Environmental Protection is Essential to Long-Term Economic Growth, New UNEP Chief Says

On his first day in office, the new head of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) called on all nations to put the environment at the heart of their economic policies.

"Care for the environment is often portrayed as detrimental to economic growth," said Achim Steiner, the 45 year-old former Director General of IUCN-the World Conservation Union and new executive director of the UNEP, in a telephone interview with Reuters from UNEP headquarters in Nairobi. "We hope to lay that myth to rest in the 21st century.”

According to Steiner, economic policies must be broadened to recognize that the nature is the foundation for all life on Earth, and that environmental protection is a condition, and a prerequisite, for long-term economic growth.


"We have to get environmental concerns into the mainstream of economics. . .to include what we are consuming and destroying," he said. "Environmental sustainability in the 21st century is not only the preserve of environmentalists, but of everybody who uses resources on this planet."

“For too long economics and environment have seemed like players on rival teams,” Steiner said in a UNEP press release. “We need to make these two sides of the development coin team players, players on the same side.”

“We then have a chance to achieve the fundamental shift of values and reach a new understanding of what really makes the world go round,” he said. “Until recently the goods and services provided by nature have been paid only lip service by traditional economic accounting. Thus the land, the air, the biodiversity and the world’s waters have been frequently treated as free and limitless.”

Steiner said he believes there is “a new mood” among people and governments worldwide, which “increasingly recognizes that, while money may make the world go round, what makes money go round is ultimately the trillions of dollars generated by the planet’s goods and services—from the air cleaning and climate-change countering processes of forests to the fisheries and the coast line protection power of coral reefs.”

Steiner said one of his many goals as executive director at UNEP is to achieve “stronger and more streamlined ties with other UN organizations, civil society and the private sector.”

”The challenges are so immense that, only by working together in mutual self interest, can we realize internationally agreed goals and deliver a stable, just and healthy planet for this and future generations,” Steiner said.