Budget Row Stalls Brazil Global Environment Talks
11/27/99
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Title: Budget Row Stalls Brazil Global Environment Talks
Source: Reuters
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: November 27, 1999
Byline: Shasta Darlington
SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Clashes over budget and financing issues
stalled on Friday a global conference aimed at stepping up a U.N.-led
effort to keep fertile land from turning into desert.
Representatives from more than 150 countries gathered in the
northeastern Brazilian city of Recife this week to assess measures to
fight the environmental crisis known as ''desertification'' that
affects 40 percent of the world's land.
But some of the member countries rejected a proposal to boost the
operational budget for the U.N. Convention to Combat Desertification
(UNCCD), dragging out talks initially scheduled to end on Thursday or
Friday midday at the latest.
``It has gotten difficult to conclude the conference and sign
documents due to disagreements over the budget,'' a spokeswoman
at the press office for Brazil's Environment Ministry said.
The UNCCD requested a 40 percent increase over 1999's $6.1 million
budget. Countries also spend billions of dollars a year on programs to
fight land degradation and poverty. Deforestation, climate change,
huge population growth and over-farming and grazing are largely blamed
for turning 57,919 square miles -- an area larger than Greece -- to
dust each year.
The damage costs governments more than $4 billion a year and affects
more than one billion people, many of whom have been forced to migrate
to cities and other countries in search of work and food.
This week, representatives from Africa, Europe and Latin America met
for the first review of efforts since the crisis was identified at the
Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, leading to the creation of the
UNCCD.
``This convention is a strong sign of the growing importance of this
topic,'' Brazilian Environment Minister Jose Sarney Filho told Reuters
this week.
He called it ``a forum to exchange experiences and technology from
around the world and for different levels of government and
institutions to put the ideas into action.''
The Budget rows are likely to delay the signing of the final Recife
Initiative until late Friday night or early Saturday morning,
participants said.
The UNCCD hopes to set a date and framework to begin talks on
implementation of anti-desertification efforts based on the
national action plans presented by African countries during the Recife
conference.
The convention also stressed the need to explore different ways of
financing anti-desertification programs by including them in bigger
environmental and anti-poverty projects.
Most programs to combat desertification are funded through bilateral
agreements between affected countries and donor countries while the
UNCCD coordinates much of the discussion.
The convention was seen as key to start discussing how to actually
implement anti-desertification proposals.