Twenty years after launching Our Common Future, Norway’s former prime minister Gro Harlem Brundtland has been appointed a UN Special Envoy for Climate Change.
26/06/2007 :: Ms Brundtland and her fellow special envoys Ricardo Lagos from Chile and Korea’s Han Seung-soo, will work closely with national leaders from all over the world, and will assist the UN Secretary-General in his efforts to give momentum to the multilateral climate change negotiations in the UN.
“No-one should doubt that the fight against climate change and the fight against poverty are the greatest challenges we face. It is our historic task to bring about the process of change that is needed,” Ms Brundtland said at the Norwegian Labour Party’s annual conference in April.
The Special Envoys for Climate Change will draw up proposals which are to be presented at the UN’s climate change conference in Bali in December, and probably to the UN General Assembly in September.
Gro Harlem Brundtland received international praise when she headed the UN World Commission on Environment and Development in the 1980s. The Commission’s work prepared the way for the Brundtland report on sustainable development, Our Common Future, which was published exactly 20 years ago, as well as for the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992.
Ms Brundtland served as Norway’s Prime Minister for three periods in the 1980s and 1990s. She also headed the World Health Organisation from 1998 to 2003.
The Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs