Tag: 1999

Below is the text of the speech made by the then Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, at the Mansion House in London on 14th April 1999.

May I begin, Lord Mayor, by thanking you for your hospitality and your invitation to join you again at this annual dinner. It is a tribute to this dinner that as I look around this room I see such a distinguished audience of people of calibre, status and wisdom in front of me. Never too early to invest in the goodwill of your audience.

As I look around I see nearly all the Diplomatic Corps in front of me, and can I say to each of those familiar faces of friends from the Diplomatic Corps, I am conscious of the heavy responsibility on me. I see in your eyes as you look at me in expectation that this speech may obtain the matter for at least one reporting telegram. I see I also have with me one of my eminent predecessors, here to see if the new man is quite up to the mark of the old. And as final confirmation of the distinguished character of this event, I also see in this room all those members of staff of the Foreign Office sufficiently senior to be paid more than the Secretary of State.

Last year I said that the Lord Mayor was one of the greatest roving Ambassadors for Britain. I have to begin this year by admitting you have more than fully kept up to that tradition, My Lord Mayor, indeed you have achieved a first, I suspect, in the history of both Lord Mayors and Ambassadors in that in one single year you have visited every capital in the European Union. And you did that in order to carry a very important message around Europe, that the introduction of a single currency for the rest of Europe does not in any way diminish the attraction and the significance of the City of London as a financial trading centre. It is a mark of the confidence that you have contributed to in the City of London as a place to do financial business that we in the City of London trade more in the euro than France, Germany, or Italy, all added together. I am proud of the fact, but I would mildly suggest that it would be helpful to our diplomatic relations if Paris, Bonn and Rome did not put that in their reporting telegram tonight.

May I thank you, Peter, on behalf of Britain for that tremendous effort you have put in, and that contribution you have made to the continuing success of the City of London. Can I balance those thanks with one modest correction. I did read in a recent interview from you that you said: ‘When I travel abroad as Lord Mayor, I enjoy the status of Cabinet Minister, so I can get up and say what I want to say.’ I am not sure that you have quite correctly comprehended the constitutional freedoms of a Cabinet Minister, so I did ring Alastair Campbell this afternoon and asked him: ‘Could I get up and say what I want to say?’, to which I got the blunt and characteristic response: ‘Who do you think you are – the Lord Mayor of London?’ But I am happy to say I have got clearance to report to you on the conduct of our foreign policy.

Unlike so many of the companies in the City, it has been a year of steady growth. We have increased the number of our posts around the world, we have increased the number of diplomats working in our posts around the world. We have put particular focus in that expansion on helping British business. We have doubled the number of diplomats representing us in the Caspian Basin where within the next few years 10 per cent of the world’s oil supply will come. We have created new consular posts to support our business work in Scandinavia, in China and in countries in between.

We have mended fences with countries where we have previously had no full diplomatic relations. I am happy to say that in the past week I have been able to announce the up-grading of our relationship with Iran to full Ambassadorial status, reflecting our success in securing a commitment from the government of Iran to take no action to further the fatwah against Salman Rushdie. And that has paved the way for us to have a dialogue with the Organisation of Islamic Congress in order to make sure that we have a better understanding between both the European world and the world of Islam.

With Libya we have achieved an historic breakthrough within the past two weeks in that we have secured the handover of those two whom we have charged with the bombing of the Pan Am flight over Lockerbie. It has not entirely cleared the way yet for normal diplomatic relations with Libya, there are other matters that are still to be resolved in our bilateral relations, particularly the killing of WPC Fletcher, but it has enabled us to proceed with our judicial process and has enabled us also to lift the United Nations’ sanctions on Libya through the immediate suspension of those sanctions and thereby remove what is becoming an increasing problem between us and countries of the Arab world.

I am particularly pleased with one relationship which we have also improved. We have always maintained diplomatic relations with Nigeria. I have to say until last year our High Commissioner found that the diplomatic relations that he had with the country to which he was attached was mainly being summoned in to be scolded whenever the Foreign Secretary had criticised the previous military regime in Nigeria. But nothing has given me more pleasure in the past year than the visit which I paid immediately after the Presidential elections as the first western Foreign Minister to visit the new democratic Nigeria: to sense the tremendous excitement of those people as they move into a new era of democracy and away from the recent past of military rule. The goodwill that I sensed there from the people of Nigeria in part reflected their respect for our firm position during the dark years of military rule.

