Brazil Offers Free Plane Rides For Poor Countries To Boost Rio+20 Attendance

Political leaders from less-developed nations in Africa and the Caribbean will take sponsored flights to attend the upcoming Rio+20 Earth Summit in Brazil, reported Bloomberg News on Monday, after the Brazilian government offered to provide free airlifts to poorer nations in order to boost attendance at the event.

Political leaders from less-developed nations in Africa and the Caribbean will take sponsored flights to attend the upcoming Rio+20 Earth Summit in Brazil, reported Bloomberg News on Monday, after the Brazilian government offered to provide free airlifts to poorer nations in order to boost attendance at the event.

According to a statement posted on the Brazilian defence ministry website, the Brazilian air force, along with Sao Jose dos Campos-based aircraft manufacturer Embraer, are set to pick up heads of state and delegations from 10 countries, such as Malawi, Liberia, Barbados and Granada, starting from today and fly them to the conference for free.

Until last week though, only 102 countries had confirmed that they would attend the event, with major world leaders such as US President Barack Obama, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, UK Prime Minister David Cameron and IMF Chief Christine Lagarde among the notable absentees.

This has led many analysts to doubt whether any concrete results can be expected from the summit; while Brazil’s lead negotiator Luiz Alberto Figueiredo warned that the summit, which has a focus on sustainable development, could be at risk of being “held hostage” by other global priorities, including the eurozone crisis.

[quote]”We are here to think about the long term, not crises that may be overcome in one or two years, said Luiz Alberto Figueiredo, who is also an undersecretary at Brazil’s Foreign Ministry, to Reuters.[/quote]

“Today I am very concerned and worried because the draft final document of the Rio+20 conference does not give proper attention to climate change,” added former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev, who has set up an organisation, called the Climate Change Task Force, to combat global warming.

[quote]“It looks like there is backsliding on this issue and that is what worries me so much, because without addressing climate change, all of the other problems and tasks that will be set by the final document will not be accomplished and will become meaningless,” Gorbachev said, as cited by AFP.[/quote]

According to Rio+20 chief spokeswomen Pargati Pascale, only 37 percent of the final document leaders are expecting to sign have been agreed to, as of last night. AFP sources added that late-night talks on the 50-page draft had been mired in discord on many issues, including text on climate-altering fossil fuels, promoting the green economy and providing funding for poorer countries.

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“Given the limited time left, it will be a real uphill task to get an agreement,” said Martin Khor, executive director of the South Centre, an intergovernmental think-tank of developing countries based in Geneva.

[quote]“The old battles will thus resume (today),” Khor added, noting that while “the initial reactions of governments indicated that although the new text is accepted as the basis for negotiations, it has not resolved most of the key issues.”[/quote]