Sri Lanka joins to combat emissions

The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) announced this week that Sri Lanka has been admitted to the United Nations initiative on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (REDD) Program.

Sri Lanka's membership comes amid a call by Sri Lanka's Permanent Representative to the UN Dr. Palitha Kohona at the UN General Assembly's Second Committee that "sufficient incentives must be provided to forest hosting countries to maintain them" and "to ascribe a carbon value to natural forests, enabling that carbon value to be traded in the global carbon market", a Foreign Ministry release said.

Argentina, Cambodia, Ecuador and Nepa were also accepted as new UN REDD partners, increasing the total membership to 14.

The UN REDD was launched as a collaborative partnership between the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) and the United Nations Development program (UNDP). The UN REDD was designed to help countries combat climate change by reducing deforestation and investing in sustainable development.

The program aims at generating upto 30 billion US Dollars in annual funding from developed countries with already promising commitment from Denmark, Norway and Australia.

Over 37 million Dollars REDD funding was approved last year for mitigation program in Panama, Tanzania, Congo and Vietnam.

Several multilateral agencies such as the World Bank and the Global Environment Facility (GEF) are collaborating on UN REDD with other entities including the Secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, regional development banks, bilateral donors, research institutions and NGOs.

The significant flow of REDD funds has been described as a reward for the meaningful reduction of carbon emissions and in support of new, pro-poor development programs, conservation of biodiversity and securing vital ecosystem services.