Papers Today

// States "still failing on global green treaties"

Many countries are failing to implement international environmental treaties, environmentalists have warned ahead of a meeting of the UN's environment programme (Unep) in Monaco this week.

The meeting will discuss environmental challenges outlined by Unep last year including climate change and biodiversity loss. These challenges are addressed by global agreements but implementation remains patchy, according to a global ranking published by the British NGO Stakeholder forum for a sustainable future.

The ranking charts national progress towards implementing five key UN environmental agreements: the Kyoto protocol, the Rotterdam convention on hazardous chemicals, the Stockholm convention on persistent organic pollutants, the Convention on the law of the sea and the Cartagena bio-safety protocol.

The findings are "an urgent reminder that not all countries are meeting their commitments to sustainable development and that universal ratification of [the agreements] represents a crucial step in halting environmental destruction", the NGO says.

Countries that have ratified all five treaties got the highest scores in the ranking. These include twenty of the EU's 27 member states, Japan, India, Brazil and New Zealand. In total only 37 countries have ratified all five.

The EU countries that have failed to ratify at least one of the treaties are Ireland, Italy, Poland, Slovakia, Estonia, Hungary and Malta. Non-EU countries lagging behind include the US and Russia. Of the agreements the Cartagena protocol and fish conservation provisions in the convention on the law of the sea are the least well observed.

Follow-up: Stakeholder forum for a sustainable future http://www.stakeholderforum.org/ plus press release http://www.stakeholderforum.org/fileadmin/files/MEA_table_stuff/Press_Release_for_MEA_League_Table.pdf, global ranking http://www.stakeholderforum.org/fileadmin/files/MEA_table_stuff/Stakeholder_Forum____________________________Issue_VI.pdf and data http://www.stakeholderforum.org/fileadmin/files/MEA_table_stuff/Stakeholder_Forum____________________________Issue_I.pdf. See also UN meeting preview press release http://www.unep.org/Documents.Multilingual/Default.asp?DocumentID=528&ArticleID=5741&l=en.