Friday, October 19, 2007

Call for clean development projects

Razen Manandhar
Kathmandu, October 18:

Nepal has urged the international community working for Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) to encourage participation
of the private sector in small-scale projects that provide social and environmental benefits.
“Our agenda in the third meeting of the CDM Designated National Authority (DNA) Forum in Ethiopia was to lobby for private sector’s participation in CDM projects,” said Batu Krishna Uprety, the chief of the Environment Assessment Section at the Ministry of Environment, Science and Technology, talking with this daily.
Uprety recently returned to Nepal after participating in the meeting organised by the secretariat of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in the UN Conference Centre in Addis Ababa of Ethiopia.
The participants of the meeting focused on capacity needs of CDM, need for raising awareness on CDM at political level and use of existing framework of cooperation. “We considered CDM to be a mechanism for economic development and adaptation on climate change,” he said.
“I stressed on how profit-making private sector could participate in social benefits related CDM projects, and the need for exploring and supporting for further participation of public sector in such small scale CDM projects,” he said. “I raised the issues related to methodologies of the small scale biomass projects with focus on realistic baselines, social responsibilities of the DNA in developing and implementing CDM projects and capacity building of stakeholders,” he added.
“It was a great opportunity to raise our voice in such big forum. Our voice needs to be heard so that we can take advantage of CDM and time has come that we would earn money through carbon trading,” he said.
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