Environment chief shuns Earth Summit
BRUSSELS: The European Community’s top environment official announced yesterday he would not attend the Earth Summit in Brazil, saying its outcome was largely pre-arranged and implying it would be a disappointment.
Environment Commissioner Carlo Ripa di Meana announced his decision a day after the bloc’s environment ministers failed to agree on key elements of the platform he had wanted the EC to take to the UN Conference on Environment and Development starting next week in Rio de Janeiro.
Ripa, who has sharply criticized the United States for watering down an international treaty on tackling global warming that will be signed in Rio, said he bad reached the decision "after evaluating the whole of the conference."
"I have decided not to go to a conference where it seems everything or virtually everything has been arranged," he told a news conference.
In a clear reference to Washington’s tactics in the global warming negotiations, Ripa said he believed in an environment policy "based on binding obligations and precise undertakings, not on words."
The commissioner, a staunch advocate of robust action by industrialized countries to head off the widely-predicted rise in global temperatures, is the architect of a controversial European Commission proposal to introduce a global warming tax on energy across the bloc.
Ripa’s decision is symbolic of growing pessimism within the European Commission, the EC executive, over prospects for the Rio summit achieving significant progress towards resolving environment and development problems.
It will have no direct bearing on the Community’s position at the conference, however, since Portugal, the current EC president, will speak on the bloc’s behalf.
Ripe had made his participation at Rio conditional on EC ministers endorsing the commission’s energy tax proposal, agreeing to a timetable for boosting Third World aid and resolving a row over where to site the EC’s planned environment agency.
Environment ministers did none of these at a meeting here on Tuesday, although Ripa said he was satisfied with their more positive than expected reaction to the tax plan.
In Singapore, the chairman of the summit’s preparatory committee said yesterday that rich countries can help bridge a gulf with poor nations by pledging fresh funds for Third World green programmes.
Singapore ambassador-at-large Tommy Koh said UN officials estimated US$125 billion ($325 billion) would be needed annually to finance Agenda 21, a summit action plan on issues such as poverty, the atmosphere and toxic waste.
"My hope is that in Rio, the developed countries will agree to provide new and additional resources to help developing countries embark upon the path of sustainable development," Koh said.
"As a token of their good faith, I hope that the developed countries will make a significant initial financial commitment in Rio," he said. "The commitment will hopefully be increased, year by year, until it reaches the target."
Koh said he expects Agenda 21 to be endorsed along with a statement of principles on forests and conventions on climate change and "biodiversity." — Reuter
Source : The Straits Times, May 28, 1992
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