Brazil a "leading polluter"

Burning of the Amazon and other forests accounts for three quarters of Brazil's greenhouse gas emissions and has made the country one of the world's leading polluters, a long-delayed government report showed.

The report is the first official recognition by Brazil of the vast scale of burning of the Amazon, the world's largest tropical forest and home to up to 30% of the planet's animal and plant species.

Environmentalists said the findings in the report would probably make Brazil the world's sixth largest polluter. They said it could give impetus to rich countries' calls for leading developing nations to share in the burden of cutting greenhouse gas emissions, which cause global warming.

The report, or inventory greenhouse gas emissions, showed Brazil produced 1.03 billion tonnes of carbon-dioxide equivalent in 1994, up from 979 million tonnes in 1990.

"That figure represents about three percent of total global emissions," Science and Technology Minister Eduardo Campos said, adding that the responsibility of slowing global warming "substantially" falls on rich countries.

"It is now clear that Brazil's quickest way to reduce its contribution to global warming is fundamentally to change the process of occupation and land use in the Amazon," Greenpeace said in a statement.

Brazil had to produce the inventory as a signatory of the Kyoto Protocol to curb greenhouse gasses, but as a developing country it does not need to cut emissions under the treaty.

(From Tvnz, Dezembro 09, 2004)

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