Called by Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the one-day meeting in the city of Manaus in the heart of the Amazon included Sarkozy because France's overseas department of French Guiana is in the region.

Together with high-level delegates from Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Venezuela and Suriname, Lula and Sarkozy hope to draw up a "common stance" on saving the Amazon jungle for the December 7-18 climate conference in the Danish capital Copenhagen.

The participants will issue a declaration urging next month's UN-sponsored talks to not neglect the preservation of the planet's forests and proposing "sufficient and adequate" funding mechanisms, said Brazilian climate negotiator Luiz Figueredo.

But the meeting's impact was thrown into doubt by the notable absence of two of the region's big hitters -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and his Colombian counterpart Alvaro Uribe, at loggerheads over an agreement granting US access to Colombian military bases.

Beyond Lula and Sarkozy, the only other head of state was Guyana President Bharrat Jagdeo, with other countries dispatching senior officials to what had been billed as a leaders summit.

The centerpiece of the meeting was a Brazilian proposal to fight rampant deforestation throughout the Amazon basin with financial help from rich nations.

"Let no gringo (foreigner) ask us to let an Amazonian starve to death under a tree," Lula said in a speech before the countries met in the planet's largest rainforest.

"We want to preserve (the forest), but they (other countries) have to pay for that preservation."

Lula's chief adviser Marco Aurelio Garcia explained that Brazil was seeking an agreement from Amazon basin countries "because in Europe, everyone thinks the Amazon is a zoo, a botanical garden and does not realize that it is more complex, there are 30 million people living here."

Greenpeace's Amazon official Paulo Adario told AFP that the Lula-Sarkozy alliance was significant "because France has an important leadership role in the European Union and Brazil is also showing growing leadership on the international stage."

The two leaders met two weeks ago in Paris to plan for the summit.

The clearing of wide swathes of jungle for farming and livestock, especially in Brazil, is reducing the planet's capacity to absorb greenhouse gases -- chiefly carbon dioxide -- that contribute largely to global warming and climate change, Greenpeace warned ahead of the summit.

As the fourth-largest greenhouse gas producer, Brazil has promised to cut its CO2 emissions by 36-39 percent by 2020. Half that effort will come from reducing deforestation in the Amazon jungle by 80 percent.

Brazil this year has managed to curb deforestation to its lowest level in 20 years, but 7,000 square kilometers (2,700 square miles) of rainforest still disappeared.

Unusually, non-Commonwealth leaders Sarkozy, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen are to address a Commonwealth summit Friday as part of an effort to influence the Copenhagen climate talks.

The 192-nation talks backed by the United Nations aim to craft a post-2012 pact for curbing the heat-trapping gases that drive global warming.

Share This Article With Planet Earth

del.icio.us	Digg	Reddit
YahooMyWeb	Google	Facebook

Related Links
Forestry News - Global and Local News, Science and Application

Memory Foam Mattress Review

SPACE MEDIA NETWORK PROMOTIONS Solar Energy Solutions Tempur-Pedic Mattress Comparison ... Newsletters :: SpaceDaily :: SpaceWar :: TerraDaily :: Energy Daily XML Feeds :: Space News :: Earth News :: War News :: Solar Energy News