While I was in Africa I also hosted a joint conference with the French Foreign Minister. Those of you here from the Diplomatic Corps from an African state will understand the full and striking novelty of the British and the French Foreign Minister hosting a joint conference in Africa. Indeed I can confirm, since the doyen of the Diplomatic Corps has pointed out, this building was constructed in 1752, even in that long time this room has never heard of a joint conference in Africa between the French and the British Foreign Ministers. But both myself and my colleague strongly feel the time has come for our two countries to put behind us the habits of competition in Africa and to base our approach to Africa on a policy of cooperation. We are both interested in securing stability and development in Africa; we both strongly believe we have a better chance of securing that if we work together rather than against each other.

This, if I may say, is a striking example of how close cooperation now is between the government of Britain and our European partners. There are other examples. We have just held this past weekend the first summit between the Prime Ministers of Britain and of Spain. The trial that we are about to hold in the Netherlands over the Lockerbie bombing would not have been possible without the very welcome and strong cooperation with the government of the Netherlands and particularly the personal interest of my colleague, van Aartsen. With Sweden we have launched a joint programme on social exclusion. With the new Germany we have secured a commitment in Europe to an annual report on European activity on human rights. And next month our Prime Minister goes to Germany to receive the Charlemagne Prize in recognition of his contribution to European development.

That strong standing in the capitals of Europe is a vital asset to us in European negotiations. I have to say also it is a vital asset as well to the companies of the City and elsewhere in British industry. It has enabled us to end the ban on our beef exports; it has enabled us to secure one of the biggest increases in support of structural funds for Objective One regions in the recent Agenda 2000 negotiations; it has secured for Britain a commitment that there will be a seat for the United Kingdom in the European Central Bank if and when we join the euro; and at the Berlin European Council it enabled us both to support budget discipline and retain the British budget rebate.

Together with our partners we are building a modern Europe, a modern Europe which has two clear futures. First, barriers are coming down between us. We have learnt that we can achieve more security for our nations by integrating our markets and our economies than we ever achieved by arming frontiers that kept us apart. But secondly, it is not an homogenised, pasteurised Europe, it is a Europe which recognises that cultural diversity is a source of strength, a Europe that respects equal rights of every citizen regardless of ethnic identity. A Europe that does not just tolerate cultural difference but treasures them as part of the richness of our communities. And those two features of a modern Europe, free of barriers with equal respect for cultural diversity, those key characteristics, explain why it is that Europe is united in support for the military campaign against Yugoslavia.

In our Grace earlier this evening we prayed for peace in our time. I hope we will secure that peace soon in our time. But meantime modern Europe cannot tolerate on its continent the revival of fascism or the doctrine of ethnic superiority and the fostering of ethnic hatred. We have seen in the past three weeks mass deportations on a scale that we have not seen since the years of Hitler or Stalin. We have seen innocent women, children and some, but not all, their men herded like cattle into railways and carried on mass deportation by shuttle service. We have seen others of their ethnic community hunted like animals across the hillside.

When I was at Rambouillet I was introduced by our Ambassador to a young woman from Kosovo who has acted as Albanian interpreter to our Embassy in Belgrade and had accompanied us to Rambouillet. I met her again last week after she had spent a fortnight escaping from Kosovo to Macedonia. In that time she had spent several days on the hillside with many thousands of others seeking to escape from the ethnic cleansing. In those days on the hillside she saw 14 babies born under the open sky. Many of those babies died and so too did some of their mothers.

Mercifully, many of those refugees have now made it over the border from that terror and I warmly welcome, Lord Mayor, the generous donation that you have announced tonight on behalf of the City of London, a donation which demonstrates the responsibility with which the City takes its international role. I also wish to pay particular appreciation to the enormous relief work that is being carried out by our and our Allied troops over those past three weeks. In two days alone, British troops constructed shelter in camps in Macedonia for 30,000 people. NATO is now emerging as a major humanitarian agency, assisting the victims of that ethnic cleansing at the same time as we seek by military campaign to make it more difficult for that ethnic cleansing to be conducted.

