Habitat

Press Release

I want to extend my warmest thanks to the government of Turkey and to the people of Turkey for the generosity and spirit with which they have supported the World Environmental Day celebrations. We are particularly indebted to his Excellency, Mustafa Tasar, the Turkish Minister of the Environment, for his deep commitment to this enterprise for the past half-year or so.

This event is important for many reasons, but most profoundly because it helps draw attention to the ways that humankind is imperilling its own habitation. The theme for this year's World Environment Day is "Our Earth, Our Habitat, Our Home." No title could be more appropriate. We know that our urban habitats have a global linkage. Here, at the Habitat II Conference, where we have been discussing the future of cities as the catalysts for social and economic growth over the next millennium, I can assure Liz Dowdeswell that the message of Habitat II will convey to the general public that the social and economic prospects of our nations in the next century will depend mightily on our cities -- and that environment will be an essential feature of this pronouncement.

We all understand, from the outset, that our municipal areas will play the critical role in advancing or retarding social and economic development in our world. The reasons are compelling: cities today absorb two-thirds of the population growth in the developing world; they offer economies of scale in housing, employment and services; and they are essential centers of productivity and the engines of immense developmental progress for nations.

But there is a shadow over our urban areas: the increasing environmental degradation that is devastating our metropolitan centres. We have already seen the ominous signs of decay in many of our burgeoning cities of the developing world, and we have seen similar signs in the so-called advanced cities of our industrialized nations. This spreading ecological blight, so evident in poor sanitation, poisoned water, frayed infrastructure, choking air pollution, poignant and frightening slums and shantytowns -- all of which most cruelly hits the urban poor.

Environmental decay has left them as the prime victims on the urban front-lines because it threatens economic efficiency in the use of scarce resources; it undermines the equitable distribution of development benefits and costs; and it weakens the durability of hard-won economic advances.

We have learned, nonetheless, at Habitat, especially in our work with UNEP, in our joint Sustainable Cities Programme, that even as cities have different levels and degrees of ecological problems, whether they be Katowice, Poland or Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, or Concepcion, Chile or Shenyang, China, they have a single mission in common -- namely displaying an enormous commitment to solving environmental challenges and a strong bias, partly out of a recognition of the past failures of governmental support, toward resolving them within the cities themselves, using local people and neighborhood resources. For that is where the problems are felt most directly, and where solutions which are developed from the bottom- up can be worked out in daily practice.

Indeed, just one week ago, some seventy-five cities, together with some twenty international support programs, met at Habitat II and issued a manifesto on "Implementing the Urban Environment Agenda". They provided overwhelming evidence that, with little outside help, localities do have the ability to mobilize the resources and expertise to solve their problems.

Thus the presentation today of the Global 500 Awards is really an occasion for me, on behalf of the Habitat community, to focus on the importance of local initiatives and to recognize the wealth of materials and assets and human resources that are available at the grassroots level. In short, we want to acknowledge here that individuals do make a difference.

I would like to cite just two awards out of the twenty-six individuals and groups who are honored today. The first is for Sonia Regina De Brito Pereira of Brazil, who has done pioneer work on helping communities to organize their neighborhoods to overcome the maladrous and sinister effects of environmental destruction; and second, for Lalita Balakrishnan, who has helped to create a more efficiently-burning woodstove and thereby has reduced the blackening of the air in India.

Through such actions, these two individuals -- and the others honored here all of whom also deserve mention -- have not only helped to clean up their small pockets of their earth, but also have helped to cleanse the world itself. I need not remind you, the cities are where we are going to have to deal pragmatically with what are now seen as global problems including such threats as the depletion of the ozone layer, global warming, and pollution of our oceans.

My salute from the Habitat II Conference to all of the winners.