On April 27, Elizateth
Dowdeswell, UNEP's
executive director, began the 3rd Session of
the UN Commission on
Sustainable - Development in New York on a strident note. "if we
aspire to greater security, to peace, to a
decent quality of life, we know it cannot be
achieved and sustained unless it is pursued
within the natural capacity of planet
Earth," she said, while presendhg the commission's programme for the 1996-97 biennum. The dominant issues are: unsustainable demands on natural resources; unsustainable production and consumption patterns; and the environmental impact of the
globalisation of the economy.
There is a case being made to force US
pharmaceutical companies to cough up for
all the medicinal plants they plunder
from the developing countries. According to a recently published UN-commissioned study, African, Asian and South
American nations would receive at least
US $5 billion annually if even 20 per cent
royalty were paid on 1/4th of the sales of
medicinal plant-derived pharmaceutical
products.
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