We meet within a City of London whose very basis is respect for the rule of law. In Kosovo at the present time we witness total contempt for the rule of law. The mass graves that have been uncovered by our photographs by aerial reconnaissance are the graves not of the casualties of fighting or of war, they are the graves of the victims of war crimes. I say to you, we will hold to account those who have carried out those unpardonable crimes. We know the names of the Field Commanders, they know their responsibility for the conduct of their units and we are passing to the War Crimes Tribunal all our information and intelligence in order that they may pursue those responsible and pursue them right up the chain of command to the top in Belgrade.

I am well aware that one should not commit servicemen to take the risk of military action unless our national interest is engaged. I firmly believe that upholding international law is in our international interest. Our national security depends on NATO. NATO now has a common border with Serbia as a result of the expansion to embrace Hungary and other countries of central Europe. Our borders cannot remain stable while such violence is conducted on the other side of the fence. NATO was the guarantor of the October agreement. What credibility would NATO be left with if we allowed that agreement to be trampled on comprehensively by President Milosevic and did not stir to stop him? Therefore we must succeed, we must succeed for our own sake but also for the sake of the refugees, we must succeed in pressing home our key objective that they should be able to return to their homes under international protection. Anything else would be a betrayal of the refugees and a reward for President Milosevic.

One of the encouraging features of the past two weeks has been the solidarity that we have received from the other seven countries of the region. I met last Thursday with the other European Foreign Ministers. All their governments are robust that a stand must be made against President Milosevic. All of them are now in a new dialogue with each other on regional solidarity. With each of them Europe is now accelerating its contacts and deepening its economic links. This is an exciting development which must not cease with a solution to the immediate crisis in Kosovo, but which we must take forward to enable those seven countries to develop a fuller integration with the modern Europe which they want to join.

By contrast, Belgrade still lives in the past. I visited Belgrade at the start of the Kosovo crisis and had a full discussion with President Milosevic on the looming developments in Kosovo. I have to report that he began by saying that I could not understand what was happening in Kosovo unless I started in 1389. There was something tragic about such a deep history perspective on current events. I am pleased to assure the diplomatic representatives here today that I did manage to choke back the observation that if we all went back to the 14th century, HMG would have very sound title to large chunks of France. But I did not believe that it would be in our national interest to assert that title, nor is it in the interests of Serbia to live in the Middle Ages when the rest of the world is moving on into the 21st century. And some day his people too will decide that they want to join the modern Europe and they do not want to be trapped in the time warp which President Milosevic offers them.

The strength of our Alliance is in no large part thanks to the continued commitment of our north American allies to freedom and stability in Europe. Just before I left for this dinner I held my daily conference call with Madeleine Albright. I will share with you the thought which I did not share with her, that for once I was very glad it was not a video conference call. The past three weeks has carried with it the very important message that vital to the freedom and security of Europe is the partnership between America and Europe, a partnership which goes back to the last war. And in 1945 when together we surveyed what we found in Europe, we found death camps, we found indecent bureaucracy of the extermination programme, pathetic survivors and millions of victims and we said then: ‘Never again’. That is the pledge that we must honour in Kosovo, because in the past two weeks we have again borne witness to forced movements by train, to thousands hungry and squalid in makeshift camps, to pathetic masses shorn of their homes and their papers for no reason other than ethnic identity. Had we done nothing in response, we would have been complicit in that evil. Had we done nothing, we would have betrayed the modern Europe we are trying to build.

President Milosevic may be beginning to grasp that we will not let him profit from the ethnic cleansing he has inflicted in Kosovo. He knows exactly what he must do to end the NATO air strikes: stop the violence, withdraw his troops and let the refugees go back with a guarantee of an international military force.

NATO was born 50 years ago out of the defeat of fascism. 50 years later we cannot tolerate the rebirth of fascism in our continent and that is why our servicemen are in action over Kosovo, some of them risking their lives tonight as we meet in the safety of the Mansion House.

