Brazil Set to Meet Low-Carbon Targets Four Years Early

[Blue_Tires]

BRASILIA, Brazil, October 27, 2010 (ENS) - Brazil is on track to meet carbon dioxide emissions reduction targets four years earlier than promised, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva announced Tuesday at a meeting of Brazil's Forum on Climate Change.
President Lula congratulated the members of the inter-governmental Forum on their efforts to advance Brazil's move toward a low-carbon economy and control emissions of greenhouse gases that warm the planet.

"Today's announcement shows once again that Brazil can be proud of the environmental agenda we have been building in recent years, said the President. Since 2003, we have been working closely to address climate change, and even with strong economic growth, our actions have already resulted in a reduction of 2.8 billion tons of carbon dioxide."

"If we keep this pace - and everything indicates that we shall do so - we will accomplish our goal of voluntary carbon dioxide reductions in 2016, four years before we had promised," he said.

Last year, after the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen, COP 15, Brazil approved the National Policy on Climate Change and voluntarily assumed a commitment to reduce by 2020 the projected emissions of greenhouse gases, between 36 and 39 percent.

Brazil is one of the world's biggest carbon dioxide emitters, due to the clearing of the Amazon rainforest, 17 percent of which has been destroyed. Deforestation releases carbon into the atmosphere as trees burn or rot.

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/oct2010/2010-10-27-01.html