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WORLDWIDE
FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS
US
Government Plans to Make 1997 "Banner Year" for Environment
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Forest
Networking a Project of Ecological Enterprises
4/22/96
OVERVIEW
& SOURCE
The
United States government plans to make 1997 a banner
environmental
year, with recent announcements of iniatives to
regain
ecological leadership. This comes, not
surprisingly, as a
presidential
election nears and President Clinton reaches out to
the
Green vote. Reuters reports on
Secretary of State Warren
Christopher's
recent environmental statements. Now is
the time to
keep
track of election year promises to insure they are kept.
Pledged
initiatives include developing a strategy for sustainable
management
of the world's forests, seeking agreements on further
cuts in
greenhouse gases, tackling toxic chemicals, and pressing
Congress
to ratify the Biodiversity Convention.
g.b.
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RELAYED
TEXT STARTS HERE:
U.S. to
make 1997 "banner year" for environment
4/9/96
Copyright
1996 by Reuters
PALO
ALTO, Calif (Reuter) - The United States plans to make 1997 a
"banner
year" for the environment in an ecological drive to match
its
global political leadership, Secretary of State Warren
Christopher
said Tuesday.
In a
speech at Stanford University, Christopher listed a
series
of initiatives Washington would launch which he said
would
make next year the most important for the world
environment
since the 1992 Rio de Janeiro "Earth Summit."
"The
United States is providing the leadership to promote
global
peace and prosperity," he said. "We must also lead in
safeguarding
the global environment on which that prosperity and
peace
ultimately depend."
At the
Rio summit, the Republican administration of
then-president
George Bush was widely seen as blocking tough
measures
to defend the environment. But President Clinton, who
took
office in 1993, changed course, signing a treaty to protect
natural
species and agreeing to anti-pollution goals.
In
February Christopher announced he was upgrading
environmental
issues on the U.S. foreign policy agenda, saying
they
were "inextricably linked" with national security
interests.
"As
the flagship institution of American foreign policy,
the
State Department must spearhead a government-wide effort to
meet...environmental
challenges," Christopher said
Tuesday.
"A foreign policy that failed to address such problems
would
be ignoring the needs of the American people.
"We
are going to use the remainder of 1996 to try to ensure
that
1997 is a banner year on the environment," he told a
questioner.
Among
the initiatives Christopher listed were:
-- to
seek agreements on further cuts in "greenhouse
gases,"
of which the United States is the leading emitter.
-- to
help lead an "international process" to tackle
problems
caused by toxic chemicals, some of them banned in the
United
States but not elsewhere.
-- to
develop a strategy for sustainable management of the
world's
forests, a problem he addressed during a visit to
Brazil's
Amazon jungle last month.
-- to
press Congress to ratify the Biodiversity Convention,
signed
by Clinton, and the Law of the Sea Treaty, although he
admitted
the prospects of ratification were "less good than I
wish
they were."
-- to
provide leadership to ensure that a U.N. summit on
cities
in Istanbul in June effectively addressed the problems.
-- to
host, by the end of 1997, a conference on strategies
to
improve compliance with international environmental pacts.
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