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LATIN AMERICA |
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Sarkozy, Lula Set Common Goals for
Copenhagen Climate Summit
PARIS – French President Nicolas Sarkozy and
his Brazilian counterpart, Luiz Inacio Lula
da Silva, announced on Saturday that they
have adopted a common position for the
Copenhagen Climate Change Summit that
suggests, among other measures, the creation
of a World Environmental Organization.
The document that both will take to the
Danish capital next month is “our climate
bible,” the Brazilian president told a press
conference after his meeting this afternoon
with Sarkozy in the Elysee Palace.
The two nations ratified in the document the
conclusions of a report by the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
and “support its goal of limiting the
increase in average world temperatures to 2
degrees centigrade above pre-industrial
levels.”
This is an accord with concrete objectives
and commitments to halt a phenomenon of
which “we are all victims,” Lula said,
recalling that his government has just
approved an ambitious “voluntary commitment”
to contain climate change and the
deforestation of the Amazon.
His presidential chief of staff, Dilma
Rousseff, gave reporters the details of this
commitment, which, as its central feature,
plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by
between 36.1 percent and 38.9 percent by the
year 2020.
This is an example to follow, according to
Sarkozy, who said that both France and
Brazil want the results at Copenhagen to be
“ambitious.”
Charged with putting guidelines into
practice would be the future World
Environmental Organization, which, according
to the French head of state, would be an
agency of the United Nations with the
mission of checking on “the compatibility of
reality with the commitments” entered into
by the different countries.
This organization would give “greater
coherence to the efforts of the
international community” in this sphere, the
text of the accord signed jointly in Paris
Saturday said.
Starting immediately, Lula and Sarkozy have
promised to work against the clock to try
and convince as many countries as possible
to share their position with a view to
making the world summit on climate change a
success.
Both sent a clear message to the United
States and China that they must be part of
an ambitious commitment and that they must
not pact some minimal agreement beforehand.
“We won’t accept that others say, well,
we’ll see about this tomorrow,” said
Sarkozy, referring to the United States when
he declared that “the world’s leading
economy must live up to its
responsibilities.”
The Brazilian president said that “we are
all victims of the same irresponsibility”
and that polluting gases are not stopped by
any wall or border. |
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