UN Calls for Greater Efforts to Protect Environment

On the occasion of World Environment Day, which falls on Tuesday, the United Nations called on the international community to step up its efforts to protect environment to pass a safe and clean world to the future generations.

U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said that the theme of this year’s World Environment Day is Connect with the World Wide Web of Life, "a choice that reflects the need for every one of us to recognize our role in preserving our fragile planet and the ecosystems, resources and natural process that bind us all together."

"More than ever, life on Earth requires of us a sense of universal responsibility -- nation to nation, person to person, human to all other forms of life," he said.

Klaus Toepfer, executive director of the U.N. Environment Program, said that the riches of the information age are being felt by everyone on earth, however, the world's old problems are enduring and urgent, citing the looming threats of inequalities brought about by the forces of globalization, poverty, reduced food security, the intricate balance between population, resources and the environment, the challenge of sustainable development and the relationship of all these to the future of humanity and the environment.

"The theme of this year's World Environment Day is a reminder that the earth with all its complex, interlocking ecosystems, is the foundation of our lives. It is our common heritage. The bounty of nature is one and indivisible. It knows no frontiers, no territorial borders," he said.

He noted that human beings are a part of a vast web of interconnected species and systems that fit together in intricate ways, enabling the whole system to continue.

"There are limits to how much our population can grow, and how much we can alter our surrounding environment, without causing changes that will reverberate throughout that web and jeopardize our own future," he said.

He called on governments and people worldwide to join hands and take common steps to protect environment so as to pass a safe, clean world to human's offspring.

(Xinhua 06/05/2001)