G8 urged to meet Kyoto Protocol goals
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, on closing the GLOBE forum on climate change yesterday, called on the Group of Eight (G8) developed nations to meet greenhouse-gas reduction targets set out in the Kyoto Protocol.
"It's important that the G8 countries assume their responsibility by complying with the Kyoto Protocol, and support our efforts by opening their markets to our sustainable products," Lula told 100 lawmakers from Brazil, India, China, South Africa and Mexico.
The two-day GLOBE forum (Global Legislators Organization for a Balanced Environment) aims to agree on a post-2012 climate change settlement and submit it to the leaders of powerful G8 countries meeting on Japan's Hokkaido island from July 7 to 9.
The international Kyoto Protocol, an agreement made under United Nations auspices according to which around 175 countries have agreed to reduce their carbon emissions, expires in 2012.
The Kyoto Protocol's dismal track record so far, Lula said, can only be improved "if the global sharing of benefits and responsibilities begins in earnest now, and greater effort is placed on post-2012 climate-change initiatives."
Lula called on industrialized nations to "bear the costs of slowing deforestation and protecting the wilderness by means of voluntary contributions to the Amazon Fund."
Brazil, he said, "wants to count on the international community's cooperation" in its efforts to preserve the Amazon region, and called for an international fund to protect the region's biodiversity.
Lula also asked the G8 to back another Brazilian Amazon preservation project seeking to invest about one billion dollars a year between now and 2012.
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