Annan outlined the scheme in a speech to launch a three-day session of high-level climate negotiations here.

Since Kyoto's inception in February 2005, industrialised countries have hugely overlooked Africa when committing funds to fight climate change, the UN said.

"It is no secret that, to date, only a few countries in sub-Saharan Africa are likely to benefit from the CDM in the coming years," said the UN Development Programme's (UNDP) energy and environment director, Olav Kjorven.

"We aim to change this so that sub-Saharan Africa and other poor countries can have their fair share of carbon finance," Kjorven said.

Through the CDM, rich countries which back cleaner-energy projects, such as lower-pollution fossil fuels or hydro and solar energy, get carbon credits in exchange. These credits may then be sold or counted towards the rich country's pollution reduction target.

Under the new initiative, the UN's environment and development programmes (the UNEP and UNDP) will provide expertise to help governments in developing countries factor the effects of climate change into their national development plans.

The goal is to help them "climate-proof" their economies.

"Investments in roads, railways, hospitals, fisheries and power systems are underway across the sub-Saharan African region but few if any are being planned with future climate impacts in mind," UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner said.

Dam building, Steiner said, may be vulnerable to increasingly intense droughts, while coastal roads may be at risk from rising sea levels. The initiative will team investors with projects considered viable in developing countries and provide expertise to help these countries pinpoint and draft such proposals.

It will also identify smaller schemes that could be bundled together to make them into a bigger package that would make investment more attractive to large corporations.

Spanish Environment Minister Cristina Narbona on Wednesday pledged two million euros (2.55 million dollars) for the Nairobi Framework and UN officials said they expected other countries to pony up funding soon.

Sponsored by the UNDP, UNEP, the World Bank Group, African Development Bank (ADB) and UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the initiative will attempt to restore balance to the CDM, which has so far eluded African countries almost completely in favour of big developing countries.

India alone accounts for 39 percent of the 480 CDM projects that are currently underway. Only nine are located in Africa -- in South Africa, Morocco and Tunisia.

Africa is the continent worst affected by global warming despite emitting the least amount of the greenhouse gases blamed for climate change.

If measures are not taken immediately to stem further climate change, nearly 480 million people in Africa may be facing water security problems by 2025, the UN said.

earlier related report
Climate change is as serious as WMD: Annan
Nairobi (AFP) Nov 14 - UN chief Kofi Annan on Wednesday demanded that world leaders give climate change the same priority as they did to wars and to curbing the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

Annan made the appeal as he launched a three-day gathering of environment chiefs, tasked with stepping up action against global warming.

In his valedictory speech to the annual meeting, the UN secretary-general painted a sombre tableau about the effects of climate change, especially on impoverished countries that were least to blame for it.

And he lacerated the fast-shrinking minority of politicians or scientists who still denied there was any threat as "out of step, out of arguments and out of time."

Climate change imperils agriculture through drought and coastal cities through rising sea levels, poses a health threat by spreading mosquito-born disease and could lead to billion-dollar weather calamities, said Annan.

"Climate change is also a threat to peace and security," he warned. "Changing patterns of rainfall, for example, can heighten competition for resources, setting in motion potentially destabilising tensions and migrations, especially in fragile states or volatile regions.

"There is evidence that some of this already occurring; more could well be in the offing."

Annan declared: "The message is clear. Global climate change must take its place alongside those threats -- conflict, poverty, the proliferation of deadly weapons -- that have traditionally monopolised first-order political attention."

Ministers or their stand-ins at the 189-nation meeting of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) are under pressure to spell out by Friday their commitments for deepening cuts in greenhouse-gas emissions.

The spotlight is being placed on Brazil, China and India -- big-population developing countries whose carbon pollution has surged in line with their economic growth.

The European Union (EU) hopes these countries will signal they will join rich nations in making binding curbs in their emissions when negotiations start next year to reshape the UNFCCC's Kyoto Protocol after it expires in 2012.

The United States, meanwhile, which walked away from Kyoto in 2001, is being scrutinised for any gesture towards the pact in the light of last week's US elections, in which the Democrats wrested control of Congress away from President George W. Bush's Republicans.

The United States by itself accounts for a quarter of the world's greenhouse gas output, although its position as No. 1 polluter could soon be overtaken by China, a major burner of coal.

Greenhouse gases trap the Sun's heat instead of letting it radiate out into space.

As a result, Earth's atmospheric temperature is rising, and many scientists are convinced this is already starting to affect the climate system.

The evidence for this comes through thinner snow cover in the European alps, shrinkage of the Greenland icesheet and Arctic ice cover, and a retreat in Siberian permafrost.

Experts are demanding swingeing cuts in the pollution to avoid prolonged droughts and floods or melting of the Antarctic icesheet that could unleash an alarming rise in sea levels.

The Nairobi conference, which began on November 6, yielded its first significant progress on Tuesday with deals on technical aspects of Kyoto's complex machinery.

