Environmental law and international treaties are in danger of becoming mere ”paper tigers” if countries do not enforce them, the United Nations’ top environmental official said on Sunday.
UN Environmental Programme (UNEP) executive director Klaus Toepfer told reporters a two-day meeting between 100 of the globe’s top judges would start on Monday to discuss the future of laws to protect the planet, ahead of the UN Earth Summit to be held in South Africa later this month.
”Almost all, if not all, countries have environmental laws. But unless these are complied with, unless they are enforced they are little more than symbols, tokens, paper tigers,” Toepfer said at a hotel in Benoni, east of Johannesburg.
”Unluckily until now, the judiciary was something like a stepchild in all these discussions,” Toepfer told reporters.
”In Rio de Janeiro (at the first Earth Summit in 1992), there was no discussion, no comparable meeting at all.”
More than 500 international and regional agreements, treaties and deals were meant to cover everything from protecting the ozone layer to the conservation of the oceans and seas, Toepfer said.
But in many regards, decisions taken at the Rio Earth Summit had yet to be implemented, he added.
”A key part of the talks centres on how to take forward access to information, public participation and access to justice, as enshrined in the 1992 Principle 10 of the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, Toepfer said.
Judges from countries as diverse as Greece and the Philippines will be discussing a set of principles which will be known as the ”Johannesburg Principles”. These will be presented at the World Summit on Sustainable Development which starts in Johannesburg on August 26.
Toepfer said he believed the principles would act as a guideline for judges and governments around the world to implement laws for a cleaner planet.
”This is an issue affecting billions of people who are effectively being denied their rights and one not only of national but regional and global concern,” he said.
Toepfer said environmentalists had become increasingly aware of how pollution in one part of the world affected another.
”The greenhouse gases of the industrial regions trigger droughts or the melting of glaciers or you get regional build-up of hazes or ‘brown clouds’, which is very much in evidence across much of Asia.”
The meeting is also expected to chart ways of implementing laws to preserve the rapid disappearance of forests, such as those in Indonesia.
Judges plan to form a global network to promote the exchange of ideas in making sure the laws are implemented, Toepfer said. – Sapa-AFP
For more about the Jo’burg Summit, visit our special report