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Water and the environment are indivisible. The management of water resources is central to our environmental future. And the formidable challenges the developing countries face in managing their water resources will be critical to our prospects for a secure and sustainable future as well as to theirs. An indispensable key to the UN's success in undertaking this role in leading and catalyzing action by the entire world community is for it to become the primary source of objective, credible information on major global trends and issues. Read more: The United Nations in the 21st Century (18 June 1996) It is only through changes in economic management and behaviour that we can hope to achieve a secure and sustainable balance between our economic, environmental and social needs and aspirations in the period ahead.
No sector of our economy will have a greater impact on the movement for sustainable development than road transport. To be sure, the transition to sustainable development will produce both winners and losers. But the winners will be those who are leading the process of change and the losers will be those who lag it and are left behind. Read more: Sustainable Development: winners and losers (26 March 1996)
Over the years all governments have developed a series of direct and indirect subsidies to various sectors of the economy - from energy, agriculture, transport, and resource development, to name but a few. While these were designed to serve purposes unrelated to their environmental impacts, it is now clear that many of them. amounting to literally hundreds of billions of dollars, provide de facto subsidies to practices that are environmentally destructive and unsustainable. Read more: Business and Sustainable Development (26 March 1996) The profound changes laking place in the new South, provide hath new imperatives and new opportunities to forge a new set of cooperative global relationships which move beyond outmoded, traditional notions of north and south. They must take into account both the shift of economic growth and political weight towards the new South as well as the continuing entrenchment of dire and debilitating poverty. Read more: The "new south" - key to a sustainable future (8 September 1995) |