VIENNA CONVENTION PROTECTING OZONE LAYER LAUDED 15 YEARS AFTER SIGNATURE

Press Release
UNEP/66

VIENNA CONVENTION PROTECTING OZONE LAYER LAUDED 15 YEARS AFTER SIGNATURE

NAIROBI, 21 March (UNEP) -- Tomorrow, 22 March, marks the fifteenth anniversary of the adoption of the Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer. With the adoption of that Convention, the foundation was laid for concerted international efforts to protect the ozone layer.

The Vienna Convention and its Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer are now acknowledged as outstanding successes and as examples to be followed for the solution of global environmental problems through global cooperation and partnership.

"Though the steps that the global community took at Vienna were small compared to the challenges facing it, they symbolized a major psychological breakthrough in dealing with the threat of the depletion of the ozone layer", said Klaus Toepfer, Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). "The Vienna Convention helped to pave the way for the more comprehensive agreement that was to follow -- the Montreal Protocol", he said.

The Vienna Convention committed parties to protecting human health and the environment against the adverse effects of depletion of the ozone layer due to human activities. It set out broad principles of ozone layer protection, rather than establishing the detailed phase-out schedule of ozone-depleting substances which were later included in the Montreal Protocol in 1987. The Convention committed States to cooperate in researching the causes and effects of ozone depletion as well as alternative technologies; to cooperate on adopting legal and policy measures to counteract activities that are harmful to the atmosphere and to facilitate the transfer of technology and transmission of information, especially to developing countries.

Both the Convention and the Protocol allowed the Parties thereto to progress step-by-step in building ownership of the process by all governments, industry, non- governmental organizations and academia, among others. At its adoption on 22 March 1985, the Convention was signed by 28 countries. There are now 173 Parties to the Vienna Convention. Those Parties have phased out 84 per cent of consumption of the chemicals that destroy the ozone layer. That path must continue to ensure recovery of the ozone layer by the year 2050.

For more information, please contact: Tore J. Brevik, UNEP Spokesman and Director of Communications and Public Information, Nairobi, tel.: (254-2) 623292; fax: 623692; e-mail: cpiinfo@unep.org; or Jim Sniffen, UNEP Information Officer, tel: 1-212-963-8094, fax: 1-212-963-7341, e-mail: uneprona@un.org. Official documents and other materials are available on the Internet at http://www.unep.org/ozone.

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