Ecobreves – CHILE: Criticisms for UN Appointment of Ex-President as Climate Envoy

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SANTIAGO, May 5 2007 (IPS) - Chilean environmentalists reject the United Nations appointment of former president Ricardo Lagos (2000-2006) as one of three special envoys on climate change. In a communiqué released May 1, the UN underscored as one of Lagos's merits his creation of the Democracy and Development Foundation.

“I think it's outrageous and worrisome, given that during his administration he had no sensitivity to environmental issues. On the contrary, he put public policies below the big private interests,” Luis Mariano Rendón, of the Ecological Action Movement, told Tierramérica.

Lagos, who will share the post with Norway's former prime minister Gro Harlem Brundtland and South Korea's former foreign affairs minister Han Seung-Soo, assured that under his government “there were efforts” to fight climate change, but he conceded that “we could have done more.”