THIMPHU: Bhutan will join 192 countries with three key negotiation points when they sit at the 15th session of the United Nations framework convention on climate change (UNFCCC), also called COP15, which will take place in the Danish capital, Copenhagen, next month. Bhutan’s special focus is on the adaptation fund, reward for conserving and managing sustainable forest and simplifying procedures to obtain green technology projects under clean development mechanism (CDM).

“Bhutan is conserving large tracts of forest for global benefit and we strongly stand to reap reward,” said the director general of national environment commission, Sonam Yanglay. “Our good forest cover may benefit from emission trading under CDM projects. Our negotiation will be to cut short the procedures.” Today no CDM-related project activities could take off for lack of technical capacity. “Once the CDM project is established and certificate is obtained, Bhutan will be open to carbon market,” said Sonam Yangley.

Forestry mechanism, REDD, or reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, was taken up under the Koyoto Protocol. It aims to provide incentives for developing countries to cut emissions by preserving forests or having better forest management practices — all of this in an effort to bring down emissions from this source and to ensure that there were sufficient forests remaining for the intake of carbon dioxide.

According to the report by United Nations environment programme, till 2008, CDM has spurred the development of more than 4,000 projects in 70 developing countries. These projects are expected to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to 2.6 percent.

However, Bhutan’s negotiation will be a joint one with LDCs (least developed countries), as climate change negotiation processes usually break into regional or economic status groupings to present a common position.

The greatest challenge with climate change in Bhutan was people paying less attention even after experiencing impact, said an official from NEC. Hot days and cold nights in winter, the outbreak of dengue fever in recent years, untimely rainfall and the flooding in May this year due to cyclone Aila in the Bay of Bengal were some of the impacts of climate change. “All our rivers systems are fed with glacier lakes and, in the long run, when the glacier lakes melt, there will be water scarcity and our hydrostations will be affected,” said the official.

According to the intergovernmental panel on climate change fourth assessment report, the glaciers in Himalaya are receding much faster than in any other part of the world, and are expected to disappear by 2035. The international centre for integrated mountain development based in Kathmandu, Nepal has identified more than 2,500 glacier lakes in Bhutan. These are threats to our economy, said the officials.

Bhutan became a member of UNFCCC in 2002 after the National Assembly ratified the convention in August 1995, but the only benefit from the convention was US$ 3.5m under LDC fund through the global environment facility. The money is being used for glacial lake outburst flood (GLOF) projects.