Māris kļaviņŠ, azamat azizov, JĀnis zaļoksnis environment, pollution, development: the case of uzbekistan

Figure 10.5. 
UN 
Headquarters in New 
York, USA
Figure 10.6. 
UN 
Assembly Hall
The speaker is Ban 
Ki‑Moon from South 
Korea, who assumed 
office as the Secretary 
General of UN on 
1 January 2007.
Figure 10.7. 
Emblem 
of the UN Environment 
Programme

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10. INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION IN ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
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However, the possibilities of the UN Environ ment Programme 
are rather limited. Therefore, the countries of the world deliberate on 
substitution of the Programme with the Global Environ ment Organi-
sation (GEO), which would have wider powers and better funding.
 10.3.2.  Environmental activist groups
Environ mental activist groups usually come out against slow and 
low-quality measures aimed at tackling environ mental issues, and 
they often attract the attention of the society to lesser-known environ-
mental issues. Thus, they present an important force in the global 
environ mental management. There are numerous environ mental 
activist  groups  and  they  have  different  interests  because  of  their 
differences in ideology, strategy, institutional structure and goals.
Global environ mental protection groups have manifested them-
selves to the world in various ways. Their principal activities are 
aimed at global protection of the environ ment. Among these groups 
are the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), Greenpeace and the 
Climate Change Network. Some organisations specialise in data col-
lection that testify to the degradation of the world’s environ ment, 
for example, the World Resources Institute in Washington prepares 
regular surveys of all kinds of impact on the environ ment caused by 
anthropogenic activities. 
Many environ mentalist groups are extremely active at the venues 
of important negotiations on the problems of the world’s en viron ment 
or sustainable development and also at world environ men tal con-
gresses. The protesters often wear masks of animals or birds, stick up 
protest slogans on tall buildings, and actively lobby leaders of official 
delegations or delegates. Of late they also organise parallel conferenc-
es and environ mental forums.
Such activities cannot be ignored, especially because the major-
ity of the society support the environ mentalist groups and take their 
side. Consequently, many protesters’ demands are included in offi-
cial agendas and even reflected in the concluding documents. There 
are new tendencies that global environ mentalist groups cooperate 
and work out alternative concluding documents, make them known 
to wide public, collect signatures in support of such documents and 
demand their consideration along with the official concluding docu-
ments. For example, the International Union for the Conservation of 
Nature (IUCN), consisting of a network of nature protection groups, 
prepared the Draft Convention on Biodiversity.