Remarks by Achim Steiner at the Environment for Europe Conference

A properly functioning economy is an environmentally friendly economy

Astana, 21 September 2011-Thank you for inviting me to address the 7th Ministerial Conference of the Environment for Europe with 56 participating countries, the UN Economic Commission for Europe and partner organizations and institutions.

And thank you to the Government of Khazakstan for hosting this important event.

Twenty years ago, in June 1991, the first Environment for Europe Ministerial Conference took place at the Dobris Castle near Prague where late Josef Vavrousek, Environment Minister of what was then Czechoslovakia initiated the "Environment for Europe" process. 

Your meeting comes at a time of extraordinary reflection, debate and discourse on sustainable development in terms of acceleration and scaling-up.

20 years after the 1992 Earth Summit, the world is again on the Road to Rio with the Rio+20 conference scheduled for June next year.

As in Europe, the world has passed through two decades of extraordinary transformation and change geopolitically but also economically, socially and environmentally.

The Astana conference, the last pan European ministerial meeting before the November 1 deadline for inputs to Rio+20, can shape and sharpen this region's contribution to the overall themes.

Your two themes - Sustainable management of water and water-related ecosystems; and Greening the economy: mainstreaming the environment into economic development - reflect the urgency to take sustainability seriously in a world where next month the seventh billion person will be born-two billion more than in 1992.

Your two conference themes also echo to those of Rio+20-a Green Economy in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication and an institutional framework for sustainable development. Read More

(Source : United Nations Environment Programme)