APP on climate approves 18 flagship clean development projects

New Delhi, Oct 15 (UNI) The Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate launched last year at Sydney today approved 18 flagship projects aimed at reducing emission of greenhouse gases by increasing energy efficiency and shifting to clean energy.

The projects were approved at the Partnership's second ministerial meeting at which Canada joined it as the seventh member.

The projects relate to different sectors like buildings, Aluminium production, cement industry, hazardous waste, power generation, coal mining, renewable energy and steel production.

The main focus of Partnership projets is on activites, such as sectoral assessments, capacity building, identifying best practices and technology research.

The partnership, said to have been launched on US initiative which has kept out of the Kyoto Protocol, has U S, India, Australia, China, Japan and the Republic of Korea as its founding members.

It is a non-legally binding framework for international cooperation to facilitate the development, diffusion, deployment and transfer of existing, emerging and long term cost-effective, cleaner and more efficient technologies and practices among the partners.

The US has so far been refusing to sign the Kyoto Protocol which sets manadatory targets on developed nations for reducing carbon emissions while exempting developing countries like India and China.The US wants these countries to commit themsleves to tragets.

Announcing the result of the ministerial deliberations to the media, Minister of state for Environment and Forests Namo Narain Meena said the Partnership was playing a significant role in enhancing cooperation among member nations in adopting clean technologies and best practices to improve energy efficiency while meeting the targets of economic developments.

Earlier, inaugurating the meeting, Minister of External Affairs Pranab Mukherjee said the Partnership was consistent with the principles of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and was a complement to the Kyoto Protocol.

He emphasised the importance of developing and sharing clean technologies in tackling climate change.

Mr Mukherjee said there was very little Research and Development effort on technologies that respond to requirements and resource endowments of developing countries, which should be remedied.

He called for collaborative Research and Development between developing and developed countries and R and D institutions.

''In this context we need to be mindful of creating a fairer balance between rewards for innovators and the need to ensure the common good of human kind as far as Intellectual Property Rights(IPR) regime was concerned. Standards and priorities should reflect the developmental context to which they apply ,'' he added.

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