Paris, Nov 15 (EFE) French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his Brazilian counterpart Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said thay have adopted a common position for the Copenhagen climate change summit that suggests, among other measures, the creation of a World Environmental Organisation.
The document that both will take to the Danish capital next month is “our climate bible”, the Brazilian president told a press conference after his meeting with Sarkozy in the Elysee Palace Saturday.
The two nations ratified in the document the conclusions of a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and “support its goal of limiting the increase in average world temperatures to two degrees centigrade above pre-industrial levels”.
This is an accord with concrete objectives and commitments to halt a phenomenon of which “we are all victims”, Lula said, recalling that his government has just approved an ambitious “voluntary commitment” to contain climate change and the deforestation of the Amazon.
His presidential chief of staff, Dilma Rousseff, gave reporters the details of this commitment, which, as its central feature, plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by between 36.1 percent and 38.9 percent by the year 2020.
This is an example to follow, according to Sarkozy, who said that both France and Brazil want the results at Copenhagen to be “ambitious”.
Sarkozy said the World Environmental Organisation would be an agency of the UN with the mission to check on “the compatibility of reality with the commitments” entered into by the different countries.
This organisation would give “greater coherence to the efforts of the international community” in this sphere, the text of the accord signed jointly in Paris Saturday said.
Starting immediately, Lula and Sarkozy have promised to work against the clock to try and convince as many countries as possible to share their position with a view to making the world summit on climate change a success.
Both sent a clear message to the US and China that they must be part of an ambitious commitment.
“We won’t accept that others say, well, we’ll see about this tomorrow,” said Sarkozy, referring to the US when he declared that “the world’s leading economy must live up to its responsibilities”.
The Brazilian president said that “we are all victims of the same irresponsibility” and that polluting gases are not stopped by any wall or border.
