The first-ever United Nations Environmental Assembly (UNEA) underway in Kenya has said climate change and the environment must be the top priority of the world.
More than 150 high-level delegations are undertaking a weeklong examination of the intersection between global economic progress and the environment.
The environment was no longer a niche topic backed by a passionate minority, Achim Steiner, the head of the UN Environmental Program (UNEP) told The Associated Press newsagency, but was clearly linked to economic and societal issues.
The changing environment, including climate change, pollution, land degradation and access to wate, showed that the world’s economy needed to be reinvented or progress would suffer, Mr Steiner said.
The UN recently upgraded UNEP’s standing and the weeklong assembly is the highest-level UN body ever convened on the environment.
“Wherever you live on the planet these phenomena are going to change the lives and economies of people, whether it’s in Ohio, somewhere in Siberia or western China,” Mr Steiner said.
Sanjaasuren Oyun, minister of environment and green development in Mongolia, told the opening session that a shift toward more environmentally sound policies is a prerequisite for sustainable development.
Ms Oyun was elected the president of the newly constituted UN Environmental Assembly (UNEA).
The conference is discussing ways to increase the progress of what is known as the green economy, including alternative energies, smart grids and new transportation options.
Delegates will also look at the illegal wildlife trade, including rhino and elephant poaching.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is expected to attend the UNEA meeting later in the week
Mr Steiner said UNEP argued that the world was on the verge of a technology revolution that in the coming decades would allow humans to tap into endless sources of energy.
That would fundamentally change a continent such as Africa, where 70 per cent of residents today do not have access to electricity.
Put another way, he said, the globe would see another block of people the size of China demanding access to energy.
Already, Mr Steiner said, air pollution caused seven million premature deaths a year, four times the combined number of deaths from AIDS and diarrhoea, a huge killer in Africa.
“A healthy environment is about healthy people,” Mr Steiner said.
“What we are doing is helping people understand how people will live better and longer and how their children will have a world that is not so polluted that the quality of their lives will be compromised.”
World leaders recognise that global environmental cooperation must be achieved, Mr Steiner said.
US President Barack Obama this month proposed new rules to cut carbon dioxide emissions from coal plants by up to 30 percent by 2030 from 2005 levels.
The proposal has been well received in Africa, which is seen as being highly vulnerable to changing climate patterns, changes African leaders blame on the West.
President Obama’s announcement sent a strong signal that the U.S. will undergo a sustained and serious effort to bring down its carbon footprint, Steiner said. Climate change is a dramatic driver of a rethinking of global economies, Mr Steiner added.
“At the beginning of the 21st century the environment and natural resources are perhaps more critical than ever before in allowing our economies to advance,” he said.
If economic penalties such as carbon taxes were not adjusted and the world continued to see the environment as an expendable commodity for national development, “we are facing an increasing dramatic set of scenarios where tipping points kick in and we reach a point of no return,” Mr Steiner added.
