WB plans int'l fund to fight deforestation
Wednesday, 13 June 2007
WASHINGTON, June 12 (AFP): The World Bank is planning an international fund of at least 250 million dollars 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 the news agency.
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.
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 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 UN Climate Conference in Bali, Indonesia, in December.
The targets for the fund are all countries that have significant rain forests, Werner Kornexl, senior technical specialist in the carbon finance unit, told the news agency.
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.
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 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 UN Climate Conference in Bali, Indonesia, in December.