South Africa's Minister for Water Affairs and Forestry, Kader Asmal, told correspondents this morning at a Headquarters press conference that increasing population and rapid urbanization were threatening freshwater supplies in Africa.
At a Headquarters press briefing this afternoon, Mohammed T. El-Ashry, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Global Environment Facility (GEF), said good policies and strong institutions were essential to the pursuit of environmentally sustainable development.
Voluntary industry initiatives were important policy tools for promoting sound environmental management, participants at the High-Level Advisory Panel on Business and Sustainable Development declared today at the end of its one- day informal dialogue.
At a Headquarters press conference this morning, the Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, John Prescott, called on the developing nations to sign the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
At a press briefing this afternoon at Headquarters, sponsored by the Division for Sustainable Development of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs, panellists addressed the issue, "Industry, Consumption, Labour and Trade: Who will Protect the Environment?"
The Executive Chairman of the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM), Richard Butler, said at a Headquarters press briefing this afternoon that the Commission would close its investigation of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programmes once the Iraqi Government gave a true and verifiable accounting of its claims.
Klaus Topfer, Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), this afternoon discussed the work of the Secretary-General's Task Force on environmental and human settlement issues, as well as efforts by the United Nations system regarding the forest fires in Indonesia, at a press briefing at United Nations Headquarters.
At a Headquarters press conference this afternoon, Vladislav Jovanovic, Charge d'Affairs of the Permanent Mission of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to the United Nations, appealed to the international community to call on Albania to stop aiding and abetting "terrorism" in the Serbian province of Kosovo and Metohija.