This annual dinner is one of the many expressions of the strong traditions of the City, traditions that provide deep roots for the political and economic freedoms that have fostered the success of the City: the rule of law; equal opportunity on merit; transparency of information and the freedom of comment; a spirit of internationalism and security for trade with any part of the world. Because we possess these freedoms perhaps we do not sometimes prize them enough. Nobody has a better or a more bitter appreciation of the worth of freedom than those who are denied it, such as the people of Kosovo. It is in the hope that we can build a modern Europe in which all its peoples can be united by the same security and freedom that I now call upon each of you to join with me in a toast to the Lord and Lady Mayoress.

Below is the text of a speech made by the former Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, to the Green Alliance at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in London on 15th February 1999.

For the past week I have been commuting to and from Rambouillet, the chateau just outside Paris where the Kosovo peace talks are going on. It is easy in foreign affairs to become preoccupied with the pressing issue of the day. But while we deal with the conflicts of today, it is crucial that we keep thinking about the kind of world we want to live in tomorrow.

THE SIZE OF THE CHALLENGE

If we want that world to have a healthy environment, then we have a major challenge ahead of us. For anyone who still thinks that global warming can be treated as a side-issue here are four simple statistics. The six warmest years on record have all been since 1990. Last year was the warmest ever. Thousands of square kilometres in Britain are already at risk of flooding. A fifth of the world’s population live within 30km of the coast.

The facts are just as stark in other areas. Take biodiversity. Some people still say that the extinction of plant and animal species is a natural process. So it is. But as the malign result of human activity it is now occurring at up to a thousand times the natural rate. Well over a tenth of the plant species known to man are at risk of extinction. And that isn’t just a tragedy for those who enjoy nature. It should concern anyone who cares about our health. A quarter of all prescription drugs are derived from plants. Drugs derived from tropical forest plants are worth USD25 billion a year.

In fact, last year the scientific journal Nature published the first ever estimate of the monetary value of the services nature provides for us. The figure the authors came up with was USD33 trillion. If he had to pay for their true value, even the hardest-nosed cynic might think twice about destroying them. It is no coincidence that New York City has found it is cheaper and more effective to restore the forest from which its water is drawn rather than build a new water treatment plant.

Freshwater is another issue where the position is crystal clear. The demand for freshwater is doubling every 21 years. In 1994 the UN Development Programme reckoned that there was a third as much usable water per person in the world as there had been in 1970.

Each one of these issues is a slow-moving menace with the momentum of a super-tanker bearing down on us. And I haven’t even got onto the loss of soil and spreading deserts, the state of the world’s fish stocks, the forests, the coral reefs or the ozone layer.

There is another statistic that is pretty sobering for party politicians like me. All of Britain’s political parties together have less than a million members. The largest number of them, of course, belong to the Labour Party. But there are over five million paid-up supporters of environmental groups in Britain. This is clear evidence of the immense public interest in the environment – people putting their subscriptions where they see their interests.

THE ROLE OF THE FOREIGN OFFICE

I believe firmly that the agenda of foreign policy should be set by the concerns of the people. I believe it should be about the things that matter to them. I have therefore pushed the environment up the Foreign Office’s agenda.

The environment is not a problem we can deal with on a national level alone. CFCs from Chinese fridges will cause skin cancer on this side of the globe. There are still sheep in Britain that cannot be brought to market because of the Chernobyl explosion in the former Soviet Union.

The response therefore to the environmental challenge must be international. We need to build a coalition that unites the international community in a determination to take the action required. And the Foreign Office has a key role to play in building that coalition.

I also believe that the environment must be central to foreign policy because it cannot be separated from other issues with which we have to grapple. The prospects for peace in the Middle East would be enhanced if the region’s freshwater were properly conserved. South-East Asia would be more stable if over-fishing were not forcing the fishermen further into the disputed Spratly islands. We strengthen our foreign policy and help make a safer world by factoring in protection for the environment.

And the converse is true. We strengthen our environmental policy by having a foreign policy that supports democracy, human rights, accountability and openness. It is no coincidence that democratic countries tend to look after their environments better than dictatorships, or that the East European Greens were in the vanguard against communism. All across the world environmental concern is driven by the people. If the people have no voice, their leaders have no interest in the environment.

