UN Targets Africa With Online "Bazaar" for Carbon
Date: 07-Sep-07
Country: UK
Through carbon trading under the Kyoto Protocol on global
warming, rich countries can meet domestic emissions goals by
buying carbon offsets from developing nations.
That trade, worth US$5 billion last year, has so far largely
focused on a handful of chemical plants in China and India,
which have been able to cut their greenhouse gas output very
cheaply.
Africa has seen just 2.7 percent of all carbon offset
projects approved by the UN's climate change secretariat, and
it's hoped the new "bazaar" website will help overcome a local
lack of resources and foreign reluctance to invest.
"If the benefits are to be more widely shared, especially in
areas such as sub-Saharan Africa, more efforts need to be put
into building developing-country capacity," said Achim Steiner,
executive director at the United Nations Environment Programme.
"The CDM Bazaar is therefore a very welcome new networking
initiative."
The website, at http://www.cdmbazaar.net/default.asp, will
allow developers to advertise their projects and so stimulate
competitive bidding for their carbon offsets.