Paris: More than a hundred countries now support a French proposal to create a "World Environment Organisation" at the upcoming 20th anniversary conference of the Rio Summit, France`s ecology minister said today.
"More than 100 countries have now associated themselves with the proposal," Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet said at a conference in Paris aimed at stimulating ideas for June 20-22 global gathering.
The idea is to beef up the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), which critics say lacks clout and resources for dealing with the world`s worsening environmental crisis.
Kosciusko-Morizet said the new agency was a key to the success of the June 20-22 conference, designed to assess the 20 years that have passed since the 1992 Rio Summit that nailed the environment to the political agenda.
It should be part of a rethink of the world`s economy, in which green issues and social questions should be placed alongside the search for profit.
"The new capitalism which emerges from the crisis has to be environmental, or it won`t be new," she said.
The Paris conference gathered several hundred representatives from national and local government, think tanks and civil society with the declared aim of gingering up a programme, called "draft zero," that is being hammered out for Rio.
PTI
