Brazil calls for common position among Amazonian countries for COP16

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva defended on Wednesday a common position of the Amazonian countries on climate and environmental issues to be discussed at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP16) to be held in Cancun, Mexico, in December.

After meeting with his Peruvian counterpart Alan Garcia in Manaus, city located in the Brazilian Amazon, Lula da Silva said that a consensual speech between the countries of the region is necessary to prevent developed countries from trying to impose barriers to developing countries growth.

"I think we need to organize a South American integration and come to COP16 very strong to adopt a more environmentally correct policy," he said.

He said that developed countries put pressure on Amazon countries to prevent them from building hydroelectric power plants in order to sell them nuclear power.

"The climate issue has to be taken seriously and we have to do concrete things, but we cannot be at the mercy of the discourses of the countries that deforest everything they had to deforest, win everything they had to win, are rich and now do not want us to be rich," he said.

Lula da Silva said that harnessing the potential of the Amazon through hydroelectric power generation avoids the use of more polluting sources, such as thermoelectric plants, which depend on fossil fuel.

The Brazilian leader had prompted a meeting between Amazon countries before COP15, held last December in Copenhagen, Denmark, but had little resonance among his counterparts of the region.

In Copenhagen, the Brazilian government presented the goal of reducing by 1,000 million tons the emissions of carbon dioxide by 2020 and voluntarily reducing between 36.1 and 38.9 per cent by 2020 emissions of greenhouse gases in relation to what would be issued if no action was taken.

Source: Xinhua