Five Nations Sign On to Tackle Deforestation
New York, Nov 2 2009 3:10PM
Five countries today "> UN-REDD and its
activities, particularly concerning improved consultations
with indigenous peoples and civil society, according to a
press release issued by the programme today in
Nairobi.
Argentina, Cambodia,
Ecuador, Nepal and Sri Lanka each asked to participate in
the initiative, known as (">
The five countries said they wanted to
benefit from the expertise generated by
UN-REDD, which is a partnership between the
Food and Agriculture Organization (http://www.fao.org/), the
UN Development Programme (http://www.undp.org/) and the UN Environment
Programme (http://www.unep.org/), hopes to eventually generate
up to $30 billion a year of financial flows from rich
countries to poor nations to help them reduce their
greenhouse gas emissions.
The initiative targets
deforestation and forest degradation as related activities
such as agricultural expansion, the conversion of forests to
pasture land, infrastructure development, destructive
logging and fires account for almost 20 per cent of global
emissions of greenhouse gases.
In its first year of
operations UN-REDD has approved more than $37 million in
funding for the national anti-deforestation programmes of
countries, including Panama, the Democratic Republic of the
Congo (DRC), Tanzania and Viet Nam. The programme says
another 20 countries have voiced interest in
joining.
Denmark also announced today that it is
become the second country donor to the programme after
Norway.
ENDS