Copyright © 1999 Reuters Limited.
December 2, 1999
BEIJING, Dec 2 (Reuters) - The United Nations said on Thursday the
planet's protective ozone layer would start to heal in the next few years, but
non-government organisations slammed the world body for not moving faster.
The ozone layer, high up in the atmosphere, shields Earth from much of the sun's
harmful ultraviolet rays. The layer has been thinning for years through the use
of damaging man-made chemicals, increasing the number of skin cancers, cataracts
and other illnesses.
``The scientists predict that the ozone layer will begin its recovery in the
next few years and will heal completely in the middle of the next century if we
implement the Montreal Protocol faithfully,'' Shafqat Kakakhel, deputy executive
director of the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP), told a conference.
A reduction in the use of ozone-eating substances will allow the ozone layer to naturally replenish itself.
Kakakhel was in Beijing for a conference to discuss proposals to raise money to replenish a fund, established under the protocol signed 1987, which helps developing countries switch away from ozone-eating chemicals.
``The developing countries are coming up with a figure of $700 million, but the developed countries are willing to give about $300 million. There are some painstaking negotiations going on but I'm sure they'll agree on a figure in between,'' he said.
The United Nations set up the fund in 1991 and has since invested about $1 billion in projects in 117 countries to phase out the consumption of 122,000 tonnes and the production of 42,000 tonnes of chemicals and gases which destroy ozone.
NGOs CALL MEETING A FAILURE
Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) called the Beijing conference a failure, saying in a statement it hit ``the Great Wall of industrial interests and government indifference.''
``That amount of money is peanuts compared to what the United States spent on bombing Kosovo,'' John Mate of environmental group Greenpeace told Reuters, referring to the $300 million offered by developed countries.
Environment campaigners said the United Nations had taken little action to halt the production and use of methyl bromide, a fumigant about 60 times more destructive to the ozone layer than chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) used in refrigerators and air conditioners.
``CFCs have been known worldwide as the primary ozone depleting chemical,'' Anne Schonfield, programme coordinator of Pesticide Action Network, an NGO.
``Methyl bromide is used in fewer quantities ... but atom to atomwise it's more destructive,'' she said.
She said U.N. scientists estimated that by 2000, methyl bromide would be responsible for up to 15 percent of ozone destruction.
The ozone hole over Antarctica, where the layer has been damaged most -- covered 9.8 million square miles (25.38 million sq km) on September 15, about twice the size of China and more than two-and-a-half times the scope of Europe.
OZONE PROBLEM WORSE IF NOT FOR U.N.
The United Nations hit back, saying the ozone layer would have been in much worse shape if not for its efforts.
``If not for the Montreal Protocol, the chlorine in the atmosphere would have been four times larger and ozone depletion would have been 10 times greater,'' Kakakhel said.
The chlorine, which attacks ozone molecules, comes from CFCs when they break down high up in the atmosphere.
``The number of cases of skin cancer would have been an additional 20 million.''
He said the production and consumption of ozone-eating chemicals had been cut by 85 percent in the past 10 years and industrialised countries used less than 15,000 tonnes, compared with a million tonnes in 1989.
``The developing countries have almost the same consumption now as in 1989, even though they are allowed to increase their consumption without a limit to meet their basic domestic requirements,'' he said.
A UNEP report said in 1997 that developing countries produced 166,600 tonnes out of the world's 278,250 tonnes of the ozone-eating chemicals and used 210,900 tonnes out of 256,600 tonnes of the global total.
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