Description
This special edition of UNEP's magazine Our Planet focuses on environmental security.
Executive Director Klaus Toepfer cites UN reports that argue that “environmental sustainability is a critical foundation for ending poverty, and…a considerable body of scientific data points to environmental degradation as a direct cause of many of the most pressing issues we face, including poverty, declining human health, hunger, undrinkable water, emerging diseases, rural-urban migration, and civil strife.”
Nobel Peace Prize-winner Wangari Maathai concurs: “There can be no peace without equitable development, and there can be no development without sustainable management of the environment in a democratic and peaceful space.”
Steve Lonergan, director of DEWA and head of the Environment and Conflict Initiative, writes that tensions over water will increase as scarcity increases, but that outright conflict can be avoided. Pekka Haavisto, head of UNEP’s Post-Conflict Assessment Unit, proposes that “Green Helmets” could provide environmental protection during times of conflict and in post-conflict situations, if the political will and technical capacities are in place. Other interviews and articles by former U.S. presidential candidate Joseph Lieberman on climate change, OSCE Secretary-General Jan Kubis on the Southern Caucasus, President Gayoom of the Maldives on the tsunami, and former CIA Director James Woolsey on energy security, join comments by ministers of the environment from Georgia, Iran, and Indonesia.
Information
- Author(s)
- Toepfer, Klaus, Wangari Maathai, Steve Lonergan, Pekka Haavisto, Joseph Lieberman, Jan Kubis and many others
- Publisher
- UNEP
- Place published
- Nairobi
- Date / journal vol no.
- Volume 15, no. 4
- Pages
- 32
