A/42/427
English
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programmes to deal with their problems and advise and assist development assistance agencies in this respect; and
The environment has quickly deteriorated in certain areas and we don't know where to put the thresholds for nature's tolerance. We must move very fast towards a consensus on the necessity for taking urgent action. There is a strong popular support for this in our country. The findings of several opinion polls tell us that ecological issues have heightened priority. People feel anxious about the legacy our generation will be passing on to the next one. A new environmental awareness has germinated among large sections of the community and mainly among young people.
Dr. Imre V. Nagy
Environment Protection Committee
of the Patriotic People's
Hungary
WCED Public Hearing
Moscow, 8 Dec 1986
- to provide advice and asistance to the United Nations Development Programme, the World Bank, and other UN orqanization and agencies regarding the environmental diemesions of their programmes and technical assistance projects, including training activities.
2.2.1 Focus on Environmental Protection Issues
47. UNEP has been a key agent in focusing the attention of governments on critical environmental problems (such as deforestation and maine pollution), in helping develop many global and regional action plans and strategies (as on desertification), in contributing to the negotiation and implementation of international conventions (on Protection of the Ozone Layer, for example), and in preparing global guidelines and principles for action by governments (such as on marine pollution from land-based sources). UNEP's Regional Seas Programme has been particularly successful, and could serve as a model for some other areas of special concern, especial!y international river basins.
48. UNP's catalytic and coordinating role in the UN system can and should be reinforced and extended. In its future work in critical environmental protection issues, UNEP should focus particularly on:
- developing, testing, and helping to apply practical and simple methodologies for environmental assessment at project and national levels:
- extending international agreements (such as on chemicals and hazardous wastes) more widely;
- extending the Regional Seas Programme;
- developing a similar programme or international river basins; and
