The global effort to stem climate change could soon include paying countries in the tropical belt to not cut down their rain forests, beginning with a World Bank pilot project.
The World Bank is planning to start a 250 million US dollar investment fund to reward countries such as Indonesia, Brazil and Congo for “avoided deforestation”.
The G8-countries concluded that stopping deforestation could provide a “significant and cost-effective contribution toward mitigating greenhouse-gas emissions” and encouraged the development of the World Banks project.
Benoit Bosquet, a Senior Natural Resources Management Specialist at the World Bank who is leading efforts to develop the pilot project, said that policy makers in developed nations have realized they can not ignore the effect of deforestation on climate change.
Many details of the project remain to be ironed out. The World Bank hopes G8 will supply most of the 250 million dollar, Bosquet said.
If the World Banks approach is to work and be adopted more widely as a weapon in fighting global warming, it will take involvement of private companies and the emerging carbon-trading system. The omission (udeladelse) of avoided deforestation from the Kyoto climate treaty was the result of concerns about the environmental effectiveness of the process.
Some environmentalists fear nations might sign up to secure one area, shifting deforestation elsewhere, but bringing no net gain. Bosquet said the World Banks project is an attempt to overcome these concerns as nations debate whether to overhaul Kyoto, which runs out in 2012.
Environment ministers from more than 20 nations will examine the G8 pledge when they meet in Sweden from Monday. Brazil, Bangladesh, China, France, Germany, Japan, Mexico and the United States are among the countries invited.
Kilde: www.worldbank.org
