After Safari, Clinton Vows Environment Push
3/31/98
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Title: After Safari, Clinton Vows Environment Push
Source: Reuters
Status: Copyrighted, contact source to reprint
Date: 3/31/98
Byline: Randall Mikkelsen
GABORONE (Reuters) - President Clinton emerged from a ``magnificent'' safari in
Botswana elephant country Tuesday to pledge new efforts to protect the
environment in Africa and elsewhere.
``Any human being who spends any amount of time in a unique pristine place full
of the wonders of animal and plant life instinctively feels humanity's sacred
obligation to preserve our environment,'' Clinton said in a speech at the
Mokolodi educational nature reserve near Botswana's capital Gaborone.
Clinton outlined efforts to help Africa preserve its environment by controlling
the spread of the deserts which now take up 27 percent of the continent, and by
helping local communities play a greater role in environmental issues. He spoke
after reviewing ecology concerns in a meeting with environmentalists from
around Africa.
The U.S. space agency NASA would begin a survey of Africa to measure the impact
of climate change, Clinton announced, and he pledged a renewed effort to win
U.S. Senate ratification of an international treaty to fight desert spreading
by encouraging local efforts to protect fragile lands.
Clinton said two U.S. senators, Republican Jim Jeffords of Vermont and Democrat
Russell Feingold of Wisconsin, would lead the fight to ratify the treaty, which
has languished since it was signed and submitted in 1996. Some 120 nations have
already ratified it.
Ruud Jansen, an official of the World Conservation Union who attended Clinton's
speech, said: ``I think it is high time the U.S. gave some effort to ratify the
convention. We would clearly anticipate that more attention to desertification
would provide the means (money) to combat it.'' He said fighting African
poverty was crucial to any environmental efforts.
A spokesman for Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms, Marc
Thiessen, declined in Washington to comment on the treaty other than to say:
``It looks like the treaty of the week.''
Clinton is in the final stretch of a 12-day Africa trip covering six countries.
The president headed to the last country, Senegal, after his speech. He returns
to Washington on Thursday.
The president flew to Gaborone earlier Tuesday from a two-day stay at Chobe
National Park in northwestern Botswana, near Namibia and Zambia.
``It's been wonderful, beyond my wildest dreams,'' Clinton said on leaving the
park, where he and first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton watched elephants, lions
and other African wildlife along the banks of the Chobe River.
``I learned a lot about this part of Africa. I learned a lot about the
environment. Mostly it was just wonderful to be out of doors and see what we
saw,'' he said. ``This is a magnificent place.''
The president sported a belt buckle depicting the open jaws of a crocodile as
he spoke.
In his environmental speech, Clinton said Africa played an important role as a
symbol and inspiration for environmentalists.
``American children in their imagination often travel to Africa. Since I was a
boy, we have done that. The essence of what attracts them and people everywhere
is a vision of the most magnificent, amazing creatures on earth living in
harmony with unspeakably beautiful nature, the vision we saw realized in
Chobe,'' he said.
``That vision of somehow nature in all of its manifestations in balance with
people living their lives successfully inspires environmental efforts around
the world,'' he said.
Clinton also stressed the importance of protecting the diversity of plant and
animal species, and praised Botswana's efforts to protect its variety of
wildlife.
Environmentalists said in a news conference in Gaborone on Monday that there
was a need for a joint policy among nations in the region to give wildlife
equal protection from poachers and other threats regardless of borders.
Before leaving the Chobe area, Clinton dropped by a Habitat for Humanity home-
building project and chatted with homeowners Simon and Ruth Mogwerane.
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter publicized Habitat for Humanity, in which
volunteers pitch in to build houses for the needy. The group built the home for
Mogwerane, a government gatekeeper on an $85 a month salary, and his wife and
sold it to them with a $1,220, no-interest mortgage costing $10 a month.
Clinton said upon leaving Chobe that he hoped to return, perhaps less
constrained next time by his entourage and the demands of protocol. ``Actually,
there are many parts of Botswana and nearby areas I really want to see,'' he
said.
``When I'm not president for example, if I want to drive 70 or 80 km (44-50
miles) to see Victoria Falls (in Zimbabwe), I can, without thinking of the
diplomatic implications of going into a different country and all of that.''
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