Andean countries propose joint action to protect glaciers and Amazon forests

Bali (Indonesia), Dec. 13, 2007.- In a well-attended meeting of Ibero-American Environment Ministers and Authorities held within the framework of the world conference convened by the United Nations in Bali, CAN Secretary General Freddy Ehlers today explained the urgent task of monitoring and protecting the Andean glaciers threatened by climate change.   

The huge Amazon area, known as the lungs of the world, depends mainly on the Andes and tropical rain forests for its water supply.  The depletion of that precious resource will not only have dramatic consequences for the subregion, but will also affect the entire planet; therefore – Ehlers stated- "the whole world bears a responsibility for promoting and financing joint activities adjusting to the new ecological situation.” 

Ehlers called attention to the need to rethink the model of unlimited economic development and to seek new proposals for the entire world from the political and cultural perspective of the Andean peoples.  Colombia’s Environment Minister, Juan Lozano, speaking in the Plenary Meeting, also expressed the need for a revision of the consumption-driven economic development model.

The Ambassador of Ecuador, Rodrigo Yépez, for his part, also referred to a change in the economic model as a need in order to be able to come to grips with the causes of climate change.  He underscored the injustice of the present development model and its effects on the less developed countries that today are suffering the effects of climate change and have the least capacity for response.   

Ambassador Yépez spoke, as well, about the Yasuni project as an example of a change in development model, stressing that this initiative to leave the oil they own in the ground not only prevents the loss of biodiversity and keeps close to 436 million tons of CO2 from being emitted into the atmosphere, but also guarantees the rights of the native peoples living in that area. 

The Ibero-American delegates also expressed their agreement with and support for Ecuador’s so-called Yasuni proposal, which hopes to get the international community to contribute economically to the conservation of the most important natural parks in the world, thereby avoiding the extraction of oil at this site with its so abundant and fragile biodiversity.  They drew attention, as well, to the project for forest ranger families being carried out in Colombia that could be replicated in the rest of the countries of the subregion.