Conference to debate tackling air pollution

Press, 26 June 1984, Page 8

Conference to debate tackling air pollution

NZPA-Reuter Munich Environment Ministers and top officials from 31 nations in Europe and North America gathered in Munich yesterday to seek a joint strategy for fighting air pollution. The West German Chancellor, Dr Helmut Kohl, said in a welcoming statement that overcoming the damage to forests, lakes, and rivers caused by air pollution was one of the “biggest challenges of our time.” West Germany, host to the four-day conference, has seen its forests deteriorate dramatically in recent years. This is mainly attributed to emissions from industry and vehicles. Growing fears about pollution have turned the Green (ecologist) Party into a serious political factor, and Bonn has made care of the environment a top policy plank domestically and in the European Community. Dr Kohl underlined the wider importance that Bonn attached to the presence of the United States and the Soviet Union with their

respective allies, Moscow having boycotted preparatory talks in May. “I regard it as extremely important for the conference that East and West, despite all that divides them, are ready to discuss how to reduce cross-border air pollution through practical means,” he said. Moscow and some of its allies said that they will call for a slow-down in the super-Power arms race to help the environment. In a proposed preamble to a draft resolution, the East bloc nations said that the arms race had disastrous consequences on the environment. The draft was submitted by the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, and the Soviet republics of Belorussia and the Ukraine. Czechoslovakia had already signalled its intention of raising the arms issue at the conference, accusing the West of diverting vast sums into new weapons instead of spending money on pollution controls.

All East European coun-

tries except Albania have sent ministerial or highlevel delegations, as have most Western European States, the United States, and Canada. The conference’s chairman, Dr Friedrich Zimmerman, Bonn’s Interior Minister, with responsibility for the environment, said that Munich would be a main step forward if it produced a joint policy resolution. This would mainly have to address the problem of cutting sulphur dioxide and nitrous oxide emissions, assumed to be the main forest killers.

At the preparatory talks no accord was reached on targets for lowering emissions, but East Germany, one of the few Soviet bloc countries that took part then, signalled readiness to take radical steps to cut exhaust fumes from cars.

A top Zimmermann aide emphasised that no legally binding accords were to be expected at the conference, but it would give political impetus and endorse common goals at a high level.