Dear Fellow P2ers, I received the following email from Sascha Lafeld, who works with UNEP in Paris. They are in the process of developing Strategies and Mechanisms for Promoting Cleaner Production Investments in Developing Countries and are looking for examples of P2 finance around the world. I thought maybe there are others out there who would like to participate in this survey. Sarah Diefendorf ____________________________________________________ Sarah M. Diefendorf Executive Director Environmental Finance Center, Region IX Alameda Point 851 West Midway Ave. Alameda, CA 94501-5012 Ph: 415-664-4715 Fx: 415-664-1675 www.greenstart.org/efc9
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- Subject: Cleaner Production Financing
- From: Lafeld Sascha <Sascha.Lafeld@unep.fr>
- Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2000 11:58:47 +0100
Dear Ms. Diefendorf, my name is Sascha Lafeld, I am working at UNEP in Paris/France at a project on Cleaner Production (CP) Investment. Since I assume that some activities implemented by your organisation incorporate CP investment relevant topics, I wonder whether you could give me some contact points within the Environmental Finance Center that deal with this particular field of investment. To give you an idea about the project I am working at, please let me briefly summarise the basic aspects: Cleaner production (CP), as defined by UNEP, is a general term to describe a preventive rather than aftercaring (end-of-pipe) environmental strategy for industrial production. CP can be the most efficient way to operate processes, manufacture products and provide services. Costs of wastes, emissions as well as environmental and health impacts can be reduced, and benefits from these reductions and new markets can be realized. Other parallel terms are eco-efficiency, green productivity or pollution prevention. In 1998 UNEP launched the project "Strategies and Mechanisms for Promoting Cleaner Production Investments in Developing Countries" to help developing countries in this matter. The project will demonstrate how investments in cleaner production can be stimulated by helping financial institutions to understand its benefits, and by training national experts to develop creditworthy CP investment proposals. Finding investment funds is a major constraint in making the cleaner production concept more widely practiced. No systematic effort has yet been made to persuade development banks and the private financial sector to invest in cleaner production . CP investments have to be interpreted widely and they might vary from major infrastructure projects through to single plant retrofit of production lines. However, a key problem of CP investments is their incremental nature, in a sense that the application of cleaner production principles increases the costs of a 'regular' investment. Thus, it is crucial to acknowledge that a CP investment should not be interpreted as an additional cost related to environmental performance. It rather relates to the cost entailed by the choice of technology in an ever-changing array of alternatives. The first step of the project deals with finding CP investment examples worldwide. These examples might provide useful advice and information for the application of CP investments in developing countries. Therefore, we have developed a questionnaire on CP investment institutions. The aim of this questionnaire is to collect data about CP investment promotion and financing initiatives in the financial and non-financial sector. A compendium, to be published by UNEP/TIE, will provide core-data on the profile and ongoing CP investment activities of the participating organisations. Could you provide contact addresses within the Environmental Finance Center that might belong to the target group of this questionnaire and/or do you know other organisations/contact persons that might belong to it? Thank you for any help you might provide, with best regards from Paris to San Francisco, Sascha Lafeld Cleaner Production Financing UNEP/TIE 39-43 quai André Citroën F-75739 Paris Cedex 15, France Tel: + 33 1 44 37 76 17 Fax: + 33 1 44 37 14 74 http://www.uneptie.org/Cp2/about/background.html
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