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Environmental issues featured prominently during the United Nations Millennium
Summit hosted by Secretary-General Kofi Annan in New York in 2000 (see
box below). While recognition of the importance of environmental issues
at this summit was encouraging, the actual progress report was not. The
Secretary-General was blunt in his comments regarding environmental management,
stating that the international community was failing to provide future
generations the freedom to 'sustain their lives on this planet. On the
contrary', he said, 'we have been plundering our children's future heritage
to pay for environmentally unsustainable practices in the present' (UN
2000).
| UN Secretary-General's key proposals presented
to the Millennium Summit |
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Freedom from want: the Development Agenda
Heads of State or Government are urged to take action in the following
areas:
- Poverty: to halve, by 2015, the proportion of the world's
people (currently 22 per cent) whose income is less than one dollar
a day.
- Water: to halve, by 2015, the proportion of people who
do not have access to safe drinking water (currently 20 per cent).
- Education: to narrow the gender gap in primary and secondary
education by 2005; and to ensure that, by 2015, all children complete
a full course of primary education.
- HIV/AIDS: to halt, and begin to reverse, the spread of
HIV/AIDS by 2015 by:
- adopting as an explicit goal the reduction of HIV infection
rates in persons 15 to 24 years of age, by 25 per cent within
the most affected countries before the year 2005, and by 25 per
cent globally before 2010;
- setting explicit prevention targets: by 2005 at least 90 per
cent, and by 2010 at least 95 per cent, of young men and women
must have access to HIV-preventive information and services; and
- urging every seriously affected country to have a national plan
of action in place within one year of the Summit.
- Clearing the Slums: to endorse and act upon the Cities
Without Slums plan launched by the World Bank and United Nations
to improve the lives of 100 million slum dwellers by 2020.
A sustainable future: the Environmental Agenda
Heads of State or Government are urged to adopt a new ethic
of conservation and stewardship; and, as first steps:
- Climate Change: to adopt and ratify the Kyoto Protocol,
so that it can enter into force by 2002, and to ensure that its
goals are met, as a step towards reducing emissions of greenhouse
gases.
- Green Accounting: to consider incorporating the United
Nations system of 'green accounting' into their own national accounts,
in order to integrate environmental issues into mainstream economic
policy.
- Ecosystem Assessment: to provide financial support for,
and become actively engaged in, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment,
a major international collaborative effort to map the health of
the planet.
- Earth Summit +10: to prepare the ground for the adoption
of concrete and meaningful actions by the world's leaders at the
10-year follow-up to the Earth Summit in 2002
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| Source: UN 2000 |
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