East Africa calls for fair carbon credit pricing

What you need to know:

During the forum in Nairobi, the negotiators from Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, Burundi, Rwanda and Ethiopia insisted that the region must be adequately informed on the proposed measures to stem climate change

Arusha. Eastern African countries are keen to explore the potential of carbon markets as part of climate change mitigation efforts.

Meeting ahead of the forthcoming climate change summit in Poland, they called for fair mechanisms on carbon pricing.

“We would like to explore the potential of carbon markets mechanisms to reduce emissions,” they said at the end of their talks in Nairobi.

Carbon pricing, a method favoured by economists for reducing global warming emissions, charges those who emit carbon dioxide, which is a greenhouse gas.

That charge, called a carbon price, is the amount that must be paid for the right to emit one tonne of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Carbon pricing is an important tool for climate change mitigation under the Paris Agreement reached during the Climate Change Summit in the French capital in 2015.

Under the agreement, each country must determine, plan and regularly report on its mitigation measures with set targets and financing aspects. During the forum in Nairobi, the negotiators from Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, Burundi, Rwanda and Ethiopia insisted that the region must be adequately informed on the proposed measures to stem climate change.

The pre-Conference of Parties (COP) forum in the Kenyan capital for eastern Africa attracted participants from the East African Community (EAC) secretariat, among other regional organisations.

During the meeting, experts presented the relevant examples of carbon pricing approaches for the African countries and how the banks can be roped in to support the initiative.

Accordingly, as many as 34 African countries make reference to carbon mechanisms in their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) of green house gases. The 24th Conference of Parties under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) will be held in Katowice city in Poland later this year.