BENONI,
South Africa, Aug. 18 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) -
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 Sunday, news agencies
reported.
UN
Environmental Program (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, Agence france-Presse (AFP) reported.
"A
key part of the talks centers 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.
U.S.
Secretary of State Colin Powell is set to replace President George W.
Bush as the American representative at the U.S. summit.
The
last summit attended by the U.S. in South Africa was the International
Conference on Racism and Xenophobia, in which Israel and the U.S.
walked out among talk of international condemnation for Israeli
actions and against the Palestinians and U.S. support for the illegal
occupation of Palestinian lands
