Nairobi, 22 feb (EFE).-United States today rejected the plan which defends the European Union (EU) to the United Nations programme for the environment (UNEP) become an agency of the UN with greater executive power.
Well said today in Nairobi to Efe Kerri-Ann Jones, head of the delegation of United States in the XII meeting Special of the Board of Directors of UNEP and the Global Forum of Ministers of environment, which today celebrates its third and last day.
“Support the strengthening of the UNEP to make it a more effective organization with a mandate more solid and important”, said Jones, Assistant Secretary of the Office of oceans and scientific and environmental international, belonging to the U.S. Department of State.
“However – he said-, at this time we do not support that it becomes a specialized agency, because we believe that you can do much being the type of organization is now whether there is the intention of changing making it more effective”.
Representatives of some 140 countries – including 80 ministers – meet at the headquarters of UNEP in Nairobi, to specify positions to the United Nations Conference on sustainable development (RÃo+20), which will house Brazil next June.
The two key issues which will try to RÃo+20 are the green economy in a context of sustainable development and the eradication of poverty, and the international environmental governance, which include the possible transformation of UNEP into a UN agency.
The European Commissioner for environment, Janez Potocnik, said Wednesday in the Kenyan capital that the EU believes that “UNEP should be strengthened and become an agency of the United Nations with full capacity”, position also supported by African countries.
However, Potocnik admitted that “there is still some disagreement about concrete way to give way, but it is part of the negotiations”.
Currently, the UN Environment Programme lacks executive capacity and independent budget, and its decisions will rise to the Assembly of the United Nations, who can adopt them or reject them.
In contrast to agencies such as the World Health Organization (who), the decisions of UNEP, which meets in 2012 forty years of history, not can join international law.
About RÃo+20 and sustainable economy, Jones stressed that us expects the Conference to “revitalize the commitments to sustainable development”.
“Seek – explained – the participation of the private sector and non-governmental organizations, and society more broadly, because Governments can not do this alone”.
The Under-Secretary indicated that it would not be convenient to “use many hours negotiating, but talk about the different types of actions that people want to commit themselves”.
For the United States negotiator. UU., second most polluting country in the world, the green economy “is the recognition that economic development can be carried out in an ecological way, way that is positive for the environment”.
However, he added, “there for green growth is a single response.” “Each country has its own path”.
RÃo+20 will take place in Rio de Janeiro twenty years after the Earth Summit, convened in the same city in 1992, which laid the foundations of contemporary sustainable development.
The Nairobi meeting is the last held the Environment Ministers before the appointment of RÃo+20. EFE
