More efforts to promote sustainable development urged at African meeting

A regional meeting in Nairobi, Kenya, preparing for a major United Nation conference on environmental issues, has urged African countries to mobilize their efforts to promote sustainable development and called on the international community to support that undertaking.

The call came in a ministerial declaration adopted on Thursday at the end of a three-day meeting of the regional preparatory committee laying the groundwork for next year's World Summit on Sustainable Development.

The World Summit, scheduled for 2 to 11 September 2002 in Johannesburg, South Africa, is a 10-year follow-up to the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED). It aims to reinvigorate, at the highest political level, the global commitment to sustainable development.

Regional preparatory committee meetings for the Johannesburg Summit will take place next week in Cairo and in Rio de Janeiro, according to a UN spokesman in New York.