From: Bloomberg
Brazil will make an “ambitious” proposal to fight climate change at meetings in Copenhagen later this year, said Luiz Alberto Figueiredo Machado, the country’s lead climate negotiator.
“We will propose solid numbers because we want to contribute to a robust result in Copenhagen,” Figueiredo told reporters today in Brasilia. “But we will put pressure on the countries responsible for global warming to pay for their share of the damage.”
Governments from around the world will meet in Copenhagen starting Dec. 7 for the final round of talks on a climate accord to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.
Rich nations need to focus more on cutting greenhouse-gas emissions and less on programs that allow them to offset the pollution they create, said Figueiredo, who heads the environment department at Brazil’s Foreign Relations Ministry.
“We are seeking to establish a limit for the use of carbon offsetting mechanisms so that developed countries will be forced to maximize internal efforts to cut emissions,” he said.
There is a consensus among developing countries that rich nations must cut emissions by at least 40 percent by 2020 from 1990 levels, the Brazilian diplomat said.
Targets
Pledges by industrialized countries have fallen short of that level, and current proposals set emission reduction targets between 11 percent and 17 percent, he said.
So far, only Norway said it will make a 40 percent reduction. Japan pledged to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions 25 percent, he said.
Countries have three weeks of talks left -- one in Barcelona next month and two in the Danish capital -- to close gaps in the accord that would set targets to reduce heat- trapping gases such as carbon dioxide.
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has pledged to reduce deforestation in the country’s Amazon rain forest by 80 percent by 2020. The Amazon, which spans nine countries and is roughly the size of Australia, is commonly called the lungs of the Earth as its plants and trees absorb greenhouse gases from the air.
Brazil is the world’s fourth-biggest polluter because of greenhouse gases produced by fires used to clear land for pasture in the Amazon rainforest.
Cattle-ranching is responsible for 80 percent of the illegal deforestation, according to Brazil’s environment ministry. The fires create 6 percent of the carbon dioxide spewed into the air worldwide, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists in Cambridge, Massachusetts.