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Brazil Criticizes U.S. for Abandoning Kyoto Accord
Brazil's Foreign Affairs Minister Celso Lafer criticized the United States on Thursday for abandoning the international accord on global warming.
"Brazil views the United States' decision not to ratify the Kyoto protocol with concern," Lafer said as he set up a commission responsible for defining Brazil's stance ahead of the world summit on sustainable development set for September, 2002, in South Africa.
The Kyoto protocol of 1997 calls for industrialized countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 5.2 percent from 1990 levels by 2012. The build up of the gasses like carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are believed to cause global warming and wide spread climatic changes.
But the Bush administration's recent decision to reject the measures has darkened the outlook for world negotiations to put the reduction plan into practice.
"The magnitude of the impact of climatic change does not permit countries to adopt different positions that would jeopardize the enforcement (of the plan) to efficiently arrest the build up of greenhouse gases," said Lafer.
The minister was one of the organizers of the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, where the seeds of the Kyoto accord were sown.
"The Kyoto protocol, in its innovative form, links environmental protection with the affirmation of the priority of countries' sustainable development," said the minister.
The U.S. rejection of the accord has spurred international criticisms of the Bush government which argues that the accord's application would have negative economic consequences for North America.
The United States is responsible for 25 percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions.
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