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G-7 Must Prove Environmental Leadership At Earth Summit II

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June 20, 1997

New York, US-- WWF-World Wide Fund For Nature today urged the G-7 leaders coming to Denver to prove their environmental leadership by making real commitments to slowing down deforestation and climate change before heading to New York for the second Earth Summit.

Since the Rio Earth Summit five years ago, no specific targets have yet been adopted to reduce carbon dioxide emissions nor has there been any effort to save the world's fast dwindling forests. The leaders meeting in Denver share an historic opportunity to safeguard long term economic prosperity by agreeing to early action to combat climate change and deforestation.

"If the G-7 leaders seize the chance to send a clear message to their negotiators, a new regime for the 21st century can be established." said Merylyn McKenzie-Hedger, WWF's Climate Change Policy Coordinator." By agreeing to significant CO2 reductions, the G7 leaders would be sending a powerful signal for investments in energy saving technologies which can create new and long lasting jobs."

Continued apathy by governments to take strong measures now would mean embarrassing inaction towards controlling the ravaging effects of climate change such as floods and droughts which in turn affect health and food supply.

Similarly, a push by the G-7 leaders on the forest front could clear the clouds over forest stewardship. During the last three years, the rate of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has gone up by over 30 per cent - amounting to a loss of up to 100 million hectares of forest cover.

"The forest crisis deepens even as the world continues to struggle on how best to manage the crisis," said Steve Howard, Senior Forest Officer of WWF UK. "Transnational logging companies continue to carve out the last remaining areas of virgin and primary forests from Russia to Central and West Africa."

WWF believes the G7 could promise action in two specific areas - increasing protection and stopping illegal logging. For example, 80 per cent of the 60 million cubic metres of logs cut out each year from the Amazon forests in Brazil are taken illegally. And it is much the same story in parts of Asia and Africa. For forests to survive into the next millennium, networks of ecologically representative protected areas should be established by the year 2000, covering at least 10 per cent of each of the world's forest types.

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Contact: Elizabeth Foley, 1 917 853 2761; Someshwar Singh, 41 79 200 0064; Merylyn Mc Kenzie-Hedger, 1 917 834 6630; Steve Howard, 1 917 593 3210. All four can be reached at their hotel at: 1 212 986 8800 (tel) or 1 212 986 1758 (fax).

*WWF is known as World Wildlife Fund in Canada and the United States of America