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UN chief Ban Ki-moon said Tuesday he was "committed" to helping Brazil preserve its Amazon basin, after national and indigenous officials asked him to provide greater international political support."I make my firm commitment that the United Nations will work with you and stand by you," Ban said as he stood on a jungle island in the Amazon, on the last leg of a week-long trip to South America and the Antarctic.He described the flora and fauna of Brazil's forested northern region-often termed "the lungs of the planet" for its role in absorbing greenhouse gases-as "fantastic."Brazilian Environment Minister Marina Silva, accompanying Ban and his wife up the Guama River in the Amazon basin to Combu Island, near Belem, said "the presence of the UN secretary general is a strong gesture" for Brazil's conservation efforts.But she urged more concrete measures, namely Ban's support in having conventions on biodiversity and tackling climate change passed.She said she also wanted to see countries that benefited from the products from Amazon's forest to help pay for its preservation."He can make a strong political contribution," she told reporters.A representative of the Coordination of Indigenous Organizations of the Brazilian Amazon, Antonio Marcos Alcantara de Oliveira, told Ban as he stopped under a giant tree on the island that indigenous people here needed assistance."The country and the state have contributed, but we need more, we need help," especially in the areas of education and health, he said, before bestowing a native necklace on the UN chief as a gift.Ban reassured de Oliveira that the UN was aware of the needs of the Amazon."The people who have been living here for thousands and thousands of years, you are the pioneers in preserving this forest," he said.He added that the Amazon forest was "a common asset of all humankind and we must preserve it."The UN secretary general made the Amazon trip as part of his fact-finding mission to see for himself the results of global warming.It may have been more educational that he originally planned: a trip along a river to a different village in the Amazon was changed at the last minute because the water level was too low, despite it being Brazil's rainy season.Ban intends to take what he has learned first to a Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change meeting in Valencia, Spain later this week, then to a December summit in Bali aimed at coming up with a successor text to the Kyoto treaty, which expires in 2012.The UN chief has declared tackling climate change one of his top priorities.He said he was "returning with a sense of great achievement" from what he had learned throughout his trip.During his tour, he took in Argentina, Chile and the Antarctic before going to Brazil for three days. He met Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Monday and commended him on his ecological policies.Ban was due to fly on to Spain, where he was to meet Prime Minister Jose Luis Zapatero, and then on to Tunisia for an international conference on terrorism, and finally back to Spain, for a climate change meeting in Valencia at the end of the week.http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=071113192426.q2r832xk&show_article=1&catnum=0
As in the days of Noah....
