PRESS CONFERENCE BY CHAIR OF DEVELOPING COUNTRIES GROUP ON ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES

PRESS CONFERENCE BY CHAIR OF DEVELOPING COUNTRIES GROUP

ON ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES

The new United States administration had sent “a bad and disappointing message” by exercising a unilateral approach to the multilateral process of the Kyoto Protocol on controlling the emission of greenhouse gases, the Chairman of the “Group of 77” developing countries and China, Bagher Asadi of Iran, told correspondents this morning at a Headquarters press conference.

Addressing ongoing negotiations on global environmental issues, particularly climate change, Mr. Asadi said the 1997 agreement reached in Kyoto -– a Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change that seeks to have developed countries reduce their greenhouse gas emissions -- was a valid international instrument and was not to be renegotiated.  Its provisions should be respected and complied with by all the parties according to the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities”, which was an overarching principle enunciated almost 10 years ago at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro.  He hoped that the United States, despite recent pronouncements, would join the international community in earnest in the ongoing process of addressing climate change challenges.

He announced that Minister Jan Pronk of the Netherlands, President of the Sixth Conference of the Parties (COP-6) to the Climate Change Convention, had just distributed a new paper for further consideration and negotiation on outstanding issues.  A one-day informal consultations would be held in New York on Saturday, 21 April, chaired by Mr. Pronk.  The Group of 77 would hold a high-level/

ministerial meeting on 20 April for initial discussion on the paper.

Also, he said, the Commission on Sustainable Development would start its two-week ninth session on Monday, 16 March.  Environmental protection was one of the three interrelated and interdependent pillars of the sustainable development issues.  The other two were economic development and social development.  The Commission on Sustainable Development was established under the aegis of the Economic and Social Council to pursue implementation of Agenda 21, the action programme adopted in Rio.

On the agenda of the ninth session were transport; information for decision-making and participation; atmosphere; and international cooperation for an enabling environment.  A fifth issue would be energy, as the Ad hoc Working Group on Energy and Sustainable Development had finished its work in February and would submit its final report to the Commission next week.  On the “sideline” of the session were other matters, such as international environmental governance, the beginning of the preparatory process for Rio+10, to be held in South Africa in September 2002, and the questions around the Kyoto Protocol and the resumed session of the COP-6 of the Climate Change Convention.

Energy would be an important issue during the ninth session, he continued.  Developing and developed countries had differing views and interests.  Developing countries needed access to affordable and predictable energy on “unconcessional

terms”.  Within the framework of sustainable energy, there was also the question of clean and environmentally sound technologies for effective energy production. That issue was directly related to climate change and the control of greenhouse gases emissions.

Capacity and access were cross-cutting concerns related to such issues as transport and information.  In that regard, the developing world needed the support of the international community, particularly of the developed countries, which had the financial resources and the technology.

One meeting of the ninth session, on 18 March, would be devoted to international environmental governance.  For the Group of 77, the important issues included:  institutional arrangements; multilateral environmental agreements and the coordination between them; finances; decision-making; and compliance.

The preparatory process for the tenth session of the Commission for Sustainable Development, as the beginning of the preparatory process for the World Summit on Sustainable Development (Rio+10), would begin right after the ninth session.

Answering a question about controversies in the transfer of energy technology, Mr. Asadi said the issue came back to the matter of financing.  Developing countries could not afford available technologies at market prices.  Within the framework of international cooperation for development, the developing world expected to receive adequate support from the developed community in order to achieve a certain degree of development that would make overall global development sustainable.

The message from the United States regarding the Kyoto Protocol was negative because it was a unilateral decision by one of the actors in an ongoing multilateral process, he said, in response to another correspondent’s question.  What would that mean for other ongoing multilateral processes? he asked.  The message was perhaps more important than the act itself.  The United States was the biggest contributor to the emission of greenhouse gases.  That country’s early role in the development of ideas of climate change had led, on the other hand, to the Kyoto Protocol agreement.

Nobody was in a position to twist arms in the consultations of Saturday,

21 April, he said, but the fact that ”the entire international community minus the United States” would like to continue with the negotiations would constitute “power of persuasion”.  Negotiations were not easy, because the national interests of every country were involved.  Small island developing countries were very concerned about the matter, as were the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and European countries.  There was a scientific consensus about climate change, but there were some differences of opinion as to the degree of that change.

Asked how the message from Washington would impact on the work of the ninth session of the Commission for Sustainable Development, Mr. Asadi said that the Kyoto Protocol and the COP-6 issues were not on the session’s agenda.  The message would, however, “shed its shadow” on the Commission’s ongoing work, because most of the high-level participants would refer to the matter in bilateral talks and in their statements.