08/07/2010 - After
two decades in the Congress, the National
Policy on Solid Waste (PNRS) was approved
by the Plenary of the Senate last night
(July 7). On the same day, in the afternoon,
the PNRS was debated and approved at the
Senate committees.
The Brazilian minister
of the Environment, Izabella Teixeira, celebrated
the approval of the law which establishes
the policy. "With the approval of the
National Policy on Solid Waste, Brazil now
has a set of innovative tools for solving
the problems of garbage in the country."
The law defines responsibilities
and tools for the management of several
types of solid waste, among them, electronic
materials, for which there is still no federal
law defining how the disposal might happen.
The proposal approved
by the Senate is the result of a broad consensus
involving all the actors who are part of
the many different cycles of production
of solid waste. It deals with issues that
are already part of daily routine of people,
involving concepts such as contaminated
area, the product life cycle, selective
collection, social control, waste management,
recycling, shared responsibility and urban
cleaning services.
The new policy aims
at the protection of public health and environmental
quality, as well as at the adoption, development
and improvement of clean technologies to
minimize environmental impacts, and at the
reduction of the volume of hazardous waste,
amongst other actions.
+ More
Governments meet to
finalize a legal instrument on genetic resources
13/07/2010 - Secretariat
of the Convention on Biological Diversity
/ United Nations Environment Programme
Governments meet in Montreal to settle the
details of a new global legal agreement
governing the terms for the provision and
use of the genetic resources of the planet.
The results of these negotiations, to be
taken to the Nagoya Biodiversity Summit
in October this year, will contribute to
unlocking the huge scientific and economic
potential of the biodiversity of our planet,
with a significant impact on human well-being.
In 2002, at the Johannesburg
World Summit on Sustainable Development,
world leaders agreed on the need for an
international regime on access and benefit-sharing
(ABS). The 4,000 participants attending
the eighth meeting of the Conference of
the Parties, held in March 2006, agreed
to finalize negotiations as soon as possible
and no later than 2010.
"The adoption of
the Aichi Nagoya Protocol on Access and
Benefit-Sharing will make a major contribution
to achieving not only the objectives of
the Convention on Biological Diversity,
but also the Millennium Development Goals,
as well as to promoting sustainable development.
It will also be a major contribution to
achieving and celebrating the 2010 International
Year of Biodiversity", said Ahmed Djoghlaf,
Executive Secretary of the Convention on
Biological Diversity.
The two Co-Chairs of
the Working Group, Timothy Hodges of Canada
and Fernando Casas of Colombia, expressed
confidence in the negotiators and in the
final results of the Montreal negotiations.
"This Working Group
has come a long way and finalization of
the Protocol is at last within its grasp.
Now is the time for the Parties to demonstrate
to one another, with the eyes of the world
community upon them, that they support a
fair deal and one that will benefit the
entire planet", said the two Co-Chairs.
"This negotiation is about pursuing
opportunities and working towards a new
win-win situation. Who could possibly be
against such a goal?"
With the generous financial
support from the Government of Japan, some
600 delegates from governments, civil society
and indigenous and local communities will
meet from 10 to 16 July to come to agreement
on the final version of the text.
Access and benefit-sharing
refers to the way genetic resources - whether
plant, animal or microorganism - are accessed
in countries of origin, and how the benefits
that result from their use by various research
institutes, universities or private companies
are shared with the people or countries
that provide them. Ensuring the fair and
equitable sharing of benefits from the use
of genetic resources is one of the three
objectives of the Convention on Biological
Diversity (CBD).
The final result is
a draft agreement that will be submitted
for adoption at the Nagoya Biodiversity
Summit, otherwise known as the tenth meeting
of the Conference of the Parties (COP 10)
to the Convention on Biological Diversity,
to be held in Nagoya, Aichi Prefecture,
Japan, in October 2010.
Over 10,000 participants
are expected to attend the Biodiversity
Summit. The high-level segment of this historic
meeting will be held on 27-29 October 2010
and will be preceded by a high-level meeting
of the United Nations General Assembly exclusively
devoted to biodiversity to be held in New
York in September 2010 in conjunction with
the sixty-fifth session of the General Assembly
and with the participation of Heads of State
and Government.
The negotiations on
access to genetic resources and benefit-sharing
aim at the effective implementation of the
access and benefit-sharing provisions of
the Convention, as well as Article 8(j)
of the Convention related to the equitable
sharing of benefits arising from the utilization
of traditional knowledge associated with
genetic resources.
