Ma Jun Quotes

We firmly believe the environmental issues cannot be addressed without extensive public participation, but people need to be informed before they can get involved.

So to hope to be able to have peace, to be able to have justice and environmental balance, are consequences of our behavior, not just our intentions.

If you look around the world, the countries with the best environmental practices are the wealthiest. There's a reason for that. If you're worried about where your next meal is going to come from or shelter over your head, your focus is on those things.

The primary task of developing countries is to develop the economy and eradicate poverty. Without economic growth, there would be no material basis for a better life or better environment for the people. But economic growth must not be achieved at the cost of environment or resources. In the absence of proper resource and environmental protection, there could be no sustainable economic development.

We have reached a new milestone as a human family. With seven billion of us now inhabiting our planet, it is time to ask some fundamental questions. How can we provide a dignified life for ourselves and future generations while preserving and protecting the global commons - the atmosphere, the oceans and the ecosystems that support us?

The growth that we want is one that brings real benefits to the people, raises quality and efficiency of development, and contributes to energy conservation and environmental protection.

It is one of the issues that will have to be worked through however let me make the point and I think anyone would accept that if you set it up properly, not only will you get better environmental outcomes, you have a chance to create more wealth with the available resource.

I think the greatest challenge in environmentalism and the most rewarding challenge is trying to figure out how humans can meet their needs while protecting the environment.

I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic growth, environmental protection, improvements in our educational system.

I firmly believe that we can have a healthy environment and a sustainable timber industry.

The motivation should come from regulatory enforcement, but enforcement is weak, and environmental litigation is near to impossible. So there's an urgent need for extensive public participation to generate another kind of motivation.

Sustainable development is the pathway to the future we want for all. It offers a framework to generate economic growth, achieve social justice, exercise environmental stewardship and strengthen governance.

New Zealand needs to balance its environmental responsibilities with its economic opportunities, because the risk is that if you don't do that - and you want to lead the world - then you might end up getting unintended consequences.

China's environmental conundrums will not be solved by changes within government alone. New mechanisms are needed to allow the communities which may be affected by a given plan, and citizens concerned about the environment, to join in.

Like many countries, Indonesia can transform its decision-making system to be more transparent and inclusive, particularly on resource allocation and use.

Saving our planet, lifting people out of poverty, advancing economic growth... these are one and the same fight. We must connect the dots between climate change, water scarcity, energy shortages, global health, food security and women's empowerment. Solutions to one problem must be solutions for all.

When we realize we can make a buck cleaning up the environment, it will be done!

Environmental policy must strike a balance between the earth's best interests and our citizen's pressing needs.

To waste, to destroy, our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed.

Conservation has been in eclipse in this country ever since Theodore Roosevelt’s day. It had barely gotten off the ground when Uncle Joe Cannon, the Speaker of the House in those days, issued his ultimatum: “Not 1 cent for scenery.” Well, today we are repealing Cannon’s law. We are declaring a new doctrine of conservation.

Sustainability is a very tough thing in our government because there are so many different competing priorities.

We must subject the machine—technology—to control and cease despoiling the earth and filling people with goodies merely to make money.

Everyone realizes that we have to clean up the environment, but no one likes the cost.

How much longer, for instance, can we continue to crowd more and more people into this world? …. How long can we permit the uncontrolled use of the earth's resources when there is no possibility of replacing them? Indeed, how long will it be before we have completely used up everything our lives depend on? These issues are the politics of the future. Neither Republicans nor Democrats have begun to spell out in substantive fashion the means by which we can control population growth, environmental problems, and the conservation of our natural resources.

Those of us concerned with developing new technology should consider ourselves to have a major undertaking to try to meet the expanding needs of the increasing number of people in the world with its finite resources and environments constraints.