STRENGTHENING THE ENVIRONMENT DEPARTMENT

We have already strengthened our environment department – it is now the fastest-growing department in the Foreign Office. I can announce today that we are taking this one step further:

We will be inviting a secondment from an environmental organisation. I want a closer dialogue between government and the environmental movement – so our foreign policy benefits from their immense expertise, and they benefit from a foreign policy that is alive to their concerns and priorities.

We will be inviting a secondment from business. This will strengthen our partnership with business both to protect the environment and to promote exports from Britain’s strong environmental industries.

We have agreed a series of secondments into our environment department for young future leaders from developing countries. The programme will be organised through the ‘Leadership for Environment And Development’ programme based in New York. The key to building a global consensus on the environment will be to break down the suspicion between North and South. We in the developed world need to convince the South that our concern for the environment is not a form of protectionism in disguise. We also need to listen to their legitimate wish to enjoy the same prosperity we take for granted, and work with them on models of economic development that are also environmentally sustainable. When the fifth of the world’s population in the richest countries are responsible for over four-fifths of the world’s consumption it is a bit much for the rich to lecture the poor about preserving the environment. We need to work with the South, and build their perspective into our foreign policy.

A GREENER FOREIGN OFFICE

The other announcement I made in November was that the Foreign Office was going to put our own house in order as well. I announced a full environmental audit of our operations, so we could ensure that it wasn’t just our policy that was green, but our buildings were as well. This is moving ahead.

We have carried out an energy audit of our Embassies from Tokyo to Dhaka. The new Embassy we are building in Berlin will be a model in energy efficiency, and our new Embassy in Moscow will contain some of the latest environmentally-friendly building technology.

We are preparing a Green transport plan for all our operations. We have engaged consultants to look at our home estates and our posts overseas. And we are looking at bringing the Foreign Office and all its posts into line with the criteria of ISO 14001 – the recognised world-wide standard for environmental assessment.

MAKING A DIFFERENCE

Our Embassies can have a real impact overseas using their political contacts and public profile to make a practical difference on the ground. All over the world our embassies are running pilot projects, organising training courses, funding consultancies and other projects that have an impact multiplied out of all proportion to our investment in them.

In Kazakhstan, for example, our Embassy is funding a project to use British expertise to tackle mercury pollution. In Venezuela we are helping to train the National Guard and Coastguard in the enforcement of environmental law. We are providing start-up funding for the manufacture of fuel-efficient stoves to reduce chronic air pollution in the capital of Mongolia.

I am shortly going to visit Russia. When I am there I will be going to Murmansk to visit the decommissioned nuclear submarines whose waste poses a severe environmental hazard to the region. We are already working with the Russian nuclear regulator to ensure that it has the capability it needs to deal with this problem. But there is a great deal more to be done, and I will be seeing for myself how Britain can best contribute to that.

THE CLIMATE CHANGE CHALLENGE FUND

By working with business, the environmental movement and developing countries, we can break the myth of conflict between the green agenda and the growth agenda. I want British business to lead the way in showing that what is good for the environment can also alleviate poverty – it is not just a rich man’s luxury.

Today I can announce a major step forward in the way we do that work. Together with the DETR, and in cooperation with DFID and the DTI, we are launching a new climate change fund in partnership with business. It will be called the Climate Change Challenge Fund. It will help us make use of British expertise in clean technologies and renewable energies. It will fund projects that will help developing countries to build up the capacity they need to combine healthy growth with low emissions of greenhouse gases.

To start it off the Foreign Office is putting in half a million pounds into the fund. We hope British companies with an interest in energy and the environment will at least match this sum.

The Challenge Fund will enable young high-fliers in the key industries in these countries to spend time in British companies. It will pay for carefully targetted consultancies and training programmes.

The authorities in Peking, for example, tell us that they would welcome British expertise in encouraging the use of gas rather than coal for heating and cooking. And a consortium led by a British company, The Solar Century, is negotiating in China to build the world’s largest factory to make solar panels. At a stroke they will be vividly illustrating the value of environmental technology to the Chinese, helping to hold back global warming, and also creating jobs for Britain. Shell are already showing what British companies can achieve by providing solar power to the townships of South Africa.

