UN to support our renewable energy efforts
08.07.2009
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) will help us as we draw up our long-term energy policy, the organisation’s representative here Claudio Calderone said yesterday.
“We will do the long-term energy policy together with government institutions. This will be an important structure for the country because it will be the occasion to introduce renewable energy,” Mr Calderone said after paying his farewell visit to President James Michel at State House.
“Seychelles should also be able to tap into the additional clean development funding mechanisms,” he said.
“That means Seychelles will have additional carbon finance, which will come into the country and make things easier to happen,” he added, noting that President Michel was recently in Dubai where he took part in talks on producing energy from wind farms.
Mr Calderone said the UNDP will be involved in training to increase the country’s capacity to tap into carbon financing.
The World Bank has created the Carbon Finance Unit (CFU), which uses money contributed by governments and companies in Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development countries to buy project-based greenhouse gas emission reductions in developing countries with economies in transition.
The emission reductions are bought through one of the CFU’s carbon funds on behalf of the contributor, and within the framework of the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) or Joint Implementation.
Mr Calderone became UNDP representative in July 2006 and yesterday named the many projects it has been involved in during his term of office, including rebuilding the Roche Caiman bridge which was damaged by the 2004 tsunami.
He also talked about the recent meeting of the various heads of UN bodies represented here, who sought ways to support our economic reform through their organisations.
And he said the UN will step up its support for our HIV/Aids control efforts.