Zimbabwe
Conference on cleaner production for Africa in Nairobi

afrol.com, 10 August - The first Cleaner Production Roundtable ever for Africa will be held at the headquarters of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in Nairobi on 9 and 10 August. On 11 August there will be a workshop on Sustainable Consumption. The Kenyan Minister of Environment and Natural Resources, Honorable Francis Nyenze, will open the Roundtable meeting. 

Cleaner Production is now widely accepted as a successful strategy to improve industrial performance while ensuring protection of the environment. African countries, in their pursuit of economic development, stand to benefit from propagation of cleaner production which promotes optimum utilization of resources. 


The Roundtable, organized jointly by UNEP (Division of Technology, Industry and Economics) Carl Duisberg Gesellschaft (CDG) (Germany) and the Government of Norway, seeks to provide a platform for information and experience exchange on Cleaner Production, to provide networking among practitioners and stakeholders and to develop a common agenda for the promotion of Cleaner Production in Africa. 


Participants at the meeting hope to create an institutional mechanism for ongoing review, assessment and information exchange on Cleaner Production in Africa; provide a framework for linking Cleaner Production with Sustainable Consumption; establish a forum to project Africa in the international arena on Cleaner Production. 


The United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) and UNEP have already established National Cleaner Production Centres in Kenya, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Tunisia and Morocco. Other centres are planned for Ethiopia, Mozambique and Nigeria. 


The workshop on Cleaner Production and Sustainable Consumption, scheduled for 11 August, is aimed at raising awareness, identifying information and training needs and defining actions needed for an integrated approach for sustainable consumption and cleaner production strategies. The workshop will follow-up on the recommendations of the Eighth Session of the African Ministerial Conference on the Environment held in April this year. 


The Nairobi meeting will include Government and governmental agencies, NGOs, representatives of European, Asia-Pacific, and Mediterranean Roundtables and UNIDO. The Sixth International High-level Seminar on Cleaner Production (CP6) will take place in Montreal in October 2000.

Source: UNEP

© afrol.com. Texts and graphics may be reproduced freely, under the condition that their origin is clearly referred to, see Conditions.    You can contact us at mail@afrol.com