On 2 February 2007 the French President Jaques Chirac opened an international environmental conference in Paris which aims at mobilising support for a strengthened UN Environmental Programme (UNEP) and its transformation into a UN Environment Organisation (UNEO). Federal Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel took part in the two-day conference on behalf of Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Minister Gabriel who is also President of the EU Council of Environment Ministers at the moment commented as follows on the conference:
"We are faced with the enormous challenge to find solutions to problems of global human relevance: How can we deal with climate change effectively and how can we secure an energy supply which is viable for the future and affordable for everyone? In the face of these enormous tasks we need powerful and effective international structures in the environmental sector as well. The most important body of the United Nations in the environmental sector is UNEP. Even though the responsibilities of the UN-Environment Programme have grown steadily, status, mandate and features of the body have not. A reform of the organisational structures of international environment policy is therefore long overdue.
On the one hand we need a strengthened UNEP. The proposals made by Executive Director Achim Steiner for more efficiency point in the right direction. However, that will not be enough to allow us to face up to the challenges before us. For this reason we need to start a process of upgrading UNEP to become a United Nations Environment Organisation UNEO, a body which combines expertise and authority, assumes a leading and coordinating role for environmental concerns within the United Nations and resolutely advances global environmental policies within the UN framework. I am pleased that the French President has taken it upon him to bring this process forward by organising this conference."
A group of state representatives is to be established in Paris which supports the founding of a UN Environment Organisation. It will be the task of this group to push ahead the environmental reform process within the United Nations framework.
The EU advocates an upgrading of UNEP in Nairobi to become a UN Environment Organisation (UNEO). The UNEO initiative is aimed at establishing a strong UN Environment Organisation which can achieve a balance between economic globalisation and the requirements of global environmental policies, advance environmental competence in the countries of the Southern hemisphere and make recommendations which will actually be heeded by other international institutes such as the World Bank or by the UN Specialised Agencies such as the World Health Organisation (WHO), the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) or the UN Development Programme (UNDP).
The conference in Paris will not only be attended by Ministers from numerous countries but also by, i.a. the President of the EU Commission Barroso, the President of the UN General Assembly al Khalifa, the Advisor to the British Prime Minister Blair, Sir Nicholas Stern, IPCC President Rajendra Pachauri, the Vice President of the World Bank, Katherine Sierra, the President of the World Conservation Union IUCN, Valli Moosa and the Executive Director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), Claude Mandil.