Japan, Ecuador agree to cooperate over preserving biodiversity

TOKYO, Sept. 6 Kyodo -
Japan and Ecuador agreed Monday to cooperate in preserving biological diversity
and making an upcoming U.N. conference on biodiversity in Japan a success,
Japanese officials said.
Prime Minister Naoto Kan and Ecuadorian President Rafael Vicente Correa
Delgado, who is on his first visit to Japan, also reaffirmed that the two
countries will adopt a common position in seeking a nuclear-free world and
reform of the United Nations, and agreed to further deepen their economic ties.
Correa said Ecuador backs Japan's bid to become a permanent member of the U.N.
Security Council and Kan expressed gratitude for the support.
Kan said Japan hopes to cooperate with Ecuador, which boasts of rich
biodiversity in the Galapagos Islands and Amazon rain forests, toward the U.N.
biodiversity conference to be held in Nagoya in October.
Correa expressed his desire to offer support, saying Ecuador's new Constitution
stipulates that any national or company can be sued for destroying nature and
that the law is therefore the ''greenest'' one in the world, according to the
officials.
Kan asked the Latin American country to improve its investment climate so that
more Japanese companies can do business in Ecuador. Correa said his country is
now politically stable and foreign firms can operate under the legal stability.
Prior to his summit talks with Kan, Correa had an audience with Emperor Akihito
and talked about fire prevention and conservation efforts in the Galapagos
Islands, which are designated as a World Heritage site.
Correa, who assumed the Ecuadorian presidency in 2007, is on a four-day visit
to Japan through Wednesday. He is scheduled to visit Hiroshima on Tuesday.
Separately, Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Ricardo Armando Patino Aroca, who is
accompanying Correa, met with his Japanese counterpart Katsuya Okada and agreed
to boost the two countries' economic ties, according to the Japanese officials.
Earlier in the day, Correa said in an interview with Kyodo News that his trip
to Hiroshima will demonstrate Ecuador's commitment to peace and pursuit of a
world without nuclear weapons.
He also sought Japanese firms' investment as well as financial and technical
aid in such areas as hydropower generation, oil refinery and modernization of
harbors and airports.
He pitched Ecuador's ''revolutionary'' project to establish a trust fund
together with the U.N. Development Program to protect an ecological site in an
oil-rich area of the country's Amazon rainforests and sought international
support for the initiative.
Ecuador signed a deal with the U.N. agency last month to launch the fund to
collect ''compensation'' for leaving untouched an estimated 850 million barrels
of crude oil lying under the country's Yasuni National Park.
The Latin American country is seeking contributions from the international
community to protect oil fields in the park from drilling. The site is home to
indigenous peoples and considered to be one of the most diverse biological
reserves in the world.
By not exploring the oil fields, it is estimated that more than 400 million
metric tons of carbon will be prevented from being discharged into the
atmosphere, thus contributing to the fight against climate change.
The newly launched fund is aimed at collecting $3.6 billion, about half of the
estimated income to be generated by tapping the oil.
Correa said clean air to be emitted by Amazon forests should be considered as a
''resource'' and that the international community should have shared
responsibility to cooperate with the initiative to protect the environment in
his country.
Ecuador thinks it would be ideal if certificates to be issued to governments
that contribute to the fund will be traded in carbon markets in the future, he
said.
Germany, France, Belgium and Chile have expressed their support for the
Ecuadorian initiative, Correa added.
==Kyodo