Interview: New climate partnership planned to protect forests
by Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent

Reuters    Translate This Article
9 March 2010

OSLO (Reuters) - Governments will seek a new climate partnership in 2010 to protect tropical forests with funds going through the United Nations, the World Bank or bilateral channels, Norway said on Tuesday.

'The idea is to establish a partnership of everyone who wants to be included' in safeguarding forests, Environment Minister Erik Solheim told Reuters.

'It will be open to everyone, even if you don't contribute one single dollar, even if you don't have a single tree,' he said. The partnership would help reinforce U.N. negotiations on a deal to slow deforestation.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy will open a one-day ministerial meeting on forests in Paris on Thursday with a follow-up hosted by Norway in May to spur talks on combating climate change after the U.N.'s Copenhagen summit in December.

Deforestation, from the Amazon to the Congo basin, is estimated to account for about 20 percent of mankind's greenhouse gas emissions. Plants soak up carbon dioxide as they grow and release it when they burn or rot.

One of the richest nations in the world due to oil exports, Norway has led donors by pledging in 2007 to provide $500 million a year to protect forests in developing nations.

Solheim said that donors would discuss plans including a pledge in Copenhagen by the United States, Australia, France, Japan, Britain and Norway to provide $3.5 billion from 2010-12 to save forests. Norway's cash comes from existing pledges.

WORLD BANK

Asked how the $3.5 billion would be spent, Solheim said: 'The money is under national control of each government but we want to establish mechanisms in the United Nations and the World Bank on how to use the money.'

'I think that it will be a mixture of bilateral agreements of the type we have ... as well as global schemes within the U.N. and the World Bank,' he said, adding that each forested nation had sovereignty to manage its natural resources.

Norway's bilateral forest plans include up to $1 billion for Brazil from 2008-15, up to $280 million for Guyana from 2010-15 and about $83 million for Tanzania. Each of those schemes has strings attached, depending on performance.

Mobilising cash will be one way of building trust between rich and poor nations after the Copenhagen summit fell short of agreeing a legally binding treaty, he said. Mexico will host the next set of annual U.N. talks, in late 2010.

More than 100 nations have endorsed a Copenhagen Accord, the main outcome of the December summit, which seeks to limit global warming to below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 F) and foresees almost $30 billion in aid for developing nations from 2010-12, rising to $100 billion a year from 2020.

'There was broad agreement on sustainable forestry use. We can take that forward,' Solheim said.

'There are other similar areas where steps are possible—technology, climate adaptation, financing, systems for monitoring and verification of reductions' in greenhouse gas emissions, he added.

(Editing by Noah Barkin)

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