They reached agreement on how a fund to help poor countries adapt to global warming will be managed, and on a five-year work programme to identify areas in rich and poor countries alike that could be vulnerable to climate change.

In addition, they agreed rules for defining which projects should be eligible under Kyoto's "Joint Implementation" (JI) initiative. JI is a scheme by which rich countries that transfer clean technology to former Soviet eastern European countries can gain carbon credits that they can trade or offset against their own emissions goal.

Financial experts on Tuesday warned climate change could so amplify the effect of weather disasters that droughts, storm surges and other natural catastrophes could cost as much as a thousand billion dollars in a single year by 2040.

earlier related report
Climate change: Key countries stick to old stances despite UN appeal
Nairobi (AFP) Nov 14 - Key countries in the fierce debate over tackling climate change struck familiar negotiating stances on Wednesday, despite warnings from UN chief Kofi Annan that goodwill and fresh action were desperately needed.

Annan -- whose valedictory speech to environment ministers coincided with a watershed in the Iraq war and the row over Iran's nuclear programme -- pointedly said leaders should give global warming the same priority they gave to violent conflicts and the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

The UN secretary-general said the Kyoto Protocol, while crucial, was "far too small" a step for tackling the carbon pollution which drives global warming.

"As we consider how to go further still, there remains a frightening lack of leadership," Annan sombrely warned.

He said climate change imperilled agriculture through drought, threatened coastal cities through rising sea levels and opened the door to billion-dollar weather calamities and mosquito-borne epidemics.

"Climate change is also a threat to peace and security," Annan warned.

"Changing patterns of rainfall, for example, can heighten competition for resources, setting in motion potentially destabilising tensions and migrations, especially in fragile states or volatile regions.

"There is evidence that some of this is already occurring; more could well be in the offing."

Annan declared: "The message is clear. Global climate change must take its place alongside those threats -- conflict, poverty, the proliferation of deadly weapons -- that have traditionally monopolised first-order political attention."

But Annan's appeal for a fresh tack was followed by signs from key actors in the climate-change debate that they were happy to camp on familiar positions.

The United States, the world's biggest carbon polluter, set out a stall laden with familiar policies that reject Kyoto's mandatory and multilateral format in favour of a voluntary approach, bilateral partnerships and technological innovation.

Senior US delegate Paula Dobriansky, who is undersecretary of state for democracy and global affairs, rejected Annan's criticism that there was no leadership on climate change.

"We think the United States has been leading with its groundbreaking initiatives," she told journalists.

Ministers or their stand-ins at the 189-nation meeting of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) are under pressure to spell out by Friday their commitments for deepening cuts in greenhouse-gas emissions.

The spotlight is being placed on Brazil, China and India -- big-population developing countries whose carbon pollution has surged in line with their economic growth.

According to one estimate, China may overtake the United States as the No. 1 polluter by the end of the decade, thanks to its voracious burning of coal.

The big question is whether these countries will join rich nations in making binding curbs in their emissions when negotiations start next year to reshape the UNFCCC's Kyoto Protocol after it expires in 2012.

The absence from the big developing countries in the current targeted pledges is cited by the United States and Australia as a reason why they have refused to ratify Kyoto.

Australian Environment Minister Ian Campbell called for "a new Kyoto" that would cover "all the major economies."

But senior Chinese delegate Jiang Weixin rejected such thinking.

China was willing to take part in talks on long-term emissions cuts, he said.

But the dialogue could not usurp the UNFCCC, and it should be "neither a negotiation process, nor an attempt to set up emission reduction limitation targets for the development countries," Jiang said.

Jiang said the onus in the post-2012 negotiations fell on industrialised countries, which first had to show what cuts they were willing to make.

As expected, countries of the European Union loudly championed Kyoto but skirted the thorny issue of whether they wanted big developing countries to join industrialised nations in signing up to binding emissions commitments beyond 2012.

In a speech read to the conference, French President Jacques Chirac called for "an effective and strengthened multilateral regime" post-2012 that would include "all industrialised countries... and better associate emerging countries, whose emissions are growing swiftly."

British Environment Secretary David Miliband spoke of a "global framework for emissions reductions, driven by the science, fair in its burdens, and urgent in its delivery."

Greenhouse gases trap the Sun's heat instead of letting it radiate out into space.

As a result, Earth's atmospheric temperature is rising, and many scientists are convinced this is already starting to affect the climate system.

Experts are demanding swingeing cuts in the pollution to avoid prolonged droughts and floods or melting of the Antarctic ice sheet that could unleash an alarming rise in sea levels.

The Nairobi conference, which began on November 6, yielded its first significant progress on Tuesday with deals on technical aspects of Kyoto's complex machinery.

Financial experts on Tuesday warned climate change could so amplify the effect of weather disasters that droughts, storm surges and other natural catastrophes could cost as much as a thousand billion dollars in a single year by 2040.

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