Climate change.

(Our locals already acting)


Climate change road map soon (From today's national Newspaper)
By ISAAC NICHOLAS
THE Office of Climate Change and Carbon Trade (OCCCT) is working out a road map to set the rules of engagement in international negotiations.
Executive director Dr Theo Yasause said yesterday officers were working to put in place legislations and plans for negotiations by the OCCCT.
PNG’s special envoy on Climate Change to the United Nations, Dr Kevin Conrad, is in town to help the OCCCT put together the country’s road map for negotiations.
Dr Yasause, Dr Conrad and senior OCCCT managers turned up in full force at the National Broadcasting Corporation talk-back show on Monday night to discuss the new challenges in climate change and carbon trade.
Dr Conrad said a work plan was being developed that would ask for a reduction in emissions and also for a development framework to reduce emissions.
He said this plan would be taken to Copenhagen, Denmark, later this year for PNG to use the available data to negotiate with much bigger countries.
Dr Conrad said “carbon trade is a new thing” and people could not be told not to cut down trees while negotiations at the international level were still going on.
Dr Yasause said the OCCCT was set up to show PNG was serious in taking the lead in climate change nationally and globally.
He said capacity building was taking place and, for the first time, the OCCCT had organised a meeting with development partners and other government agencies to address the issue.
The OCCCT has the mandate to:
*Advise the Government on climate change, environment sustainability and carbon trading;
*Devise appropriate framework consistent with government policy and PNG’s international commitments in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and related agreements, and to ensure that such policy frameworks are fully implemented to reduce emission from carbon offsets projects as well as from deforestation and degradation (REDD), and to fully maximise benefits derived from these;
*Work with other government agencies in developing, employing and co-ordinating mitigating strategies in REDD and related areas in order to address climate change and environment sustainability; and
*Lead the development, commercialisation and management of carbon trading rights for the Government and people of PNG, and ensure that the PNG community fully benefits from these schemes.