Pledge by EC to developing countries
KUALA LUMPUR, Mon. —The European Community (EC) has pledged to co-operate actively with developing countries to improve access to environmentally-sound technologies, increase their transfer on a fair and favourable basis and enhance their capacity to use and develop these technologies.
In a plenary session statement issued by Portugal on behalf of the EC, it said the community intends, in the framework of development co-operation, to purchase patents and making them available as part of aid packages and encourage industry to export technology compatible to sustainable development.
It said, however, that for efficient use of technologies, technical co-operation could not be separated from capacity building.
The EC, in a contrasting position to the G77, also reaffirmed its belief that the Global Environment Facility (GEF) fund should serve as the appropriate multi-lateral mechanism to provide new and additional financial resources on grant and concessional terms to cover the agreed costs.
On funding for Agenda 21, the statement said existing funding sources and mechanisms should be maintained. These include multilateral development banks and funds and relevant specialized agencies and other United Nation bodies.
It should also include multilateral institutions for capacity building and technical co-operation, bilateral assistance programmes, debt relief and private funding.
Kamal Nath, India’s Minster for Environmental Forests, said the country was seeking four elements essential to the New Global Partnership which was not based on charity or unilateral action but on common concern, transparent responsibility and credibility. They are:
• to give equal weightage : the concerns of all nations, such as the conservation, management and development of forests and poverty eradication;
• not only to limit the containment of pollution but also focus on environmental restoration through t massive re-greening of the Earth; ....be prepared
• give the United Nations a stronger role in dealing with these matters; and,
• to give continuity of partnership on distinct and separate mechanisms to transfer of new and additional financial resources and environmentally sound technology on preferential, concessional and non-commercial terms.
The German Federal Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, Professor Dr Klaus Toepfer, said the industrialized countries were the main contributors to the emission of climate-relevant trace gases and were responsible in working out strategies and measures to combat the greenhouse effect.
"Industrialized countries must be prepared to take additional responsibility, both nationally and internationally," he said.
Germany, for instance, has set itself an objective of reducing carbon dioxide emissions between 25 to 30 per cent by the year 2005.
Toepfer said it would be a gradual process but what was more important was the need to initiate such moves and also offer these technologies to the developing nations.
"It is our responsibility to reduce such gas emissions not only in our country but also in other nations that would benefit from our research," he said.
"We can use our money and our technology to provide higher energy efficiency not only in our country. but also in others," he added.
Source : New Straits Times, April 28, 1992
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