News

Bureau staff will participate in the second Africa Carbon Forum in Nairobi from 3 - 5 March 2010. We are particulary keen to meet others who are interested in our various CDM Programmes of Activities - small hydro (up to 15 MW), improved cookstoves, forestry, energy efficiency, solar hot water, PV. Please contact us during the meeting on +256 752644611. Georg Zenk and Bill Farmer will be present.

We will also participate at the 2010 Carbon Expo in Cologne, Germany from 26 - 28 May 2010, so again, please contact us in advance to set up appointments to meet us at this busy gathering. As always, we are anxious to meet existing partners and fresh contacts who would like to work with us on our Africa programme.

Despite the frustrations of the official negotiations, this year's programme of side events provided us with fresh contacts, fresh insights into the international carbon markets and new ways to take forward our increasing portfolio of carbon projects. Highlights in Copenhagen were CIFOR's well organised Forest Day 3, the hugely successful Avoided Deforestation Partners' event at the Marriott Hotel with its stellar cast of speakers, Al Gore's address to the COP, the various biochar meetings that we attended, Desmond Tutu and Mary Robinson's presentations at OXFAM's International Climate Hearing, and the excellent sessions at the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA) Crowne Plaza venue. The latter was a welcome area of tranquility alongside the frantic atmosphere of the Bella Centre. We were stunned by the generous hospitality of our Danish hosts, in equal but opposite measure to the queuing at the Bella Centre.

The need for all Parliamentarians to get reliable information about the challenges and opportunities of climate change, led to the creation of the Parliamentary Forum on Climate Change by a group of concerned Members of Parliament in May 2009. The mandate of the Forum is to promote awareness and action about the effects of climate change and to ensure society-wide resilience against climate change through targeted capacity building. The Bureau has provided pro bono assistance to the Forum's founders, and will continue to support the Forum's work.

We are pleased to welcome Emma Casson to the team. She was Britain's first Schools Carbon Reduction Officer (in North Yorkshire) and is leading on our communications and training work, and the launch of our Climate Sense newsletter in conjunction with a number of Ugandan partner organisations. She has already made many links with local schools and organisations to persue her passion for permaculture, renewable energy and education interests. She has so much enthusiasm for her work that we are all learning from her. And we have also been fortunate that Pam Mukandoba Reynell is now looking after our carbon neutral assessment activities for local firms and organisations. Besides being a trained lawyer, she has exceptional organisational skills developed from her musical interests and her previous training and counselling work. She also has a passion for environmental issues and a talent for keeping our computer system in working order.

The Bureau participated in the CarbonExpo in Barcelona, Spain from 27-29 May 2009. It was as hectic as usual. We had the opportunity to meet a number of the organisations with whom we have developed close links over the past year, and who are already working with us or are interested in joining us in projects in Uganda. We got a further update on the progress with CDM Programme of Activities, a subject that we are focusing on. In the week after the meeting we were in London talking with project partners.

We are pleased to announce that the German organisation CIM (Centre for International Migration and Development) has supported us by recruiting an energy specialist to be part of our team in Kampala. Dr Georg Zenk joined us at the end of April 2009 from Tuv Sud, and is leading our energy work. He is an experienced CDM auditor and gives us the capacity to handle PIN and PDD work to a high standard and at affordable local prices. We are currently supporting the development of a number of CDM small hydro projects in Uganda, and are negotiating a programme of German support that will cover improved cooking stoves and other topics suitable for development as CDM Programmes of Activities.

We had a good time meeting global colleagues at the East & Southern Africa Katoomba Group meeting in Dar-es-salaam and Morogoro during 16-20 September. The theme of Taking Stock & Charting a Way Forward: Payments for Ecosystem Services in Africa created a lot of interest amongst the participants. Our work in local market development and the voluntary carbon market was featured in one of the sessions, and we highlighted the need for many more learning projects to be launched to inform the debate about REDD and other forestry carbon developments.

We attended the first Africa Carbon Forum in Dakar, Senegal during the first week of September 2008. We had a number of projects that we discussed with investors, and made many new business contacts. There was much discussion about ways to increase Africa's level of involvement in the international carbon markets, but there is still a lot to be done to increase awareness and technical skills. We are grateful to UNEP and UNDP for their sponsorship support.

Bureau staff attended the Readiness Forum Workshop on REDD, in Ghana on 19/20 August 2008. There was a series of meetings supporting the same topic during the rest of the week. We met many others who are working on REDD in Africa at this important gathering. The Woods Hole Research Center, the Ghana Forestry Commission and the Ministry of Lands, Forestry & Mines organised and hosted this successful event.

We participated in the June 2008 meeting at Edinburgh University at which the opportunities for carbon finance to contribute to the lives of some of the poorest people on the planet were discussed. We met representatives from the Plan Vivo projects in Mexico, Mozambique and Uganda, and from the upcoming projects in Rwanda and Malawi. Check here to see the conference papers.