Environment Ministers to Meet
Copyright 2001 Associated Press
October 20, 2001
By MICHAEL ASTOR, Associated Press Writer
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (AP) - Nearly 10 years after the world's leaders gathered in Brazil to discuss the Earth's future, environmental ministers from across the region are to return Sunday to take stock of progress since then.
The picture is not good.
Global warming (news - web sites) and Amazon destruction both are on the rise, and the United States' backing out of the Kyoto accords on greenhouse gas emissions is only the most glaring example of the failed promise of the 1992 U.N. Environmental Summit, or Eco-92.
The Bush administration in March said it was withdrawing from the 1997 protocol reach in Kyoto, Japan, arguing that its mandatory regulation of greenhouse gases would hurt the U.S. economy.
But organizers of this year's conference say if Latin America and the Caribbean can develop a common front ahead of the 2002 World Summit for Sustainable Development, to be held in Johannesburg, South Africa, progress is still possible.
``We know what needs to be done. We have the script. What we don't have are the actors, sets and equipment. I think the meeting could be an important step,'' said summit coordinator Antonio Fernando Mello, the environmental affairs adviser to Brazil's Foreign Ministry.
Mello said he believes many of the failures of Eco-92 had to do with legislative roadblocks.
``That's why it's important to try to harmonize legislation throughout the region,'' he said.
Lack of money also played a part. Few of the developed nations kept their promise to pay 0.7 percent of their gross domestic product to protect the environment.
Developing financing mechanisms for environmental projects will be a major issue at the conference that opens officially Sunday evening and runs through Wednesday.
There will actually be two conferences in Rio: the 13th Meeting of Latin American and Caribbean Environmental Ministers and another sponsored by U.N. Development Program that brings together 156 environmental groups from across the region to form a unified position ahead of next year's world summit.
Mello says the events were combined because of the participants' overlapping concerns.
Since a big chunk of the region is taken up by the Amazon basin, issues such as biodiversity, forests and water resources are certain to be on the table.
But urban environments also are a growing concern in a region where cities are growing at astonishing speed, straining often precarious infrastructure.