G8 Environment Ministers' Meeting in Syracuse: Development, Biodiversity and Children's Health
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21/04/2009
The G8 Environment Ministers' Meeting in Syracuse, which Environment Minister Stefania Prestigiacomo introduced in the course of a news conference, is due to get under way tomorrow. “A grand alliance between the world's northern and southern hemispheres can be launched from Syracuse under the banner of technology and of conjugating the environment with development”.
''We need to disseminate low carbon content technologies and to improve their accessibility," the minister explained, "making sure southern hemisphere countries do not have to pay the price of pollution that we have seen in our own development".
"That," Stefania Prestigiacomo added, "is the key to a G8 bent on fostering the dissemination of low carbon content technologies in order to allow the emerging countries to enjoy the kind of eco-sustainable development that can go hand in hand with the West's commitment to cutting back on emissions and to improving energy efficiency".
Talks on the second day of the meeting will also be focusing on the defence of biodiversity, a battle to which governments need to devote far more attention, given that the international community has broadly failed to enact its earlier pledge to bring the loss of biodiversity to an end by 2010. "In this connection," Stefania Prestigiacomo announced, "a new stimulus will be provided by the Charter of Syracuse, which is to be launched under the slogan Biodiversity Is Business, in order to promote biodiversity not just as a constraint but as a resource and an opportunity for development''.
The talks will end with a meeting devoted to the relationship between pollution and children's health: "It is a duty and a priority for governments and for the international community to concern themselves with the more vulnerable members of the community, those who are less able to defend themselves against exposure to environmental hazards". The minister went on to call for "more effective intervention measures", also getting health ministries involved. "Statistical evidence shows that it is children who suffer the most harmful effects of pollution and that it is responsible for the spread of extremely serious chronic diseases. Our pledge," Stefania Prestigiacomo said in conclusion, "will be to support those international initiatives designed to reduce or to eliminate the impact of harmful substances on children, and to propose epidemiological research on minors' health and on their interaction with the environment".
The meeting in Syracuse will also seek to facilitate dialogue on the issue of climate change, ahead of the Copenhagen Conference tasked with defining global conditions in the post-Kyoto world in December.
