World Bank plans global fund to fight deforestation
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
THE World Bank is planning an international fund of at least US$250 million ($384.6 million) to fight deforestation, which contributes to global warming, a bank official said yesterday.
The targets for the fund are all countries that have significant rain forests, Werner Kornexl, senior technical specialist in the carbon finance unit, told AFP.
That includes countries in Latin America, Central Africa and Southeast Asia, especially but, mainly, significant carbon-dioxide emitters such as Brazil, Congo and Indonesia, he said.
The programme "will be performance-based, so a country will only receive funds after it was measured and verified that the emissions were reduced", said Kornexl.
"That could be a historical deforestation rate that has been reduced in future and this difference is the difference that will be paid," he said.
Deforestation, which advances at a rate of five per cent per decade, is responsible for 20 per cent of the total annual carbon dioxide emissions or three billion tonnes of CO2, according to a World Bank report released in late October.
"We have been requested by the G8 (group of industrialised nations) to design the facility (funding programme), but this is something that we have been working on already for some time," said Kornexl, who said Bank officials hope to launch the programme at the next major United Nations Climate Conference in Bali, Indonesia, in December.
The Bali conference is aimed at setting up a framework for an agreement that would succeed the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.
The fund will include public and private donors, Kornexl said.
"The bank is not putting money, it will be carried by investors and donors," he said.
"There are companies that are already investing in climate change activities and forestry, that shows very huge interest," he said.
Kornexl said the bank "would only declare it effective whenever we have everything together".
Forests provide 47 million jobs worldwide, according to the World Wildlife Fund, and cover 30 to 40 per cent of the earth's land area.AFP
The targets for the fund are all countries that have significant rain forests, Werner Kornexl, senior technical specialist in the carbon finance unit, told AFP.
That includes countries in Latin America, Central Africa and Southeast Asia, especially but, mainly, significant carbon-dioxide emitters such as Brazil, Congo and Indonesia, he said.
The programme "will be performance-based, so a country will only receive funds after it was measured and verified that the emissions were reduced", said Kornexl.
"That could be a historical deforestation rate that has been reduced in future and this difference is the difference that will be paid," he said.
Deforestation, which advances at a rate of five per cent per decade, is responsible for 20 per cent of the total annual carbon dioxide emissions or three billion tonnes of CO2, according to a World Bank report released in late October.
"We have been requested by the G8 (group of industrialised nations) to design the facility (funding programme), but this is something that we have been working on already for some time," said Kornexl, who said Bank officials hope to launch the programme at the next major United Nations Climate Conference in Bali, Indonesia, in December.
The Bali conference is aimed at setting up a framework for an agreement that would succeed the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.
The fund will include public and private donors, Kornexl said.
"The bank is not putting money, it will be carried by investors and donors," he said.
"There are companies that are already investing in climate change activities and forestry, that shows very huge interest," he said.
Kornexl said the bank "would only declare it effective whenever we have everything together".
Forests provide 47 million jobs worldwide, according to the World Wildlife Fund, and cover 30 to 40 per cent of the earth's land area.AFP
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