Africa plans green fund, seeks new funding methods

BRAZZAVILLE (Reuters) - Africa will create a fund to promote its unique environment and seek new ways of funding green reforms such as carbon credits and canceling debts in return for conservation, ministers said.

Africa has large areas of ecologically valuable rainforests and other habitat with many unique plant and animal species, but despite a small industrial base its environment faces many pressures including logging, climate change and poaching.

"We have decided to create an African Environmental Fund to promote sustainable development. This fund will be housed with the African Development Bank," Republic of Congo's Environment Minister Henri Djombo said late on Friday at the close of a biannual meeting of environment ministers from across Africa.

Djombo appealed for help from the African Development Bank (AfDB) and other international financial institutions to assist with setting up the fund, which would channel resources into conservation efforts on the poorest continent.

"However, other means will have to be explored, namely innovative finance mechanisms used by countries in other continents like Latin America, such as carbon credits and exchanging debt for environmental services," he said.

Carbon credits allow companies who reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to earn reduction credits which they can then sell to firms in developed countries.

The scheme grew out of the United Nations Kyoto Protocol under which most developed countries have committed themselves to targets to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases blamed for climate change.

Kyoto signatories are meant to cut emissions by an average of 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12 as a small step to combat rising temperatures that many scientists say could cause more floods, desertification and violent storms and raise sea levels by almost a meter (yard) by 2100.

Environment ministers pledged in a closing statement at the Brazzaville meeting to reinforce their efforts under the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification.

Africa's biodiversity will be in the spotlight at a global conference in Madagascar next month which will examine ways to harness its ecological treasures for economic development.

Djombo, who took over as chair of the African Ministerial Conference on the Environment (AMCEN) until 2008, proposed an African environment award for people working toward better management of the continent's ecosystems.

AMCEN is due to meet next in South Africa, which as the continent's most industrialized country has spearheaded carbon credit trading in Africa and has one of its most developed systems of national parks and ecotourism.

South Africa has called for "positive incentives" to encourage developing nations to curb emissions, including aid and new technology.