|
|
Home
> Editorial
> Green about green
|
ENGLISH VERSION
Green about green
|
| |
 |
| HERALD STAFF |
|
|
VERSIÓN ESPAÑOL
Política verde todavía verde
Como el principal referente en temas ambientales de Cancillería fue despedido en vísperas de la partida presidencial a Nueva York, luego de quejarse acerca de la carencia absoluta de cualquier especie de política ambientalista, el Presidente Néstor Kirchner bien puede haber tenido sus razones para llevar el tema del cambio climático de la cumbre de las Naciones Unidas de ayer hacia el área en la que se siente más cómodo: la retórica de la deuda. En lugar de contribuir a un consenso global sobre el desarrollo sustentable, Kirchner prefirió quejarse acerca de la “insoportable carga de la deuda externa” (con algunas autofelicitaciones implícitas por la quita que impuso al comienzo de su presidencia) y atacó a los acreedores de esa deuda acusándolos de “deudores ambientales”.
Lea más
|
|
|
Given that the Foreign Ministry’s top environmental troubleshooter had been sacked on the eve of the presidential departure to New York after complaining about the total dearth of any environmental policy, President Néstor Kirchner may well have had his reasons for shifting the climate change issue of yesterday’s United Nations summit towards his own comfort zone of debt rhetoric. Rather than making any contribution to a global consensus on sustainable development, Kirchner preferred to complain about the “unbearable burden of foreign debt” (with some implied self-congratulation for the haircut solution he imposed at the start of his presidency) and blasted the creditors of that debt as “environmental debtors.” Nothing that Kirchner had to say on debt-conservation swaps offered any advance on the current Kyoto logic of emissions trading and nor did his rigid distinction between developing and developed nations as the heroes and villains of climate change address the rapid emergence of China as the planet’s worst polluter. In a word, Kirchner’s speech in New York yesterday was indirect confirmation of the fired diplomat Raúl Estrada Oyuela’s claim that his administration has no environmental policy.
Estrada Oyuela’s criticism in no way hinges on the outcome of the pulp mill dispute with Uruguay where the ousted official was long the key negotiator. Everything points to a rapid settlement of this dispute during the November hiatus between the elections and the next inauguration along the lines of Argentina accepting joint monitoring of the Fray Bentos plant (perhaps even presenting this as a great Argentine diplomatic triumph when it has been offered by Uruguay all along) in return for Uruguay delaying the pulp mill coming on stream until after the elections are safely over — the reality of the Botnia mill’s completion leaves little choice but to seek some face-saving solution. But regardless of the final outcome, environmental policy is neither part of the problem nor part of the solution — irrelevant to the nationalism of the current confrontation and the political expediency of improving Argentina’s outside image alike. Estrada Oyuela’s point about the lack of any environmental policy thus basically stands.
While criticizing the government in general, Estrada Oyuela also singled out Environment Secretary Romina Picolotti, saying she should “answer to history for the things she is currently doing” — and perhaps not doing because there has been no answer from Picolotti to Clarín’s nepotism and fraud charges a couple of months ago or to Estrada Oyuela’s critique now other than the diplomat’s dismissal. But the criticism still belongs to the government as a whole because in a truly green administration environmental concern overflows into every department instead of being one official’s task.
|
Go to top
|
Back to editorial
|
|
|
