3 500 000 000 FOR CLIMATE CHANGE

Development partners at the climate and forest conference in Oslo, Norway on Thursday launched a framework of interim partnership dubbed REDD+Partnership with financial pledges of U.S.$ 3.5 billion for the global fight against climate change.

The money is in addition to $ 30 billion indicated for the same period in the Copenhagen accord.

Speaking at the conference, Kenya's Prime Minister Raila Odinga expressed optimism that the framework and financial support covering 2010-2012 holds considerable potential for transparent, expeditious and equitable funding of climate change activities.

Odinga said the disbursement modalities and the management architecture for the partnership must be transparent and well coordinated.

"The REDD+Partnership that we are launching today is crucial to achieve our goal. We have embarked on a process of developing REDD readiness activities in anticipation that an enabling international framework for climate change will evolve, " he said.

Noting that Kenya supports the partnership wholeheartedly, the Premier expressed concern that the country's forest cover which stood at 12% at independence had been reduced to a mere 2%.

"As a result, many of our rivers dry up when it does not rain, causing crop failures and hunger. When it rains, water gushes down mountains, causing floods that wash away lives and properties," he said.

"This is as a result of human encroachment and climate change. We must restore our forests to their past glories. We must fight climate change," he added.

Odinga said the government was committed to stopping human activities in government forests which form important water towers.

So far 25,000 hectares of land have been recovered and 14,000 hectares replanted in the Mau Complex in the last one year.

Odinga said Kenya was poised to go totally green by 2017 and to restore the forest cover to 10% by 2020 with the restoration of the forests requiring an estimated $ 1 billion a year.

The government has already launched a green energy campaign and mobilized $ 1 billion to construct a 280 MW geothermal power plant and the PM says the government has completed the construction of two independent power producers with a combined capacity of 440 MW.

Kenya's Nobel peace laureate Prof. Wangari Mathai also addressed the conference.