Some 600 experts from 80 countries will meet in the southern Swedish city of Malmoe on Monday for a three-day UN conference aimed at getting the private sector to take concrete measures to protect the environment.
The World Environment Forum, organized together with the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP), will allow more than 80 environment ministers from around the world to exchange information and hold informal discussions with academia, business and industry and civil groups, according to organizers.
The Malmoe forum will focus on three main themes: "major environmental challenges in the new century", "private sector and the environment" and "environmental responsibility and the role of civil society on a globalize world."
The UNEP's Global Environment Outlook 2000 report, published in September, will provide the basis for discussions.
That report concluded that time is running out to resolve some of the most pressing environmental challenges, including the over-extraction of water and timber from forests and the loss of biodiversity.
Delegates will tackle the difficult issue of business and industry's role in creating industries and markets based on the principles of sustainable development.
Participants will also discuss the deterioration of farmland, which reduces productivity, air pollution, which has reached dangerous level in big cities, and global warming.
"This forum will offer ministers an opportunity to set their priorities for international cooperation on the growing number of environmental challenges facing the global community," UNEP executive director Klaus Toepfer said in a statement.
The results of the Malmoe conference will be presented at the 55th UN General Assembly in September and will serve as the basis for the Rio summit to be held in 2002, which "will set the global agenda for environmental and sustainable development for years to come," Toepfer said.
More than 80 environment ministers are expected to attend the meeting, as well as several dozen non-governmental organizations and industry leaders, including chairmen of the boards of Swedish packaging group TetraPak, Gunnar Brock, and Franco-German pharmaceutical group Aventis, Juergen Dormann.
Also participating will be Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, Slovakian President Rudolf Schuster and former Swedish prime minister Ingvar Carlsson, while UN Secretary General Kofi Annan is scheduled to address conference participants live from New York via video on Monday -- STOCKHOLM (AFP)
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