Annan calls for steps to promote global sustainable development

Voicing concern over the fragile state of the world’s environment, Secretary-General Kofi Annan today called for a new ethic of global stewardship to promote sustainable development across the planet.

“Together, we can and must write a new and more hopeful chapter in natural and human history,” the Secretary-General said in a speech entitled “Towards a Sustainable Future,” which was delivered this morning on his behalf by his wife, Nane Annan, at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

The Secretary-General said countries have been slow to deliver on promises made at the UN’s “Earth Summit,” held in 1992 in Rio de Janeiro. Looking to the future, he said this September’s World Summit on Sustainable Development, set to convene in Johannesburg, offered “a chance to restore the momentum that had been felt so palpably after the Earth Summit.”

While lauding the fact that preparations for the Summit have brought renewed attention to environmental issues, he cautioned that there remained a “need for greater clarity on what Johannesburg is about and what it can achieve.”

Offering his own perspective, Mr. Annan called for action in five areas where “concrete results are both essential and achievable:” water, energy, agriculture, biodiversity and health. Specifically, he urged measures to widen access to clean drinking water, improve energy efficiency, fight land degradation, preserve the world’s ecosystems, and tackle the environmental causes of disease.

“Progress [in those five areas] would offer all human beings a chance of achieving prosperity that will not only last their own lifetime, but can be enjoyed by their children and grandchildren too,” he said.