Opening Remarks: Gerard Wolters, Inspector General, VROM, the Netherlands

"Salaam alaykum" - Peace upon you. This is the traditional welcome in Morocco.

Minister Mohamed Elyazghi, Secretary Pieter van Geel, Sir John Harman, Secretary General Mohammed Lididi, members of the judiciary, and other distinguished guests. My name is Gerard Wolters, and I am the Inspector-General of The Netherlands Inspectorate of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment. More importantly, for the present purposes, I also am the co-chair of the Executive Planning Committee of INECE, and the day chair for today.

It is my pleasure to welcome you all to the 7th International Conference of INECE, in this beautiful city of Marrakech, Morocco. I note that Morocco and the US have just concluded a trade agreement, which has an important environmental provision to promote environmental compliance and enforcement. Many of the other countries represented here today also have long-standing relations with this dynamic and open country at the cross-roads of North Africa, which throughout its history has welcomed the peoples of the world.

We are pleased that Morocco is using its historic leadership role in the region, to foster a new regional network for promoting environmental compliance and enforcement. During our preparations for this conference, and for the regional conference we held Saturday, it has been clear that there is much interest in such a regional network, and much appreciation of the benefits it would bring.

This is not a surprise. We all recognize the critical importance compliance and enforcement must play in maintaining and strengthening the rule of law, good governance, and sustainable development in all of our countries.

At all levels, we see many signs that the environment is continuing to deteriorate, and at the global level we see new problems such as climate change threatening even greater and more profound impacts. These problems, and others at the regional level, have led many of our citizens to demand more global and regional rules, and stronger rule of law at the national level, as well as better compliance at all levels.

Some other citizens and some governments, however, are concerned about centralizing power and about losing local accountability of those who govern. One response to this dilemma is the rise of transnational networks such as INECE. We now have more than 4000 participants in INECE from over 120 countries cooperating in the day-to-day business of environmental compliance and enforcement.

INECE is an informal global network and that is the way we like it. Not too formal or bureaucratic. We don't need that. We have a small but dedicated Secretariat, and a governing board we call the Executive Planning Committee with members from all of the regions of the world. We focus our energy on strengthening both cross-border and internal domestic cooperation among professionals who work on environmental compliance and enforcement inspectors, investigators, prosecutors, regulators, parliamentarians, judges, and NGOs, and so on.

We work in partnership with national governments and regional and international organizations to build the stronger and more global rule of law that the world needs - but we do it through a decentralized network of accountable enforcement officials and with the participation of interested representatives from civil society.

We think the world needs INECE, and we know that the world needs to improve compliance and enforcement with environmental laws, at all levels. At the international level, for example, we have negotiated many very important multilateral environmental agreements. These agreements are critical for solving our shared global and regional problems. But they can not do their job unless they are implemented and enforced.

They can not do their job unless the firms they are designed to regulate actually comply with the national laws that all States must pass to implement their international environmental obligations. So, we are here to talk about compliance and enforcement this week.

And the capacity building we need for compliance and enforcement. In too many countries, environmental compliance is falling behind because the capacity and the knowledge are not there. The capacity and knowledge are not there in government agencies, and they are not there in many firms, especially small and medium firms. This is a challenge for all of us, and a challenge for our political leaders. We think we can put more emphasis on this, as the INECE network, and as countries.

We will talk about compliance and capacity building for the next five days. We have seven important panel discussions on critical issues of compliance and enforcement. We also have a series of 25 workshops for capacity building and education, which you all have registered for in advance.

This is a working conference-and those who have been to past INECE conferences know we work hard. But we have designed the conference to be an interesting and interactive experience for learning and teaching-for all of us. We are all here to share our best and most empowering ideas, and our most uplifting and inspiring strategies, so we can all do our jobs better.

While we will all work hard this week, we have designed the conference so we can learn from each other as well. To network, we have a nice dinner planned for the hotel tonight, with a presentation by Bakary Kante, the deputy director of UNEP, on behalf of the Executive Director Klaus Toepfer, who is unable to be here. Tuesday we will go out of the hotel for a traditional Moroccan cultural experience.

Wednesday we will continue with a tradition we started at the 6th conference in Costa Rica, and take a field trip to visit renewable energy sites, an ISO certified cement plant, as well as a ceramics factory. This is a way to see more of the country, to get to know each other better, and to learn something about the local environmental compliance challenges in the region.

So we will work hard, and we will have the opportunity to learn about and to enjoy this beautiful and hospitable country. That is our tradition at INECE. We all have one of the most important jobs in the world today, at least in my opinion. And we need to continue to improve our training and our own capacity, so we can design better and more effective and more efficient strategies.

Our children cannot afford for us to fail. The world cannot afford for us to fail. So we must succeed. We hope we can help one another to do this throughout the week, and later, by continuing to participate actively in the INECE network.

I see many familiar faces, and it will be my pleasure to work with you all again this week. I also see many new faces, and I look forward to getting to know you throughout the week.

Once again, welcome. I hope you all have a productive and exciting week here in Marrakech.

And with these brief remarks, I now declare the 7th INECE International Conference officially open. Salaam alaykum.

I will now introduce the Minister of Environment for Morocco.