MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Peruvian president calls for tax on oil to finance reforestation

Peruvian President Alan Garcia said on Friday taxes on oil and natural gas exports could help fund global efforts to combat climate change and promote reforestation of the Amazon River basin.

"A small tax on exports of natural gas could raise 20 billion US dollars a year for reforestation efforts'' Garcia said during his opening speech to the leaders' summit from Latin America, Europe and the Caribbean in Lima. "Reforesting 50 million hectares annually can help capture 2 billion tons of carbon emissions, and in a few years we could be capturing 50 billion tons", he added. Garcia's comments came at the start of a one-day summit on trade, poverty, and climate change. Garcia also announced he was naming agronomist Antonio Brack Egg to head a newly created Ministry of Environment that will help oversee Peru's mining, natural gas and fisheries industries. Rising prices for grains and other food threaten "hundreds of millions of people", insisted Garcia. He said each country should set a goal of boosting food production by 2% in order to ensure supplies of goods like rice and wheat rise and prices fall. Delegations from sixty countries, 37 with heads of state or government turned up for the summit including Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel and Spain's Jose Rodriguez Zapatero, although there were some notorious absences such as France's Nikolas Sarkozy, British PM Gordon Brown and Italy's Silvio Berlusconi. Addressing his Latinamerica counterparts Garcia called for unity and mentioned Europe as an example to follow: "which in spite of its diversity and history of conflicts has managed to work into a consolidated block". He emphasized "let that which unites us prevail over that which disunites us". Garcia also asked the summit to come up with specific results and "not only declarations". Sessions were held behind closed doors.