The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) reinforced the bond between fighting poverty and protecting the environment Tuesday.
They launched the joint Poverty and Environment Facility in Nairobi during the 24th session of the UNEP Governing Council.
The Facility, one of the first tangible examples of UN reform in action, is designed to help developing countries integrate sound environment management into their poverty reduction and growth policies.
It will play a central role in expanding the UN’s environmental work around the world, with an emphasis on Africa and Asia.
The strengthened relationship between the two UN bodies will be practically applied across a wide range of issues.
In a few months’ time, for example, under the UNDP-UNEP Climate Partnership, five nations in Africa will claim a greater stake in their environmental futures with the help of a new joint project designed to help poorer countries navigate the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).
The CDM is a market-based mechanism that allows developed countries to earn emissions credits by financing projects in developing countries that contribute to reducing greenhouse-gas emissions.
The new CDM project, supported by the governments of Spain and Sweden, is set to begin work in the next few months in Kenya, Mozambique, Tanzania, Zambia and a fifth African country yet to be determined. Though it will initially operate on a small scale, it has the potential to expand to include more countries and regions.
The need for more cooperation on climate change is heightened in the wake of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment that changes in the atmosphere, oceans, glaciers and ice caps show unequivocally that the world is warming, according to UNDP and UNEP.
Kilde: www.undp.org
