Rainforest nations want coordinated carbon effort
MILAN (Reuters) - Rainforest nations will lobby the United Nations to set up a single body to coordinate the use of carbon credit trading to stop deforestation at a conference next month in Poland, an official from the countries said on Tuesday.
"A new body should be built to coordinate initiatives (on cutting emissions from deforestation) that are going around now," Federica Bietta, Deputy Director of New York-based Coalition for Rainforest Nations, which represents about 40 countries, told Reuters on the margins of a deforestation conference in Milan.
The Coalition and other supporters of the United Nations'-backed scheme, called REDD, or reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation, hope to include it into a successor of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change after 2012.
"There is money floating around... but countries don't know where to put it. There are various ideas, often not coordinated and that is very confusing," Bietta said.
She said the Coalition would propose the creation of such a body at a conference in Poznan, Poland, in December which has been convened as part of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
The conference is expected to help craft a global agreement by December 2009 on carbon-capping mechanisms to succeed Kyoto.
Bietta said the coordinating body should be linked to UNFCCC, other U.N. agencies and the World Bank, and should help developed and developing countries to ensure transparency of funds allocation.
LITTLE REDD BOOK Continued...
Sister speaks to jailed journalist