Pakistan and Japan will shortly sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) under which the latter will extend financial assistance to the former to reduce green house gases (GHGs) through 'clean development mechanism' (CDM), official sources told Business Recorder here on Saturday.
The Cabinet, meeting in Gwadar on Monday will approve the draft of the MoU. The United Nations member states had signed the Kyoto Protocol to reduce, by 2012, the GHGs concentration to below 1990 level, through CDM, and Pakistan acceded to the Kyoto Protocol in January 2005.
CDM, being a market-based mechanism, helps the developing countries in achieving the sustainable development goal by reducing GHGs and earn foreign exchange through sale of Certified Emission Reductions (CERs) generated from the projects and mitigate the climate change effects.
The reduction of GHGs in the atmosphere benefits both the developed countries by achieving their CERs targets and the developing countries by sale of CERs for attaining the goal of sustainable development through CDM. Sources said that the Ministry of Environment has been declared as 'Designed National Authority' (DNA) to process the CDM projects efficiently and transparently.
For this purpose, a CDM cell has been established and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz has approved national operational strategy as well. In order to promote CDM activities in Pakistan through Japanese investment, Japan Carbon Finance (JCF) and Japan Bank for International Co-operation (JBIC) representatives in a recent meeting with the Minister for Environment showed interest to execute an MoU with Pakistan.
The MoU would provide basis to JCF and JBIC to cooperate with the Ministry of Environment in developing domestic institutional capacities, enabling Pakistan to develop, manage and monitor CDM projects besides promoting, developing and transferring environment-friendly technologies to Pakistan, sources added. They said that all concerned ministries had agreed to the proposal, and the draft of MoU was being placed before the Cabinet for approval.
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