Environmental assistance: Facilitating acceptance of environmental conventions among developing countries

When representatives of more than one hundred countries closed the meeting on the POP Convention in the South African city of Johannesburg in December 2000, several years of international work to protect nature against pollution by persistent organic pollutants was brought to a successful conclusion.

The meeting was simultaneously the starting signal for the work on implementation of the Convention – a task that will require particularly much of third world countries. This is where environmental assistance comes in as an obvious possibility, not least because we in Denmark already know how the hazardous substances can be replaced by other more environmentally sound substances.

Moreover, the poorer countries’ hesitation to sign international environmental agreements is often due to their difficulty in ascertaining the consequences. What alternatives are there? What will it cost? And how can we administer it? Environmental assistance can also be used to provide the countries with answers to these questions.

Denmark is working hard towards enhancing cohesion between Danish environmental assistance and the international conventions. Around 1st April 2001 the Danish EPA will publish the report “Enhancing Cohesion between International Environmental Agreements and Danish Environmental Assistance”.

Further information: Christian Kruse, Danish EPA. Phone: +45 3266 0267. E-mail:ck@mst.dk


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