Conference cuts cackle

Press, 11 July 1988, Page 6

Conference cuts cackle

NZPA-Reuter Oslo Top United Nations officials have thrown away their prepared texts in a unique attempt to cut through protocol " and tackle world environmental problems head on. Leaders of almost all the world body’s specialist agencies put aside prepared notes and speeches in Oslo on Saturday to talk more freely about the fight against international pollution, Third World poverty and ecological destruction. “I’ve never been at a conference quite like it,” said Nafis Sadik, executive director of the United Nations Fund for Population. Officials said the idea came from Norway’s plain-speaking Prime Minister, Gro Harlem Brundtland, who invited the United Nations leadership to Oslo for the two-day environmental conference.

“This is the first time some of these people have done this in years,” said one official.

“It’s certainly very refreshing to get down to the real issues,” said William Draper, administrator of the U.N. Development Programme. Delegates, including the U.N. Secretary-General, Javier Perez de Cuellar,

want to forge a plan to coordinate the agencies’ fight against world pollution and economic decay. “We simply have to come up with something,” said Mansour Khalid, vice-chairman of the U.N. World Commission on Environment and Development.

The conference framework is an extensive report from the commission, chaired by Mr Brundtland, which warns that abuse of the environment threatens economic development. Mr Perez de Cuellar accused the world of misusing its resources in the arms race “when funds are so desperately needed to preserve the world for future generations.”

He said the United Nations should expand its monitoring to keep better track of pollution, desertification and waste dumping, and he urged education programmes to try to overcome ignorance of ecological problems. The World Bank’s president, Barber Conable, said that Third World economic development was one of the best ways of preserving the environment “Poverty is one of the most dangerous toxic forces affecting the world today,” he said.