UN chief flies from Antarctica to Brazil urging climate action

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SAO PAULO (AFP) — UN chief Ban Ki-moon was to fly into tropical Brazil Sunday to further push his campaign for world action on climate change, after making a trip to chilly Antarctica.

The secretary general was making the snow-to-jungle voyage to see firsthand the damage man is wreaking on the environment.

On Friday, he became the first head of the United Nations to set foot in Antarctica.

There, he received a briefing from scientists at Chile's President Eduardo Frei Air Force base before visiting glaciers that were shrinking under the effects of global warming.

"This trip, you may call it an eco-trip, but I'm not here as a tourist," he told reporters.

"I'm here as a messenger of all the warnings on climate change," he continued. "I'm here to observe the impact of the global warming phenomena, to see for myself and to learn all I can about what's happening in Antarctica and actually around the world."

He called the impact of climate change "an emergency" and said: "If the international community does something now we will be able to prevent a further progress of the global warming."

After flying back through Chile, Ban was due to go on to Ribeirao Preto in southeastern Brazil on Sunday to examine the country's pioneering efforts to use alcohol from sugarcane in cars to limit greenhouse gases and reduce the reliance on fossil fuels.

The technology, though, is not without controversy.

A UN special rapporteur on the Right to Food, Jean Ziegler, last month called such the conversion of farmland into biofuel-producing tracts "a crime against humanity."

On Monday, Ban will talk over the issue with Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who has rejected Ziegler's call for a five-year moratorium on such land-use transformations.

On Tuesday, the UN chief will go to Brazil's northern Amazon jungle to see the effects of deforestation in an area often called "the lungs of the planet."

Ban, who has declared his efforts to focus global attention on fighting climate change "one of my main priorities as secretary general," is preparing to host a conference on the issue in Indonesia in December.

That forum is aimed at starting negotiations on a successor to the Kyoto treaty that expires in 2012.