14 DAY TRIAL // With just one day left before the Rio+20 Earth Summit officially begins, representatives of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) already argue that Canada's negotiating position is evidence that this particular country is not in the least preoccupied about environmental issues.
According to WWF, it is to be expected that Canada will go against the sustainable development plans that are to be elaborated at this conference, seeing how the country recently pulled out of the Kyoto Treaty and proved to be most difficult when it came to climate change negotiations.
For those unaware, the Kyoto Treaty is an international agreement whose purpose it that of setting national targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Rumor has it that at the Rio+20 conference Canada will deny that fact that developed nations must work together with poorer ones for the benefit of our planet, and that it will attempt to block new funding sources aimed at environmental issues.
Mongabay.com reports that, as far as WWF members and representatives are concerned, “Canada has blocked progress so far in every realm at Rio +20. (...) This is a negotiation, and yet it’s not clear anyone from Canada has any mandate to move in any way on any issue. Canada appears disinterested in measures to safeguard the environment.”
Canada isn't the only nation accused by the WWF of not carrying either about sustainable development, or about the natural world.
Certain members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries are also targeted by the said conservation group, primarily because they are in favor of fossil fuel subsidies.
Las, but not least, the same source reports that the US is accused of having “largely played a spoiler role in this process” by “calling for a weak and non-committal outcome.”
Luckily for us, the aforementioned nations are not alone at the Rio+20 Earth Summit, so the overall end results of this conference may in fact be quite positive ones.