World Envirnoment Day is June 5th, and Treehugger.com, one of our favorite sites for environmental news and views, had the good fortune of being able to interview Achim Steiner, Executive Director of the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) for the upcoming occasion. Steiner is in year two of his four year post, and manages over 1000 people in 42 countries in his efforts to bring the public and private sectors together on issues of environmental sustainabiliy and social equity. 

Steiner advocates for a GDP generated by nature, a globally green economy, and says that developed countries “should shoulder their full responsibility for having used the atmosphere as a dustbin for some 200 years.” The interview outlines Mr. Steiner´s suggestions for government incentive programs for environmental sustainability, as well as a preview of the environmental topics he´ll be covering on World Environment Day.

Treehugger (TH): You’ve lived many places–Brazil, Germany, the U.S., Vietnam, South Africa, and now Kenya. How has living in those diverse places shaped your vision for the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP)? How has it affected the way you run UNEP and ran the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)?

Steiner: It has shown me that no one country and no one culture has a monopoly of creative and transformational ideas. Indeed the diversity of thinking, of approaching a challenge from a novel perspective, is one of humanity’s strengths that we need to harness and harvest far more.

TH: Food is on many people’s minds right now. A few months ago, you warned, “if our modern agricultural systems focus only on maximizing production at the lowest cost, agriculture will face a major crisis in 20 to 30 years time.” How likely is this scenario? What are the best strategies to avert this danger?

Steiner: The current food crisis is predominantly one about prices rather than about supply. However, there could be a knee-jerk reaction to simply accelerate and intensify the farming methods of the 20th century. This is unlikely to serve us well in the 21st century on a planet of 6.7 billion, shortly rising to nine billion. Why? Because in many countries in the past 50 years or so the emphasis has been almost exclusively on hiking up production at the expense of all else.  Read the full interview…

 and find out more about World Environment Day 2008 here. 

Related:

• New Zealand hosts World Environment Day in partnership with UNEP
• Top 10 ways to take action for the environment 
• UN issues `final wake up call` on population and environment