The preservation of biodiversity is not just a job for governments. International and non-governmental organisations, the private sector and each and every individual have a role to play in changing entrenched outlooks and ending destructive patterns of behaviour

We can love what we are, without hating what, and who, we are not.

How can you have a world of today where India is not represented in the Security Council; Japan, the second contributor, is not there; the whole continent of Africa, soon to be 54 countries, don't have a single permanent seat; and Latin America is absent? It's not realistic.

Extreme poverty anywhere is a threat to human security everywhere.

Let us be good stewards of the Earth we inherited. All of us have to share the Earth's fragile ecosystems and precious resources, and each of us has a role to play in preserving them. If we are to go on living together on this earth, we must all be responsible for it.

The other thing that really I regretted not being able to do was to push effectively for the reform of the Security Council. Because the world was changing, and is changing very fast, and I felt the UN was holding on to old arrangements. Most governments felt that it has such a narrow power base, based on the results of the second world war.

Let us choose to unite the power of markets with the authority of universal ideals. Let us choose to reconcile the creative forces of private entrepreneurship with the needs of the disadvantaged and the requirements of future generations.