Plea for a better orientation of financing environmental protection in poor countries and developing countries.
Chaalal moulay
Funding for environmental protection and sustainable development is ensured primarily by domestic resources, largely through state budgets, and various economic and financial instruments developed for this purpose.
However, due to the high cost of care of all environmental problems, and their global importance, especially because of the inability of developing countries to find the necessary resources to enable them to move to that choice much harder, which is at the expense of the satisfaction of basic needs much more urgent, such as health, education, and especially the fight against poverty.
Frameworks of international cooperation have been prepared to support and supplement the local effort in the form of grants or loans on concessional terms in line with the commitments undertaken, which emanate from international financial institutions or regional banks ,or within the framework of the implementation of international conventions, like the Framework Convention on Climate Change, Convention on Biological Diversity, the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, The Kyoto Protocol, or simply in the context of development assistance.
The mobilization of these funds requires a special effort on the part of recipient countries, usually poor or developing.
One of the most difficult issues in the implementation of international strategies, including the implementation of agreements on environment and sustainable development, is undoubtedly the financing of measures, namely the resources needed to identify and areas of intervention by developed countries and international bodies to help poor countries to participate in international efforts, while ensuring that their money will not be used for something else, or will be diverted from its destination, which remains a well-established practice in public management of a large part of developing countries.
The levels of aid, modalities and mechanisms that may achieve the objectives through these programs are not yet very developed either in qualitative or quantitative, and suffer from shortcomings that make efforts in this regard are made in vain.
Indeed, funding from these mechanisms do not generally respond to the expectations of recipient countries, and do ultimately a small portion of requests by them for the protection of the environment, in addition to the conditions laid by donors and sometimes in contradiction with the noble objective to which they are intended.
Notwithstanding the very low level of aid including those from multilateral funds (tens or at most hundreds of thousands of dollars), which relates generally to the preparation of communications, strategies, plans, capacity building etc, that are more bureaucratic than technical, these actions have not a direct impact on the environment, and generally remain at the stage of the documents, whose implementation requires resources far more consistent than those reserved for their preparation.Financing through aid, in the framework of bilateral cooperation seems most appropriate for the protection of the environment, since it does not commit the resources of the country, however this form of funding (grants), is characterized by its inefficiency, as recipient countries tend to modify or even to divert its original destination, in the absence of a rigorous and continuous control from donors, which is not always easy to achieve.
Loans by financial institutions like the World Bank or regional development banks and some of their nature (in the medium to long term, preferential rates, subsidized or not), which are not only determined by requirements of the bank’s policy, they create an adverse impact on the financial situation of the borrowing countries already very precarious and clutter up them with more debts, with additional adverse effects on economic growth. The environmental impact of investments in this context is unlikely and difficult to assess,
Some mechanisms from international conventions and protocols, even if they are not directly related to developing countries( non annexe 1), can provide environmental benefits and technical, to the image of the Prototype Carbon Fund established by the Kyoto Protocol, which calls possibility of generating emission reduction units (ERU) of marketable greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions through investment in projects to mitigate climate change, it just be very interesting in the case where developed countries would like to focus their cooperation on the transfer technologies, to encourage developing countries to embark on this path of clean development mechanism (CDM)
However, it is a mechanism, which is by far the best and most appropriate to the situation of developing countries, and show the best intentions of developed countries to help poor countries protect their environment in a healthy state, which consists of conversion of the debt of these countries in green investments, they joint economic interests (debt relief) and environmental interests, it also responds very well to the concept of sustainable development, with the balance between its environmental, economic and social equity dimensions.
Given that most developed countries have debts to developing countries, these debts are generally classified in case of bad debts, given the unlikelihood of recovery, especially those held to poor countries, it is in their interest to revive their money by investing in green projects (with the example of waste management projects, the fight against industrial pollution, fight against desertification, water management etc..) that can have positive effects in more ways than one, and move on to prove beneficial to both parties.
Conciliate environmental protection and fight against poverty, is a very difficult equation to solve, in the absence of an international drive to eradicate the causes of poverty and the fight against its effects. in this case, and until this desire is manifested, it is quite legitimate for the citizens of these countries to ask if the money set aside for environmental protection, would it not be better to meet more urgent needs, such as disease control and hunger, then we can talk environment as the saying goes “hungry, has no ears.” because of the future and uncertain advantage of preserving the environment and the pressing need to satisfy their hunger, the choice does not even arise.