EuropaWorld 8/6/2001 UNDP: Administrator's Call to Accelerate Sustainable Development

Over the past 50 years, two-thirds of the world's agricultural lands have been degraded, 75 per cent of the major marine fish stocks are either depleted or being fished at their biological limit, and much of the world faces water shortages resulting from over extraction and pollution, said the head of the United Nations Development Programme this week in a statement to mark World Environment Day on June 5th.

Mr Mark Malloch Brown, officially Administrator of UNDP was underlining the agency's commitment to keeping energy and the environment a core practice areas for the 21st century. "Our challenge is to ensure that next year's Johannesburg Summit will build on the achievements of the Rio Earth Summit a decade earlier and help achieve real global co-operation to entrench and accelerate sustainable development," he said.

The theme of this year's World Environment Day is 'Connect with the World Wide Web of Life,' underlining international support for concerted action at all levels of society to protect our common environment. The theme forces us to recognise the clear links between healthy global ecosystems and successful human development, said Mr. Malloch Brown. "We know it is the poor who are most affected, with 800 million people undernourished and 5 million dying each year because of polluted water, lack of sanitation, and waterborne diseases alone."

He re-committed UNDP to helping address these problems through articulate advocacy, strategic advisory services and innovative capacity building and other programmes, including dynamic use of information and communication technologies such as the World Wide Web.