Workshop Co-Hosted by the World Bank and Forest Trends
World Bank Moscow Office, Moscow, Russia
August 15, 2006 Introductory Remarks
by Kristalina Georgieva, Country Director for Russia, World Bank
1. It is my pleasure and privilege to welcome you at the World Bank office in Moscow for a joint workshop with Forest Trends. I am particularly pleased to welcome the members of the Forest Trends’ Board of Directors, who are – for the first time – holding their annual meeting here in Russia and who are certainly for the first time in this building, the home to the World Bank Group in Russia. I am also delighted to see at this workshop our Russian counterparts, most of whom already know this room very well because you are all our close partners, colleagues and frequent visitors in this building.
2. First, let me stress – for those of you who may not know it – that the World Bank has indeed a very close working relationship with Forest Trends. My former colleague at the Bank’s Environment Department, Ken Newcombe, was one of the founding members of the Forest Trends Board. He has been one of the early advocates of the market approaches to climate change mitigation and support of ecosystem services, and it was he who significantly helped identify and develop the important niche that Forest Trends has now taken in the global environment and development debate – be it in carbon finance, or the BioCarbon Fund, or more broadly, payments for ecosystem services. I understand Ken was unable to come to this meeting for health reasons. But I am very pleased to see here today others in the current Forest Trends team who had previously worked with us at the Bank’s Environment Department, including Michael Jenkins and David Cassells and Kerstin Canby. 3. At the corporate level, the World Bank continues to pay very close, and increasing, attention to the topic of today’s workshop, ‘Kyoto Protocol and Forests’. The BioCarbon Fund that was piloted by the Bank several years ago is now a very successful financial instrument enjoying high demand – it has already been oversubscribed by the interested parties. Some of you may have heard of the Bank’s more recent global initiative in this area – the Prototype Avoided Deforestation Fund, a $200-250 million endowment proposed in partnership with The Nature Conservancy (TNC) as the first step in response to the latest thinking and policy debate in the UNFCCC / climate change community.
In our work globally – and certainly here in Russia – the Bank clearly sees the huge benefits and opportunities that sustainable forestry can entail in rural development and poverty alleviation. There is a very special role that the emerging carbon markets play in facilitating investments in the forest sector. 5. There is still a lot to be done in Russia to make such markets work – especially at the enabling level of institutional and regulatory framework which is yet to be finalized and enacted by the Government. The Bank is already assisting the Russian Government in launching the general mechanisms of Kyoto implementation, plus developing a strong pipeline of carbon finance projects. The Kyoto opportunities in forestry are rather more difficult to realize – but even so, they could be extremely rewarding in Russia – the World’s largest forest country. 6. We already have an excellent investment collaboration and policy dialogue in the forest sector in Russia, and – considering our global expertise and pioneering approach in international carbon finance – the World Bank, in close collaboration with Forest Trends and other international and local partners, can be an effective conduit of the best technical expertise in this area. This would help the Government establish and monitor a proper biocarbon trading system (and more broadly, payments for ecosystem services such as watershed protection or biodiversity) that would increase public forest revenues at different levels, make the forest sector more transparent and accountable to investors and civil society, and forest businesses – more profitable. Russia has ratified the Kyoto Protocol, and – as our guest speakers are going to show this morning – the international carbon markets are already up and running. You should not waste the opportunity to make use of them. |
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