WORLD LEADERS URGED TO PUT ‘NATURAL CAPITAL’ AT CENTRE OF POVERTY ERADICATION

2005 World Summit Must Be Red Ribbon Day for Environment, Says UNEP Head

(Reissued as received.)

NAIROBI, 17 June (UNEP) -- Sound and solid investment in the environment will go a long way towards meeting international targets on poverty reduction, the supply of drinking water and fighting the spread of infectious diseases, the head of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) said today.

Speaking at a regional launch of a new United Nations report on the Millennium Development Goals, UNEP Executive Director Klaus Toepfer said:  “The goods and services delivered by nature, including the atmosphere, forests, rivers, wetlands, mangroves and coral reefs, are worth trillions of dollars.”

“To fight poverty, we need three kinds of capital -- financial, human and environmental.  When we damage natural capital, we not only undermine our life support systems, but the economic basis for current and future generations.  Targeted investments in this natural capital have a high rate of return in terms of development”, he said.

“While restoring them to health, after they have been damaged, is a costly and often time-consuming affair, so better to keep them intact than undermining them in the first place”, said Mr. Toepfer.

In September, Heads of State will meet in New York to debate the reform of the United Nations and the status of the eight Goals.

These cover vital areas such as halving the number of people living on less than a dollar a day and the reduction of child mortality to reversing forest loss and the empowerment of women.

The report launched today highlights good progress in many parts of the developing world towards meeting the Goals by 2015.  However, it confirms that sub-Saharan Africa remains off-track in most, if not all, areas.

“We will enter the 2005 World Summit in the sure and certain knowledge that the environment is the oxygen that is breathing life into the Goals and their underlying indicators.  This is made clear by numerous reports produced to inform Heads of State attending the Summit”, said Mr. Toepfer.

“So the environment is the red ribbon running around all our ambitions.  I sincerely hope that this will be fully and finally recognized in the outcome of the Summit.  That 16 September will be truly a red ribbon day for the environment”, he said.

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, the work of 1,300 scientists and experts from 95 countries in which UNEP has played a pivotal role, gives some of the first firm figures on the environment’s economic value and thus its role in meeting the Goals.

It states that tropical mangroves, coastal ecosystems that are nurseries for fish, natural filters and coastal defences are worth around $1,000 a hectare when intact.  Cleared for shrimp farms, the same area of coast is worth only $200 a hectare.

The Assessment also puts a value on peat bogs and marshlands.  It estimates that the Muthurajawela Marsh, a more than 3,000-hectare coastal bog in Sri Lanka, is worth an estimated $5 million a year as a result of services such as local flood control.

Losses as a result of damage by alien, invasive species in the CapeFloral region of South Africa are estimated at $93 million a year.

An intact wetland in Canada is valued at $6,000 a hectare, whereas one cleared for intensive agriculture is worth about $2,000 a hectare.

The annual recreational value of coral reefs in the six Marine Management Areas of the Hawaiian islands ranges from $300,000 to tens of millions of dollars a year.

Studies from Algeria, Italy, Portugal, Syria and Tunisia also point to the value of intact forests.

These estimate that the value of the timber and fuel-wood from a forest is worth less than a third when compared with the value of services such as water-shed protection, recreation and the absorption of pollutants like greenhouse gases.

The burning of 10 million hectares of Indonesia’s forests in the late 1990s cost an estimated $9 billion as a result of factors such as increased health care and tourism losses.

Costs of restoring a damaged ecosystem back to health are also high.  In the AmericanState of Louisiana, billions of dollars is being spent to restore coastal marshes and wetlands as part of measures to reduce storm surges generated by hurricanes.

Mr. Toepfer also highlighted new and emerging research on the importance of a healthy environment for reducing the spread of diseases.

Studies in the Amazon rainforest, for example, indicate that for every 1 per cent increase in deforestation, there is an 8 per cent increase in the number of malaria-carrying mosquitoes.

This has important implications for not only human health but the costs to society.  Africa’s gross national product (GNP) in 2000 could have been 25 per cent or $100 billion larger if malaria had been eradicated some 35 years ago, say experts.

Mr. Toepfer said he welcomed the various international initiatives aimed at mobilizing funds and political will on issues, including Africa and climate change.

These include the announcement, made last week, on debt relief for African and Latin American countries and the initiatives by the Government of the United Kingdom under its presidency of the Group of 8, including its Commission for Africa.

European Union nations recently pledged to move to a minimum overseas development aid amounting to 0.7 per cent of their economies.

In the run-up to July’s Group of 8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, Mr. Toepfer also urged Governments to back a substantial replenishment of the Global Environment Facility (GEF).  The GEF is a multi-billion dollar fund, which assists developing countries in environment and development projects, enabling them to implement their commitments to four major global environmental conventions.

“The GEF is the most important source of environmental funding for developing countries, helping them in areas such as mitigation and adaptation to climate change, conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity, phase out of harmful and persistent chemicals and combating land degradation.  Governments must ensure its continued success by giving it the necessary financial backing”, he said.

With today’s launch also coinciding with the World Day to Combat Desertification, Mr. Toepfer announced the start of a new $3.5 million UNEP/GEF project to combat land degradation around Kenya’s MountMarsabit.

The project is the latest in a $115 million portfolio of projects addressing land degradation in Africa implemented by UNEP and co-financed by the GEF.  These projects are concrete actions supporting the Environment Initiative of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD).  NEPAD’s Environment Initiative, adopted by African Heads of State, has been developed and is being implemented with strong support of GEF and UNEP.

Mr. Toepfer also announced that UNEP will partner in a major $100 million initiative to combat land degradation and promote sustainable land management in Africa soon to be launched by the World Bank.

This project, supported by GEF, is expected to be announced during the forthcoming Group of 8 summit. It will be an important contribution to the International Year of Deserts and Desertification in 2006 initiated by UNEP.

For more information, please contact:  Nick Nuttall, UNEP Spokesperson, Office of the Executive Director, tel: +254-20-62-3084; mobile: +254-733-63-2755, e-mail: nick.nuttall@unep.org; or Elisabeth Waechter, UNEP Associate Information Officer, tel: +254-20-62-3088, mobile: +254-720-17-3968, e-mail: elisabeth.waechter@unep.org.  In New York, contact Jim Sniffen, Information Officer, tel: +1-212-963-8094/8210, e-mail: info@nyo.unep.org.

For more information on the “Millennium Development Goals Report, 2005”, see http://unstats.un.org/unsd/mi/mi_dev_report.htm

For more information on the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, see www.MAweb.org; for more information on the Assessment’s “Ecosystems and Human Well-Being: Desertification Synthesis”, issued yesterday, see http://www.inweh.unu.edu/inweh/MA/MA_report.htm.

For information on today’s World Day to Combat Desertification, see www.unccd.int.

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