Nairobi, 19 feb ( EFE).-representatives of more than a hundred countries, including 80 Ministers, will meet in Nairobi from tomorrow to set positions before the Conference of the United Nations on Sustainable development (RÃo+20), to be hosted by Brazil next June.
The 12th Special meeting of the Governing Council of the United Nations programme for the environment (UNEP) and the Global Forum of Environment Ministers held in Kenya until February 23 capital.
Attendees included Secretary of State Spanish of environment, Federico Ramos, whose country holds the Presidency of the Council of Administration UNEP for the second consecutive year, and the Brazilian Minister of environment, Izabella Teixeira, whose country, as host, will play a key role in RÃo+20.
The appointment of UNEP – which come also scientists, entrepreneurs and civil society groups – will be the last meeting that kept Ministers responsible for environment before RÃo+20, which will take place in the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro from 20 to 22 June.
Nick Nuttall, UNEP spokesperson told Efe that Ministers are facing the task of “shape and finalize the end positions” on the two big issues that will address RÃo+20: the green economy and international environmental governance.
On governance, one of the outstanding issues is whether UNEP, headquartered in Nairobi, should become “a stronger institution” with greater leeway, said Nuttall.
Currently, the UN Environment Programme lacks executive capacity and an independent budget, since their decisions will rise to the General Assembly of the United Nations, who can adopt them or scupper them.
In contrast to agencies such as the World Health Organization (who), UNEP decisions not can be transformed into international law.
In this regard, Federico Ramos said last Friday that the Spanish Government will support that UNEP “rise of rank” and become an agency of the UN, a decision that could be taken in RÃo+20.
This Conference will be held in Rio de Janeiro twenty years after the Earth Summit, convened in the same city in 1992, which laid the foundations for the “contemporary sustainable development”, as he recalled Nuttall.
The executive director of UNEP, Achim Steiner, hoped that the appointment of Rio de Janeiro is more than a “reflection” and serve to “chart a course firm and secure a sustainable century”, said the past day 2 in the 18th meeting of the Forum of Ministers of environment of Latin America and the Caribbean, held at Quito.
In addition, the Nairobi meeting will commemorate forty years of the creation of UNEP, which is celebrated today with a half marathon involving stars of the Kenyan Athletics as Patrick Makau, current holder of the world record for Marathon.
The Minister of environment of Brazil, Izabella Teixeira, during the penultimate day of the United Nations Conference on climate change (COP 17) in Durban (South Africa), December 8, 2011. EFE/file
