Experts brainstorm on climatic change

Global environmental experts met in the Accra last week to deliberate on modalities to combat the problem of biodiversity and the effect on climatic change in West Africa.

The two-day meeting focused on creating awareness, promoting and improving capacity on related markets and payments for ecosystem.

The conference which was the first to be held in West Africa formed part of series of high level policy and technical meetings on carbon finance and was organized by The Katoomba Group, an international forestry conservation oriented, a non-governmental organization.


It is aimed at developing the legal, policy and institutional framework for forest carbon finance, involving about 40 senior government, private sector and civil society representatives.

The was also aimed at assisting participating countries including Ghana to present a coherent national position at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) discussions, which will reach a climax at the Copenhagen in December 2009, when the post-Kyoto regime, including a Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD) mechanism, will be negotiated.

Available records indicate that Ghana has one of the highest deforestation rates in the world, – about 2% per annum. It has lost about 85% of its forest cover over the last 100 years.

The continuing erosion of forests in West Africa has been identified as putting pressure on the region’s biodiversity, which is home to more than a quarter of Africa’s mammals and 1,800 endemic species of plants.

Mr. Sachin Kapila, Group Biodiversity Advisor, Shell International Limited in a media interaction in Accra observed that the global market for carbon credits provides a new and significant economic opportunity for West African countries.

“It is a service which has the potential to alter the economics of deforestation by giving value to standing forests, and providing an economic incentive for planted trees by responding directly to market failure and providing a market-based incentive for better policies and governance.

It is pathetic to also note that only 17 per cent of the region’s forests are technically under some form of protection, while only three per cent of it is conserved for biodiversity purposes.”

Kapila complained about the alarming rate at which forests in West Africa are seriously depreciating, adding that in the past 15 years the region has lost 1.4 million hectares of primary forest to deforestation.

He therefore urged governments and policy makers to as a matter of urgency to move forward on the carbon finance agenda to combat the effect on climatic change and protect biodiversity.