DUBAI - United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan called on Monday for an end to pollution of the environment and urged oil producing nations to spearhead efforts to develop clean energy.
Speaking in the United Arab Emirates, a major oil producer, where he received the Zayed International Prize for the Environment, Annan said the world was doing too little to safeguard the environment by continued reliance on fossil fuel.
"Protecting the environment has been considered an afterthought, or even a luxury ... Prosperity built on destruction is not prosperity at all, but rather only a temporary reprieve from tragedy. There will be little peace, and much greater poverty, if this assault continues," he said.
Many scientists blame emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide for global warming, which is melting glaciers, raising sea levels and causing more intense storms and floods.
Major polluters - the United States, China, Japan, India, South Korea and Australia - earlier this month pledged to invest only millions of dollars to develop clean energy without setting any targets to cut greenhouse gases.
Annan said oil-rich Middle East countries, the world's main suppliers of oil, were well-placed to push forward efforts for less reliance on fossil.
"Doing so would be prudent self interest as well as a mark of solidarity with those less well off," he said. "I hope that through your investments and leadership, you will become a primary source of alternative energy in this one."
The United States and Australia refuse to sign the Kyoto Protocol, which obliges about 40 developed countries to cut their emissions by 5.2 percent below 1990 levels during 2008-2012. The two countries claim Kyoto's mandatory greenhouse gas cuts would threaten economic growth.
The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said in 1990 that stabilising carbon dioxide concentrations needed eventual emission reductions of 60-80 percent.
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
