Rio+20 won't compensate for airplane pollution

05/31/2012 - 17h28

The air travel of conference participants, which is the main source of greenhouse gas emissions from Rio+20, will not be compensated by the committee created by the Brazilian government for the event.

According to the committee, it will be up to each country to decide if they will neutralize the emissions generated by air travel of its delegation.

The emissions generated by the event itself will be balanced out, says the committee organizer. According to Laudemar Aguiar, the national secretary for Rio+20, this will be done with carbon credits from Brazilian projects that are recognized by the U.N.

These credits, which could come from energy efficiency projects for example, will be donated by Brazilian companies whose names will not be released.

The preliminary estimate from the committee is that emissions from official ground transportation, consumption of electricity, the use of fossil fuels, and from solid waste produced by the conference could be the equivalent of 5,000 metric tons of CO2.

This value is the equivalent of the emissions of 714 people for an entire year, using the current average of seven tons per person.

One trip by plane from Europe to Brazil in economy class emits the equivalent of one ton of CO2. The committee says that it's not neglecting this issue. According to the spokesperson, an application will be made available for the participants to calculate the emissions of their travel.

The idea is that once they have this data, countries can also use carbon credits from Brazilian projects to neutralize their impact.

CONFIRMATIONS

According to Aguiar, 176 countries confirmed their participation in Rio+20. Of these, 102 will send the head of state or leader of the government.

To guarantee the security of the participants, the Riocentro conference center will have a detection system that can pick up on chemical, radioactive and biological threats. As many as 38,000 people per day are expected at the event.

In total, Rio+20 will occupy an area almost four times larger than Rio-92, the conference that took place 20 years ago.

The area of the buildings of the Riocentro conference center will be almost 100,000 square meters. The site, which was still being worked on yesterday, will be turned over to the U.N. on June 5.

Translated by ANNA EDGERTON