Senator Marco Maciel (PFL-PE) defended, on Wednesday (14) that a United Nations (UN) sector body on environment protection should be settled in Brazil. According to him, this measure might represent international acknowledgement of Brazilian role in environmental issues since it hosted UN Summit for Environment, Rio-92, in 1992.

- It is time for Brazil to take an active and audacious position as to environment issue – suggested Maciel, during a public audience of the Subcommittee for the International Climate Change Regime, in which physicist José Goldemberg, former Environment secretary, took part.    

In his answer to Maciel, Goldemberg remarked Brazilian government missed an opportunity during Rio-92, once it did not offer itself to be headquarters for an UN organism on the environment. The chosen city would be Rio itself. Then, Goldemberg remarked, the secretary for climate changes was installed in Bonn, Germany, and the secretary for biodiversity was settled in Barcelona, Spain.

According to José Goldemberg, the only way Maciel’s suggestion can come true is by settling United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) in the country. The organism’s current headquarter is in Nairobi, Kenya. UNEP may soon become an UN agency. -Brazilian government should take this opportunity, for the world acknowledges the work Brazil has been developing - he recommended.

The subcommittee’s president, senator Fernando Collor (PTB-AL), praised Maciel’s initiative and said he could work along with the president of the National Congress Joint Committee for Climate Change, representative Eduardo Gomes (PSDB-TO), in order to make Rio de Janeiro the headquarters for a new environment summit in 2012 – deadline of Kyoto Protocol.