THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
(New York, New York)
___________________________________________________________________________
___
For Immediate Release
September 7, 2000
FACT SHEET
President Clinton and the Millennium Summit:
Protecting the Global Environment
President Clinton is strongly committed to working with the United Nations
and the United States' international partners to strengthen environmental
protections worldwide and to meet the vision of a sustainable future
outlined in the Secretary General's Millennium Report.
Protecting the world's sensitive ecosystems. The United States is actively
supporting the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (an international study on
the status of the world's ecosystems that is currently getting underway).
Today, in his speech to the Security Council, the President announced that
the United States would contribute the first complete set of detailed,
up-to-date satellite images of the world's forest ecosystems to the
Assessment. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration will work
with other U.S. agencies to assemble and provide these images from its
TERRA and Landsat satellites over the next six months, with subsequent
updates. This data will help researchers to understand better the status
of forests and provide policymakers with new tools to help control illegal
logging, conserve threatened forest areas, and promote sustainable economic
growth. This effort builds on previous U.S. contributions of scientific
data to international assessments of ozone depletion and climate change,
and the data will be shared with the public and other interested parties.
The United States is helping lead international efforts to conserve and
sustainably manage the world's threatened biological diversity. The
President's Greening the Globe initiative (a $150 million initiative,
proposed in the FY2001 budget, to help developing countries strengthen
their economies by conserving, rather than destroying, their irreplaceable
forests and biodiversity) would nearly double U.S. funding for the
protection of threatened tropical forests and their biological diversity.
Fighting climate change and promoting clean energy. President Clinton and
Vice President Gore have made climate change a priority both at home and
abroad. U.S. leadership was critical in negotiating the 1997 Kyoto
Protocol, which sets strong, realistic targets for reducing greenhouse gas
emissions and establishes market-based mechanisms to ensure that they are
met cost-effectively. The President is taking aggressive steps to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions including through directives to reduce energy use
in federal buildings to 30 percent below 1990 levels by 2010, and to target
tripling the use of bio-energy in the U.S. over the next decade. In
November, parties to the Framework Convention on Climate Change will meet
to attempt to complete the design of critical Kyoto features such as
emissions trading and the "Clean Development Mechanism." The United States
is committed to finishing the work begun at Kyoto.
Strengthening environmental protections in finance and trade. The United
States has been a longtime advocate for strong environmental standards in
the international financial institutions and taken a leadership role in
developing standards for its Export Credit Agency (ECAs). At the urging of
the United States, G-8 leaders committed in Okinawa last July to develop
common environmental guidelines for G-8 ECAs by the next G-8 summit in
2001, and to draw on experience from institutions like the World Bank to
guide their work. The President has also issued an Executive Order
requiring careful environmental review of major new trade agreements.
# # #
President and First Lady | Vice President and Mrs. Gore
Record of Progress | The Briefing Room
Gateway to Government | Contacting the White House | White House for Kids
White House History | White House Tours | Help
Privacy Statement