Japan pledges to boost aid by 50%, embrace pollution control
RIO DE JANEIRO — Japan took a leading role at the Earth Summit or Saturday, offering a substantial increase in its aid for Third World environment programmes and embracing pollution control as a scientific challenge.
In an announcement just before lunch, Japan said it would raise its official development aid for environmental programmes to between 900 billion (S$11.3 billion) and one trillion yen over five years.
That is the largest amount pledged by any country at the summit.
A Japanese spokesman said the offer represents a 50 per cent increase from current levels of aid.
The announcement was made after the Japanese delegation tailed to persuade United Nations organizers to allow Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa to speak to the conference through a satellite television hookup.
Mr Miyazawa stayed in Japan because of domestic political problems.
Diplomats said UN Secretary-General Boutros Ghali refused the video address because it would set "a bad exam-pie" that could encourage other leaders to do the same and thus weaken the UN.
Mr Miyazawa said it was "incumbent upon Japan to play a leading role in the international efforts for both environment and development".
He promised to "continue to work for techno-logical breakthroughs, the benefits of which we hope to share with the rest of the world".
He also announced that Japan would try to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to 1990 level by 2000.
That is a target set by Western European nations, but it was rejected ( by the United States which forced its removal from a climate-change convention, a move which angered many of the 178 countries negotiating here since June 3.
Earlier In the day President Francois Mitterrand of France pledged to increase development aid by the year 2000 to 0.7 per cent of his nation’s gross national product (GNP) —a target the Third World had demanded and which Germany has promised it would meet.
France now provides aid at about 0.56 per cent of its GNP.
Japan contributes 0.3 per cent of its economic output. It has committed itself to the 0.7 per cent figure without agreeing to the target date. —NYT, Reuter, AP, AFP.
Source : The Straits Times, June 15, 1992
Recycling Point Dot Com
(C) 2000 All Rights Reserved