Govt seeks ozone protocol ratification

Press, 6 October 1987, Page 36

Govt seeks ozone protocol ratification

By

OLIVER RIDDELL

in Wellington

An urgent ratification of the Montreal Protocol for the Protection of the Ozone Layer is being sought by the Government.

The Associate Minister for the Environment, Mr Woollaston, was reacting to the announcement (“The Press,” October 2) by United States scientists of further growth in the “ozone hole” over Antarctica.

A National Aeronautics and Space Administration scientist, Dr Jim Margitan, had said that the annual spring depletion of the ozone layer over Antarctica was this year the worst on record.

Mr Woollaston said New Zealanders lived closer to the Antarctic “ozone hole” than anyone else. He had emphasised that at the closing session of the Montreal conference on the ozone layer last month.

“I urged the countries represented at the conference to take speedy action to ratify the protocol so that it could come into force at the start of 1989,” Mr Woollaston said.

These latest findings under-scored the urgent need for ratification of the protocol and for the implementation of the control measures it contained.

Although still in an unrefined form, the scienti-

fic data clearly indicated that the chemical processes resulting from pollution by man-made substances were implicated in the worsening situation over Antarctica. New Zealand was one of the first signatories of the Montreal Protocol, he said. Since then, steps had been taken to identify the domestic measures the New Zealand Government had to take before it could ratify the protocol. The urgent implementation of the agreed measures to control the Emission of ozone-deplet-ing substances into the atmosphere was of vital importance to New Zeakland’s health and economy.