Massoumeh Ebtekar, Iran's Vice President & Head of the Department of Environment

   In her address to the IPF 2000, Ms. Massoumeh Ebtekar, Vice President of the Islamic Republic of Iran and Head of the Department of Environment, spoke of the dependency of sustainable development on maintaining the balance between economic growth and environmental concerns.
She believed that environmental problems could endanger man's life on the earth. She said, "despite impressive advances, analysts believe that environmental issues like climate change, ozone layer depletion and destruction of biodiversity are among great challenges facing man in the new millennium". Ebtekar also noted that access to clean production technologies and establishment of systems were among essential components in the development of Iran's petrochemical industry. She said, "disposal management is one of the issues which is of serious concern to the industry, as a whole, and to the petrochemicals sector, in particular. The Department of Environment has drawn up a program to seriously tackle this issue".

   Commending the NPC's management for their efforts to comply with the standards required for protecting the environment, Ebtekar noted that a number of NPC's complexes have received the ISO 14000 certificates as well as the "Green Industry Award" of the Department of Environment. She concluded her address with a reminder mixed with hope and worry: "Healthy environment is the basic right of both the present and the future generations who would be apprehensive about a bright future".