Congo among nations advancing on forest carbon

By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent

OSLO (Reuters) - Nations including Democratic Republic of Congo are making surprise progress towards taking part in a $200 million project for slowing deforestation from late 2010, World Bank experts said.

They also said Latin America, with forested nations around the Amazon, had strong incentives to take part since most of the continent's greenhouse gas emissions came from deforestation and shifts in land use, rather than use of fossil fuels.

"We intend to start operations later this year," Benoit Bosquet, lead carbon finance specialist at the World Bank, told Reuters of the Carbon Fund, part of a facility that involves 37 forested developing nations and 14 donors.

The fund, a public-private project for which the World Bank is trustee, so far has pledges totalling $50 million and aims for a total $200 million.

"Some unlikely countries are coming out of the starting blocks, for example in central Africa," Bosquet said in a telephone briefing.

Democratic Republic of Congo was making strong progress, for instance, in defining plans and consulting local communities and indigenous peoples, he said. Five million people died in a 1998-2003 war and the country is still plagued by insecurity.

Elsewhere in Africa, Ghana was among those advancing well and in Latin America, Mexico and Costa Rica were among those with furthest progress, he said.

Burning of forests to clear land accounts for up to a fifth of all greenhouse gas emissions from human sources blamed for stoking global warming, according to U.N. estimates.