Thaís Brianezi
Reporter - Agência Brasil

Curitiba - The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) approved a project budgeted at approximately US$ 170 thousand for Brazil to formulate strategies to unify the implementation timetables of the three conventions it has signed on the environment: The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (the Climate Convention), the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), and the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).

"We need to unite the three daughters of Rio-92," the Brazilian minister of Environment, Marina Silva, declared yesterday (30). "And to do so, a concrete agenda is required."

According to the executive secretary of the UNCCD, Hama Biallo, "Brazil is one of the few countries that can establish a setting adequate for the implementation of this convention. If it fails to do so, nobody will." In his view, the country combines the problem (the process of desertification in the highland plain and scrublands regions) and the political will to fight it.

"The creation of conservation units in these regions may not constitute as high a priority for the CBD and the Climate Convention as the creation of new protected areas in the Amazon. But in terms of combatting desertification, they are essential," remarked João Bosco Sena, secretary in charge of water resources in the Ministry of Environment. He pointed out that in December, 2004, the National Action Plan Against Desertification was launched in Brazil.

In 1999 Brazil hosted the Conference of the Parties to the UNCCD. Now, in the International Year of Deserts and Desertification decreed by the United Nations, it is hosting the 8th Conference of the Parties to the Biological Diversification Convention (COP-8).

Translation: David Silberstein