Brazil Seeks Aid From UN Chief to Protect Amazon

Raymond Colitt, PlanetArk 14 Nov 07;

BELEM, Brazil - Beneath a towering canopy in the heat of the Amazon jungle, Brazilian Indians and officials urged UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday to rally international support to protect the world's largest rain forest.

"We need the Secretary to help convert international good will into concrete mechanisms that benefit the residents of the Amazon," Brazilian Environment Minister Marina Silva told Ban under a century-old Samauma tree 30 minutes upriver from Belem, the Amazon's largest city.

Ban was on the last stop of a South American tour that focused on the potential impact of global warming and included a visit to Antarctica last week.

"I kindly ask you to help create incentives so we and other forest dwellers can make a living here," Amazon Indian Marcos Apurina told Ban, who received a necklace made of native plant seeds and saw other forest products from honey to handicrafts.

Ban, who hiked a short jungle trail on Combu island on the Guama River, said: "The United Nations will stand beside you. This is a common asset of all humankind."

Earlier Ban petted a three-toed sloth and planted two native trees at a botanical garden in Belem.

Ban is preparing for a UN climate change conference in Bali, Indonesia, in December, which should start talks to curb carbon emissions after the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012.

FOREST DESTRUCTION

Brazil produces the world's fourth-largest amount of carbon emissions, due mostly to the destruction of the Amazon rain forest, according to international environmental groups.

Ban did not comment on Brazil's refusal to adopt targets to reduce deforestation and carbon emissions. Instead, he commended Brazil for its efforts to curb forest destruction by 50 percent over two years, even though the rate has risen again since August.

The Amazon releases stored carbon dioxide when trees are burnt or decompose, contributing to global warming.

Advancing farmers and loggers clear country-sized chunks of the forest every year -- more when grain, beef or timber prices are high, less when they fall.

Silva, a former rubber tapper and activist, urged Ban to help overcome opposition by some Western countries to a proposal within the international Convention on Biodiversity that would force pharmaceutical companies to pay for drugs derived from Amazon medicinal plants.

"He listened and said he would study the proposal," Silva said after a meeting with Ban late on Monday.

Scientists say global warming could turn part of the Amazon into semi-arid savanna within a few decades.

Extreme weather has caused droughts in some parts and flooding in others. Ban's planned trip along an Amazon tributary near the port city of Santarem was canceled because the river was too shallow.

Ban praised Brazil for its leadership in developing low-emission biofuels but said more international research was needed to study the possible impact of their large-scale production on food supplies.

On the weekend, he visited one of the plants in Sao Paulo state that make Brazil one of the largest and cheapest producers of ethanol.

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's government has increased police raids on illegal loggers and expanded protected areas. But it is also building roads and hydroelectric plants which conservationists fear could increase deforestation in the long term.

(Editing by Eric Walsh)

UN chief wraps up Brazil trip with Amazon visit
Marc Burleigh, Yahoo News 14 Nov 07;

UN chief Ban Ki-moon said Tuesday he was "committed" to helping Brazil preserve its Amazon basin, after national and indigenous officials asked him to provide greater international political support.

"I make my firm commitment that the United Nations will work with you and stand by you," Ban said as he stood on a jungle island in the Amazon, on the last leg of a week-long trip to South America and the Antarctic.

He described the flora and fauna of Brazil's forested northern region -- often termed "the lungs of the planet" for its role in absorbing greenhouse gases -- as "fantastic."

Brazilian Environment Minister Marina Silva, accompanying Ban and his wife up the Guama River in the Amazon basin to Combu Island, near Belem, said "the presence of the UN secretary general is a strong gesture" for Brazil's conservation efforts.

But she urged more concrete measures, namely Ban's support in having conventions on biodiversity and tackling climate change passed.

She said she also wanted to see countries that benefited from the products from Amazon's forest to help pay for its preservation.

"He can make a strong political contribution," she told reporters.

A representative of the Coordination of Indigenous Organizations of the Brazilian Amazon, Antonio Marcos Alcantara de Oliveira, told Ban as he stopped under a giant tree on the island that indigenous people here needed assistance.

"The country and the state have contributed, but we need more, we need help," especially in the areas of education and health, he said, before bestowing a native necklace on the UN chief as a gift.

Ban reassured de Oliveira that the UN was aware of the needs of the Amazon.

"The people who have been living here for thousands and thousands of years, you are the pioneers in preserving this forest," he said.

He added that the Amazon forest was "a common asset of all humankind and we must preserve it."

The UN secretary general made the Amazon trip as part of his fact-finding mission to see for himself the results of global warming.

It may have been more educational that he originally planned: a trip along a river to a different village in the Amazon was changed at the last minute because the water level was too low, despite it being Brazil's rainy season.

Ban intends to take what he has learned first to a Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change meeting in Valencia, Spain later this week, then to a December summit in Bali aimed at coming up with a successor text to the Kyoto treaty, which expires in 2012.

The UN chief has declared tackling climate change one of his top priorities.

He said he was "returning with a sense of great achievement" from what he had learned throughout his trip.

During his tour, he took in Argentina, Chile and the Antarctic before going to Brazil for three days. He met Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Monday and commended him on his ecological policies.

Ban was due to fly on to Spain, where he was to meet Prime Minister Jose Luis Zapatero, and then on to Tunisia for an international conference on terrorism, and finally back to Spain, for a climate change meeting in Valencia at the end of the week.