This fund will be a model for government and business working together. It will show that being green need not put you in the red on the balance sheet. And it will show that business can be a friend of the environment and not a threat to the environment. It is a win-win solution.

I can report that I have already received business support for the initiative. For example, British Gas, Lloyds Register, Price Waterhouse Coopers, National Power, Alstom Gas Turbines, the British Consultants Bureau, ABB UK, and the Combined Heat and Power Association have all welcomed it.

Today I spoke to Sir Brian Unwin, the President of the European Investment Bank. The Bank is keen to work with us, funding appropriate projects that our challenge fund opens up through its well-established banking network in developing countries. And we could not hope for a better partner. The bank exists to fulfil the objectives of the European Union, and one of those objectives is to make the Kyoto agreement work. It already lends almost 7 billion euros a year on environmental projects, including 150 million euros in developing countries. We will be working together with the Bank to harness some of those resources for the projects opened up by our Challenge Fund.

THE OTs – A PARTICULAR CONCERN

The Foreign Office has another particular environmental responsibility, and that is for the Overseas Territories. Their ecosystems are of global significance. The British Antarctic Territory acts as a barometer for climate change and atmospheric pollution – it was there that British scientists first discovered the hole in the ozone layer. The Pitcairns contain the world’s best preserved raised coral atoll. 22 species of whales and dolphins have been recorded around the Falklands. Gibraltar is a key migration route for birds of prey.

If Britain is worried about biodiversity, then the Overseas Territories should be our first concern – they have ten times as many endemic species as Britain itself.

These ecosystems are under threat. Uncontrolled development and economic pressures are taking their toll. Foreign species of animals and plants threaten the delicate ecological balance. And few places face such a direct impact from global warming as our island territories.

We will shortly be publishing a White Paper on the Overseas Territories. It will set out our renewed determination to protect their environments. We will work with their governments, with our international partners and with the environmental community and the private sector.

Our aims are to build sustainability and proper resource management into their economies, to protect their fragile ecosystems from further degradation, and to find viable alternatives to the depletion of scarce resources.

We will step up the policy advice we have been providing, like the Caribbean Marine Biodiversity Workshop we organised last year. We will step up the financial assistance we are providing, like the 2.5 million pounds the British Government has committed, since coming to office, to environment-related projects in the Overseas Territories. And we will ensure that the Overseas Territories have access to the expertise they need to become the guardians of their own natural heritage.

GREENING GLOBAL GOVERNANCE

One of the slogans of the Green Movement is ‘think globally and act locally’. It is the Foreign Office that can supply some of the thinking globally.

The lending policies of institutions like the IMF and the World Bank can have a direct impact on the environment. We need to make sure that it is a positive and not a negative impact. The trade policy of the European Union helps determine whether it is in the interests of farmers in the South to look after their soil or not. We need to make sure that all external policies of the European Union support its expressed commitment to safeguarding the environment.

We need to think carefully about whether there is more we can do to wire in the environment to the work of international organisations. I believe that the key to doing so is transparency. Historically, progress in the environment has been driven by the public and by their lobby groups. Concerned citizens and pressure groups can have a huge impact. Their principal weapon is fact, and so they need access to the facts.

All international bodies, from the European Union to the United Nations, should not only conduct full assessments of the impact their activities have on the environment, but open up their workings in ways that are now the norm for international treaties on the environment.

And transparency is also the key to accountability. When institutions take decisions that have environmental consequences we need to make sure that those who are affected by those decisions can hold them to account. To do that, they need to know how those decisions were made.

Let me deal with two of these multinational bodies where Britain has a leading role. First, the European Union. We used our EU Presidency last year to get agreement to integrate the environment into all policy-making. Three of its Councils must submit comprehensive environment strategies by the end of this year. Opinion polls agree that the environment is one area where the British public, along with all the other citizens of Europe, want to see more rather than less concerted action.

Today I can announce a further step in partnership in Europe on the environment. Both Joschka Fischer and I have a long commitment to the environment and we talk about it whenever we meet. We have proposed a British-German forum on the environment, to bring together not just our governments but our non-governmental organisations and our businesses as well to look at some of the strategic problems we face on the environment.

