Volume 2, issue #10 - 14-04-1997

Apr. 3, 1997 A UN draft document prepared for a special General Assembly session in June urges industrialised nations to boost aid to developing countries to help them cut down greenhouse gas emissions.
The draft resolution criticises industrialised nations for failing to abide by pledges made at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to raise their official development assistance (ODA) to the equivalent of 0.7% of gross national product (GNP). ''Most developed countries have still not reached the UN target...On average, ODA as a percentage of GNP declined in the post-Rio period, from 0.34% in 1992 to 0.27% in 1995,'' the document says.
The document is drafted for the June 23-27 General Assembly special session on Agenda 21, the environmental action program endorsed at the Earth Summit. It will be presented to the UN Commission on Sustainable Development session to be held in New York on April 7-25 before the special General Assembly conference. The commission was set up to review progress in the implementation of Agenda 21. The draft also appeals to industrialised nations to work out an agreement on drastically cutting greenhouse gas emissions at a third conference of the signatories to the UN Climate Change Convention to be held in Kyoto in December.
Industrialised nations are called upon to stabilise their emissions at 1990 levels as nonbinding targets by the year 2000 and the issue of what to do thereafter has been the subject of heated debate as the United States opposes setting short-term binding targets. The convention, which came into force in 1994 after being signed by most countries attending the Earth Summit, aims to halt increased emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane. It notes that economic globalisation since the Earth Summit has widened the wealth gap between industrialised and developing nations and also within the developing nations' grouping itself, with declining trends in official development assistance from industrialised nations to developing countries. The draft urges measures to be adopted on promoting the transfer of environment-related technology from the rich to the poor countries so as to achieve sustainable development as was agreed at the Earth Summit. It calls on industrialised nations with declining official development assistance to raise their assistance to at least the 1992 levels in percentage of GNP. The draft also proposes taxing fuel used for international flights to raise funds to aid developing countries and double the Global Environment Facility, a fund established to finance global environmental preservation projects.