United Nations Radio

The General Conference of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) opened its five-day session in Vienna on Monday.

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The General Conference, which is the highest policy-making organ of UNIDO, brings together high-level officials from the agency's 173 member states.

Senior representatives of international organizations, such as the World Bank are also attending the session.

The theme for this year's event is "green industries" and the opportunities they offer for developing countries in the current economic circumstance.
UNIDO's spokesman George Assaf explains.

"What we mean by green industries is recognition that we cannot go on with business as usual any longer. Business as usual means going out of business. What we fundamentally have to do is to rethink our production and consumption patterns such that we preserve resources that we use less energy and we use less material to make products and at the same time we change our consumption patterns such that we are less lavish in what we consume and we consume those things that we can afford within the physical capability of the environment and our planet."

UNIDO's General Conference is expected to re-appoint the Director-General for a period of four years, approve the programme and budgets and establish the scale assessments for regular budget expenditures for the forthcoming biennium.

Dianne Penn, UN Radio.

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