Don’t lump us together with U.S. in climate pact rejection – Nicaragua eco-group

MANAGUA, Nicaragua – The United States has now joined just two countries on Earth – Nicaragua and Syria – in rejecting the Paris climate accord, but a Managua-based environmental group said it would be wrong to lump the 3 together.

Nicaragua refused to be party to the 2015 pact because it considers it “insufficient” in achieving the goal of limiting greenhouse-gas emissions, the Humboldt Center stressed through its director, Victor Campos.

US President Donald Trump, in contrast, on Thursday, June 1, declared his pull-out from the accord because he sees it “as hurting the economic interests of the United States,” Campos told Agence France-Presse.

Nicaragua’s government, which under leftwing President Daniel Ortega is allied with Russia and Iran, has not given any public reaction to Trump’s decision. Its officials routinely ignore requests for comment from foreign media.

But Trump’s announcement means America, war-torn Syria and Nicaragua are now the only countries to reject the hard-won climate accord, although for very different reasons.

Campos said Nicaragua would like to see efforts to stop global warming go much further, especially by big economies such as China’s.

But an opposition figure, Victor Hugo Tinoco, who was once a deputy foreign minister in Nicaragua, said he believed Nicaragua’s rejection of the accord was “a totally absurd decision.”

Tinoco also said Trump’s argument that pulling out of the accord would boost employment in the United States’ declining coal sector had prompted experts to see an attempt “to go back to the steam locomotive era.” – Rappler.com

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