G-8 ministers focus on environment

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Posted 9:05AM on Saturday, April 13, 2002

BANFF, ALBERTA - Environment ministers of the world's industrial powers are riding natural-gas powered buses, eating mostly organic food and getting gifts of recycled materials in weekend talks in this picturesque Rocky Mountain town. Now they want to infuse such thinking in global development policies being formulated this year at the upcoming G-8 summit in nearby Kananaskis, Alberta, and the World Summit on Sustainable Development in South Africa in August. This weekend's annual meeting of top environmental officials of the G-8 nations - the United States, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia, along with the European Union - won't resolve major issues such as U.S. rejection of the Kyoto Protocol that sets limits on greenhouse gas emissions. Instead, the ministers want to devise steps to increase the importance of environmental concerns when their bosses - the G-8 heads of state - make decisions on eradicating poverty, improving global health and other aspects of sustainable development at their June summit and the U.N. gathering in Africa. An African development plan proposed for the G-8 summit calls for helping those countries that create conditions for development and private investment, such as democratic systems, independent judiciaries and free market economies. The idea is for poor nations in Africa, and elsewhere, to attract private investment to spur development instead of depending solely on handouts from wealthy nations. Canadian Environment Minister David Anderson said the problem is that developing nations tend to ignore environmental concerns. ``Countries facing famine look to development as vital and some of them regard the environmental concerns as `That's what we do later once we reach a point where everyone has enough to eat,''' he said. ``That's a perfectly logical position to hold, but the dilemma is that if you don't consider environment at the beginning, you may in fact exacerbate your problems in the medium or long term.'' One background paper says environmental concerns usually are ``a comparatively weak component'' of policies for development, finance and trade, and calls for them to play a greater role. Another paper says the G-8 must demonstrate commitment to implementing international agreements, a dig at Washington's rejection of the Kyoto Protocol that is supported by most other nations. President Bush says complying with the protocol's limits on greenhouse gas emissions would harm the U.S. economy. While the issue is not on the meeting's agenda, Anderson said climate change would be discussed. To show how one aspect of the Kyoto agreement would work, Canada announced Friday that greenhouse gas emissions created by the air and car traffic of delegates traveling to the meeting were being offset by the purchase of credits from a South African company constructing an environment-friendly housing project. PEER Africa is spending more for passive solar power and other energy saving measures in the low-income housing it builds, with the reduced greenhouse gas emissions measured in credits available for purchase. Canada paid $1,800 for 500 tons of carbon dioxide credits to balance the amount of emissions generated for the meeting, Environment Canada said.