Secondly, the Commonwealth can make a stronger contribution to international partnership on the environment. It is unique in the trust it engenders between its members, and the constructive and friendly atmosphere of its discussions. It is the ideal body for breaking down mutual suspicion on the environment between North and South.

It was at the Edinburgh Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting that my discussion with the Malaysian Foreign Minister led to the environment initiative at last year’s Asia-Europe Meeting in London. We will be tabling proposals to the South African Government and working closely with them to ensure that the environment is central to our work at this year’s Commonwealth Heads of Government in Durban.

TRADE AND THE ENVIRONMENT

Lastly, let me address the question of trade and the environment. We live in a global economy, and the framework of that economy will do more than anything else to determine our global future – from the spread of prosperity and the equity of global growth to the survival of the environment and the protection of biodiversity.

Economists have long recognised that markets do not function effectively when hidden costs are not taken into account. If our trading system ensures that the polluter pays, then we will have taken a major step to creating an economic framework that ensures both transparent markets and sustainable growth. And that is just as important for developing countries as it is for the West.

We have made clear our support for the High Level Symposium this year on Trade and the Environment. It will help bring together policies on both trade and the environment – not to strengthen one at the expense of the other, but to create a trading system in which growth is sustainable. It will also provide a focus for our work with our EU partners to make sure that our joint concerns for the environment are fully reflected in the new trade round.

WHY THE ENVIRONMENT MATTERS

The pioneers of the environmental movement had to work hard to persuade people that it mattered. Today the impact of environmental stress is all too apparent. There is barely a major area of public policy unaffected by it.

National security, once the preserve of diplomats and generals, must now take the environment into account. Boutros Boutros-Ghali predicted that the next war in the Middle East would be over water. Two-fifths of the world’s population live in multinational river basins. Nine countries, for example, share the water of the Nile.

Our economic future is bound in with our environmental future. Our companies now know that growth must be sustainable if it is to be commercially viable in the long-term. Farmers and fishermen the world over have learnt to their cost the economic impact of exhausting the soil and the ocean.

And the environment is a key determinant of our health. Every day our doctors see the casualties of poor air quality. It may not be too long before the hole in the ozone layer brings them more patients. And according to a recent study in the Lancet modest action on greenhouse gases now could be saving 700,000 lives world- wide a year through cleaner air by 2020.

PROGRESS SO FAR

We have made progress. Kyoto and Buenos Aires showed that the world can get its act together, set itself legally-binding targets and develop innovative mechanisms for protecting the environment. We have taken action on the ozone layer by phasing out the use of CFCs.

But we are under no illusion that this is enough. We are still piling sandbags in preparation for a tidal wave. Assuming all the Kyoto commitments are met in full, global emissions of greenhouse gases will be a third more in 2010 than they were in 1990. We have started on the road to effective international action on the environment, but we have a long way yet to travel.

A JOINED-UP RESPONSE

It is not a job that can be delegated to one part of government. To use the vogue expression, it needs a joined-up response. And this Government is providing just that.

Whether it is Gordon Brown at the Treasury looking after our relations with the World Bank and the IMF and reflecting environmental objectives in his budget, Stephen Byers at DTI working for British environmental technology, John Reid developing a public transport policy for Britain, or Clare Short at DfID providing a record boost to our development strategy, the environment is being integrated.

It is being led by John Prescott and his staff at DETR. It was his leadership and strength of will that brought Kyoto back from the brink. It was he again that kept the process on track in Buenos Aires. We could not ask for a more effective and committed champion to lead the work which is supported through half a dozen other Whitehall departments.

CONCLUSION

But Government cannot achieve everything on its own. We are only one of many agents of change to the environment. Business and commerce have a direct impact on the environment. Together we have a responsibility to shape that impact for the good. Pressure groups and the media can be an important driving force for the education of the public. Together we need to get across the message of how their own conduct can shape their environment for the better or the worse.

I therefore end by asking you to join with me in a global partnership, to protect our global environment. It is a partnership around one clear message – ultimately, what we do to our planet we do to ourselves and our children.

What John F Kennedy said over thirty years ago applies even more strongly today:

Never before has man had such capacity to control his own environment. We have the power to make this the best generation of mankind in the history of the world – or to make it the last.

Let’s make sure that it is the best.