It will also take stock of how we are faring on the 2015 Millennium Development Goals. These cover poverty eradication, the supply of safe and sufficient supplies of safe- drinking water, the empowerment of women and reversing the spread of infectious diseases.

It is clear that while many important advances are being made in these fields, it is also clear that these internationally agreed targets are unlikely to be met without a new sense of urgency and greater imagination as to the solutions.

For some months now, the environment has emerged as a crucial pillar if not a cornerstone upon which the goals may well stand or fall.

A more secure world: Our shared responsibility, the report of the secretary-general’s high level panel on Threats, Challenges and Change states: “Environmental degradation has enhanced the destructive potential of natural disasters and in some cases hastened their occurrence. More than two billion people were affected in the last decade.”

One of the interim reports of the UN Millennium Project, requested by the secretary-general to inform the September review, states: “A considerable body of scientific data points to environmental degradation-- the erosion of genetic diversity, the loss of species, the degradation of ecosystems, and the decline of ecosystem services as a direct cause of many of the most pressing issues we face today including poverty, declining human health, hunger, undrinkable waters, emerging disease, rural-urban migration and civil strife.”

So the environment is not a luxury, not a Gucci accessory bag or a fancy silk tie affordable only when all other issues have been resolved.

It is the oxygen breathing life into all the Goals. It is the red ribbon running around our common aspirations for a healthier, more stable and just world.

It is also critical to the economies of countries and regions. A fact that governments have yet to fully take on board but which they ignore at their economic peril.

When New York City Council was faced with supplying safer drinking water for its nine million customers, it also faced an up to US$6billion water filtration bill.

Instead of paying for machinery, the city plumped for better management of river banks, forests, agriculture and ecosystems to reduce pollution into the Catskill/Delaware river system.

By working with nature, the city spent only US$1billion to provide safe drinking water to New York and thus saved between US$3 billion to US$5 billion.

These hard economic arguments are also underscored in the recently published Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and its spin-off reports.

The work of 1,300 scientists and experts from 95 countries has begun to put numbers on the value on individual ecosystems and the services they provide.

It says that an intact wetland in Canada is worth US$6,000 a hectare versus US$2,000 a hectare for one cleared for intensive agriculture.

Intact tropical mangroves, coastal ecosystems that are nurseries for fish, natural pollution filters and coastal defences, are worth around US$1,000 a hectare. Cleared for shrimp farms, the value falls to around US$200 a hectare.

The Assessment also puts a value on peat bogs and marshlands. It estimates that the Muthurajawala Marsh, a more than 3,000 hectare coastal bog in Sri Lanka is worth an estimated US$5 million a year as a result of services such as local flood control. Losses as a result of damage by alien invasive species in the Cape Floral region of South Africa is calculated at around US$2,000 a hectare.

The annual recreational value of coral reefs in the six Marine Management Areas of the Hawaiian islands ranges from US$300,000 to tens of millions of dollars a year.

Studies from Algeria, Italy, Portugal, Syria and Tunisia also point to the value of intact forests. These estimate that the value of the timber and fuel wood from a forest is worth less than a third when compared with the value of their services such as water-shed protection and recreation to the absorption of pollutants like greenhouse gases.

The burning of 10 million hectares of Indonesia’s forests in the late 1990s cost an estimated US$9 billion as a result of the factors, including increased health care and tourism losses.

There are also new findings on the link between the spread of disease and environmental destruction. The provision of treated bed nets, the better availability of low-cost anti-malarial drugs and the development of vaccines are crucial but so are healthy ecosystems.

Studies in the Amazon by researchers at John Hopkins University in the United State have concluded that for every one percent increase in deforestation, there is an eight percent increase in the number of malaria-carrying mosquitoes.

This has implications for human health and economic development. It is calculated that Africa’s Gross National Product (GNP) in 2000 could have been 25 per cent or US$100 billion higher if malaria had been eradicated 35 years ago.

So it is our sincere hope that when heads of state meet in New York that they put “natural or nature’s capital” right up there with human and financial capital.

And that they also recognise that significant targeted investments in the environment including the restoration and rehabilitation of damaged and degraded wetlands, forests, mangroves, coral and the like provide a high rate of return and will go a long way towards meeting the eight Goals.

Anything less will undermine our attempts to defeat poverty and deliver sustainable development and will short- change current and future generations.

Department of State for Forestry.