Asian environmental experts discuss clean development

KUALA LUMPUR April 1 - Sixty environmental officials and experts from 10 Asian countries opened a meeting here Tuesday to address issues on sustainable development goals and national priorities.

The three-day Asia Meeting on Efficient Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) Operations served as a platform for South-South partnerships through information and knowledge-sharing.

The director-general of the Economic Planning Unit (EPU) in the Prime Minister's Department, Datuk Seri Iskandar Dzakurnain Badarudin, said that the Malaysian government had set up a National Committee on Clean Development Mechanism to form a suitable framework in line with the CDM operations.

He told Bernama after opening the meeting that it focussed on two areas - energy and forestry.

The CDM is one of the mechanisms under the Kyoto Protocol of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) adopted in December 1997, which provides for an innovative way for cooperation between industrialised nations and developing countries to achieve climate protection.

Iskandar said that the Malaysian National Committee would carry out the planning and implementation in the country once the country's framework was established and agreed upon.

The highlights of the meeting are the country presentations on their respective experiences with CDM namely on structure and roles of the designated national authorities responsible for coordinating the activities.

Many of the participating countries are aware of the importance to devise effective strategies and policies to meet their respective countries' needs.

The forum will deliberate on the processses and procedures of evaluating CDM activities and the sustainable development indicators and criteria for CDM project proposals that are relevant to local needs and challenges.

It also aimed to direct private sector investments into emission-reduction projects in developing countries while promoting sustainable development.

One of the assistance that the countries could use to support their CDM operations was the Prototype Carbon Fund (PCF), a public-private partnership aimed at catalyzing the market for project-based greenhouse gas emission-reductions. The PCF was launched by the World Bank in 2000.

"The World Bank tries to demonstrate how to create an effective way, inform international communities, the developers, the countries how they can work easily ..." said Charles Cormier, senior training specialist in the World Bank Institute after the opening ceremony.