ENVIRONMENT-LATIN AMERICA: Delegates Thrash Out Regional Position

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Nov 1 1996 (IPS) - Representatives of Latin American governments began to meet here Friday to identify projects of environmental cooperation and hammer out common positions and priorities in preparation for the 10th Meeting of Environment Ministers from Latin America and the Caribbean.

The Environment Ministers will meet Nov. 11-12 in the capital of Argentina in the framework of the third meeting of the Parties for the Conference on Biological Diversity, to run Nov. 4-15.

In an interview with IPS, Arsenio Rodriguez, the regional director of the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP), said the ministers will make “a very important political contribution to putting in order financial resources that are being wasted due to the overlapping of projects.”

Rodriguez said that since the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, the question of the environment is no longer the exclusive territory of environmentalists: “After Rio, sectors like industry and the World Bank incorporated the concept. But they are ‘reinventing the wheel’, which leads to the wasting of resources.”

Broader participation in the question of the environment has led to an increase in funding, but the resources are not always adequately channeled, said the U.N. official, who added that he was confident that the ministers would help organise that flow of funding.

On Friday, Rodriguez opened the meeting which will run through Saturday with the participation of representatives of agencies such as the Economic Commission for Latin America, the Global Environmental Facility, the Convention on Desertification and other U.N. agencies.

The delegates are also thrashing out the region’s position for the Nov. 4-15 Conference on Biological Diversity, the 1997 Conference on Climatic Change in Japan, and the Dec. 7-8 Hemispheric Summit on Sustainable Development to be held in Bolivia.

They are also identifying programmes of intra-regional cooperation, such as a joint project in which Chile, Mexico and Brazil are sharing their experiences in the fight against air pollution, and a contribution from Cuban experts towards cleaning up an Argentine river polluted by the sugar industry.

The experts are setting priorities in accordance with a UNEP poll of governments in the region regarding the demands for cooperation from the various sectors of civil society.

The highest priority is to be given to the improved organisation and the sustainable use of natural resources, incentives for sustainable production and consumption, an environmental impact study on free trade, technical assistance and environmental awareness-raising projects.