DIRECTOR-GENERAL STRESSES ROLE OF DATA-SHARING AND EDUCATION IN ENVIRONMENTAL PRESERVATION

 Nairobi (Kenya), February 9 (No.2001-20) - UNESCO Director-General Koïchiro Matsuura today stressed the importance of education and of scientific information-sharing to bolster the political will required to meet the challenges of environmental protection, in an address to the 21st session of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Governing Council and Global Ministerial Environment Forum in Nairobi. 

Before reviewing UNESCO’s activities and co-operation with UNEP in environmental protection, Mr Matsuura observed that ten years after the Earth Summit in Rio, the world’s nations had not done what they had undertaken to do for the environment. He explained that “insufficient political will and at times hesitant citizen involvement” play an important role in this failure and stressed the “need for greater efforts in favour of education and information.” 

He declared: “We know that addressing the challenge of sustainable development – the key to human security – will require deep-seated changes in our ways of thinking and acting. As we see it in UNESCO, for science, this shift has profound implications, ranging from coping with increasing complexity, breaking down traditional disciplinary barriers, designing research to be relevant to policy-making, rethinking education at all levels, and communicating scientific information to non-technical user groups. Most importantly, there needs to be a greater input of science into the environmental policy-making process, in both qualitative and quantitative terms.” 

Mr Matsuura, speaking of a looming global water crisis, reiterated his commitment to making water a priority for UNESCO: “Nearly a quarter of humanity does not have direct access to drinking water. Scientific and technological progress has not remedied this situation. This failure makes the prospect of a global water crisis a very real one. UNESCO is endeavouring to promote a proactive, integrated and multidisciplinary approach to the problem of water resources management, combining social, scientific, environmental and political factors. UNESCO’s freshwater arm, the International Hydrological Programme, will focus in the coming years on water’s interactions not only with the biosphere – including oceans – but with the whole social system, with a view to minimizing risk related to water security, one of the key challenges facing the world in the 21st century.” 

He praised the existing co-operation between UNESCO and UNEP and spoke of freshwater as “an excellent example” of the reinforced co-operation he is seeking to achieve between the two organizations within the framework of the new UN system-wide World Water Assessment Programme (WWAP), launched by UNESCO last year. The Director-General recalled that “the main product of the WWAP will be the biennial World Water Development Report, the first issue of which should be out in 2003, in time for the World Water Forum to be held in Japan. The WWAP will help to promote sound policy decisions for the sustainable use of freshwater resources, thereby heading off possible causes of conflict”, he said.  

The Director-General said that UNESCO, “in its scientific programmes, - biodiversity and terrestrial ecosystems, oceans, coastal zones, freshwater, earth crust and natural hazards – […] is reviewing its co-operation with governments, the scientific community and its UN system partners, notably UNEP, to ensure that it is effective and relevant.” He pledged that “UNESCO will continue, through its major long-standing intergovernmental scientific programmes, to work towards enhancing the scientific basis for the protection of the environment and sustainable use of natural resources.”

The Director-General spoke of UNEP-UNESCO co-operation in the development of ecologically friendly tourism and in capacity-building with regard to renewable energies, particularly in developing countries. “Investment in renewable energy resources remains very insufficient”, he said, “although they are the most environmentally sound source of energy, and given that more than one billion people in rural areas of developing countries are without basic energy services.” Mr Matsuura expressed the hope that the two organizations will be able to encourage, on the national level, “much greater interaction between ministries responsible for education and those overseeing environmental affairs. If we are to achieve anything meaningful in this race against time, we cannot afford to allow the walls of fields of competence or ministerial briefs to hold us back.” 

Recommending a more holistic approach to sustainable development, Mr Matsuura reiterated that “environmental policies need to pay special attention to the specific socio-economic and cultural context of the country concerned. This is true for the definition of national and local policies, as well as for the design of technical co-operation projects in developing countries, which must also build on human resources available in the country.” 

“Education and capacity-building in environment-related issues is a tremendous task”, Mr Matsuura declared, warning that “without informed citizens in all corners of the world, the political will to actually solve the problems we are facing will not be strong enough. […] UNESCO has been given a leading responsibility [… for] education for sustainable development. In this context, we are also undertaking specific tasks on education within the framework of […] the Convention on Desertification and the Convention on Biological Diversity.” 

Mr Matsuura concluded by reaffirming his “full commitment to using the strengths of UNESCO […] in enhancing environmental protection and preserving our life support systems. To this end it is essential to ensure the full success of the World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002, which must result in enhanced political will and truly positive action.” 

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