OSLO (AFP) – A Norwegian aid package will give 500 million kroner (100 million dollars, 63 million euros) to Tanzania over five years to tackle climate change and deforestation, Norway’s government said Monday.
Tanzania has one of the fastest rates of deforestation in Africa, which aggravates climate change, Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said in a statement released in Oslo.
News of the aid package coincided with Stoltenberg’s visit to Dar es Salaam, where the two countries agreed to join forces in training, research and development of new technologies against climate change.
“Deforestation represents around 20 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions,” Stoltenberg said in the statement.
“To reach a sufficient reduction of emissions, there need to be measures against deforestation in the next treaty,” he said, referring to a pact — due to be signed in Denmark in 2009 — that will succeed the Kyoto Protocol.
While Norway is one of the main exporters of oil and gas in the world, it is also a pioneering country against climate change and aims to be carbon neutral, offsetting all its emissions, by 2030.
