Earth Summit NEWSROUND
PRIVATE SECTOR: Earth Summit
Charities Outraged Over 'Junk Food' Pacts [news]
United Nations plans to involve multinational companies including McDonald's and Monsanto in projects to save the world's poorest countries from environmental degradation provoked a bitter row at the Earth Summit yesterday. Charities rounded on the initiative, which has the support of Britain and America, saying they were "outraged" by a proposed partnership between the fast-food chain and UNICEF, the UN children's fund. The plan is intended by the summit's UN organisers to be complementary to new multilateral agreements on sanitation, health, fish stocks and energy which America and its allies are reluctant to sign. Britain and America are supporting setting up international partnerships between business, rich governments and poor countries.
The partnerships also
represent a fallback position for the summit in case the political stages
collapse - like at last year's summit on racism in Durban - so that at least
it can be said to have achieved something.
[source: The Daily Telegraph]
EARTH SUMMIT NEWSROUND:
Children's BBC [website]
This online resource for
children provides an in-depth guide for children on the summit. Answering
questions from global warming to the conservation of endangered animals and
GM foods, this is an excellent online teaching and news resource for
children.
Go to: http://www.news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/ find_out/guides/world/earth_summit/newsid_2202000/2202675.stm
