UN Urges Brazil and Neighbors to Join Efforts to Save the Amazon

Brazil's Amazonia The just-released United Nations Environment program (UNEP) shows two sides of the human effect on climate change, with a report revealing hastened degradation of the earth's largest forest zone and the Danish city of Copenhagen becoming the 100th member of a climate-friendly network.

"Our Amazonia is changing at an accelerated rate with very profound modifications in its ecosystems," the eight Amazonian countries declared in the GEO Amazonia report, supported by UNEP and the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO).

Despite the development of national programs to manage the region's ecosystems, economic activities, infrastructure construction, and human settlements are still decimating the great rain forest, vital to keeping atmospheric carbon down.

The report says that by 2005, 857,666 square kilometers of the forest had been transformed, reducing vegetation cover by approximately 17%, equal to two-thirds of Peru or 94% of Venezuela.

It recommends that the countries of the area – Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela – harmonize their efforts for sustainable utilization of the Amazonian ecosystems.

It also called on them to bolster their environmental institutions, boost their information campaigns, promote the economic value of sustainability and create a monitoring and evaluation system for all policies, programs and projects.

Meanwhile, UNEP announced that Copenhagen, Denmark, which will host the crucial UN Climate Change Conference at the end of the year, has become the 100th member of the Climate Change Network (CN Net).

Launched a year ago, the CN Net brings together a wide range of participants, including countries, cities, major international companies, UN agencies and leading non-governmental organizations (NGOs), UNEP said.

"One year on, the unfolding financial and environmental crises make the CN Net more relevant than ever before as a showcase of both the promise and viability of the low-carbon development model which goes hand-in-hand with the emerging Green Economy initiatives around the globe," UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner said at the agency's annual Governing Council meeting, taking place this week in Nairobi.

UNEP added that Copenhagen, under its vision of becoming a "climate capital of the world," has already cut its CO² emissions by one-fifth since 1990 and has pledged another 20% cut by 2015.

The city will play host to a music and arts festival in September to be run entirely on renewable energy, including a dance party in which stationary bike teams will generate power for the sound system and 'piezoelectricity' created by dancing crowds will light up the dance floor.

In a related development, the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) said today that experts at a Geneva conference urged the world maritime shipping fleet to reduce the carbon dioxide emissions of seaborne vessels, adding that dealing with climate change is a priority that should not be undermined by other concerns such as the current global financial crisis.

Engines of seaborne vessels now contribute between 1.6 and 4.1% of the global output of CO², speakers said at the three-day meeting entitled: "Maritime transport and the climate-change challenge."

Tags:

You May Also Like

Make Your Bets

During the whole month of February and the first week of March the Immigration ...

Brazil in Recession, with Industry Due to Shrink 1.7% in 2014

Industrial-activity data released this week added to worries that Brazil’s economy, already in recession, ...

Best-seller Books, Plays and Movies

To understand Brazil’s rural unionism, we need to distinguish among the movement’s four different ...

Brazil Exercises Right to Remain Silent on Uruguay-Argentina Brawl

Brazil does not intend to get involved in the dispute between Argentina and Uruguay ...

Brazil’s First Astronaut Celebrates Brazilian Aviation’s Father

A new, two-man crew of the International Space Station (ISS) and a Brazilian astronaut ...

Brazil Gets Top Ranking in Murders, Which Are 5% of All Deaths

Brazil holds the first place in violent deaths in the comparative study carried out ...

Brazilian Protestors Bring Big Tractor Traffic Jam to Brasí­lia

It has been baptized the Tractor Traffic Jam (“tratoraço”) and is scheduled to begin ...

Vive Les Bleus! A Bungling Brazil Is Sent Back Home.

Thierry Henry finally made his mark in a game that matters, scoring the only ...

Voters to Choose Between Past and Future in Brazil

A win for Marta Suplicy as Mayor of São Paulo would indicate that Brazilian ...

Alas, in Brazil, the Greener Times Seem to Be in the Past

Contradiction festers in Rio de Janeiro as international fervor surrounding June’s lackluster Rio +20 ...