countries can identify the impacts of recent trade liberalization on their natural and environmental resources, and then develop innovative strategies to address negative impacts and strengthen positive ones", said Klaus Toepfer, UNEP Executive Director.
The country-level reports include new action-oriented research on trade- related environmental problems in the forestry, mining, fisheries, manufacturing and water sectors of six countries: Bangladesh, Chile, India, the Philippines, Romania and Uganda. Each report concludes by recommending a set of practical measures that promise to effectively halt trade-related environmental degradation, and in turn, ensure that the country's trade remains robust yet sustainable over the long term.
"Through trade liberalization, enhanced trade objectives were achieved in these six countries, but there were serious negative environmental, and related social, impacts of expanded trade activity as well", said Mr. Toepfer. "However, with technical assistance from UNEP, national teams, including non- governmental organizations, successfully developed policy packages to redirect each country's trade and economic development along a sustainable path", he said.
The six projects were entirely country-driven -- conceived, designed and conducted by national teams of practitioners - making them among the first of their kind. In each country, national teams are now working closely with relevant government departments to implement sustainable development policies. The UNEP plans to help start similar projects in other countries in 2000.
For more information contact: Hussein Abaza, Chief, UNEP Economics and Trade Unit, Geneva, Tel: (+41-22) 917-8179, Fax: (+41-22) 917-8076, e-mail: eteu@unep.ch Or Robert Bisset, UNEP press officer in Seattle, c/o Crown Plaza Hotel, tel: 1-206-464-1980, fax: 340-1617, mobile: 206-909-3518, e-mail: robert.bisset@unep.org. In Nairobi, please contact: Tore J. Brevik, UNEP Spokesman and Director of Communications and Public Information, P.O. Box 30552, Nairobi, Kenya; Tel.: (254-2) 623292; Fax: 623692; e-mail:
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