Go Achim Steiner

The BEEB has some encouraging news about someone who "get it."

UNEP, the United Nations agency devoted to development of "South" or poor countries as well as to an improved environment has a new director who understands that improving the environment can be very good for the economy of poor countries. He takes the helm at a time of controversy concerning UNEP's role. As BBC reports, "The defining environmental issues of our day are international, and Unep is the one organisation with the potential to develop global, equitable regulation - provided that the national governments which are now debating the UN's future shape give it the tools to do its job."

The article asks why some countries (coughUSAcough) have been unwilling to cede power over "environmental affairs to Unep or any other international agency" when they've been willing to cede far more power over "economic and business affairs to the World Trade Organisation." Well, we know the answer to that. Corporatists thought they could get a good, or at least a consistent (and therefore cheaper to implement), deal from the WTO. They believe that they can get better deals on environmental issues from their local governments. Pollution doesn't stay in one place and a dirty factory on the border of Country A tends to pollute the air in Country B to its West. Country A externalizes it's environmental effects to Country B, which has little power to do anything about it.

BBC reports that "Achim Steiner, the man about to take control of the world's most powerful environment agency, is not one of them, despite his rural origins.

'I basically grew up on a farm, my father was a farmer, so I grew up with nature as part of my everyday experience,' he says.

'But what I became interested in was development and poverty - the realisation that for the poorest of the poor, stopping environmental degradation and having the ability to manage it properly is the easiest way for them to work their way out of poverty.'

The intimate, destructive relationship between environmental degradation and poverty is at the heart of what the United Nations Environment Programme (Unep) is about."

May the Goddess guard him. I hope he has a chance to do both of his jobs -- bring about an end to poverty and help improve the environment. Rational family planning policies -- including education for girls and free access to safe, effective birth control -- would be an excellent place for him to start on both fronts.