RIO DE JANEIRO, 18 June 2012 - A financing agreement worth over EUR 350,000, signed today by the Director-General of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) and the Director-General of the Agence Française de Développement (AFD) will help destroy in an environmentally-friendly way some 166 metric tons of unwanted ozone-depleting substances in Mexico.

UNIDO’s Kandeh K. Yumkella and Dov Zerah of AFD signed the agreement during Rio+20, the UN Conference on Sustainable Development taking place in the Brazilian capital.

The pilot demonstration project will be jointly implemented by UNIDO and the French Global Environment Facility (FFEM). It is funded by the French bilateral contributions to the Multilateral Fund.

The project seeks to identify the best technical solutions to avoid releasing unwanted ozone depleting substances that have a high global warming potential into the atmosphere, and to eliminate them by using destruction technologies approved under the Montreal Protocol, an international treaty designed to phase-out substances responsible for the ozone depletion.

“Today’s contribution agreement is another testimony to our increasing cooperation with AFD as well as with the French Global Environment Facility (FFEM),” said Yumkella.

UNIDO and the Agence Française de Développement also signed a financing agreement on a FFEM contribution of EUR 900,000 that aims to reduce the impacts of mercury on human health and the environment in artisanal gold mining communities in Burkina Faso, Mali and Senegal. This will be done by adapting the so-called fair-trade-gold concept developed in South America to the West African context.
 
For more information, please contact:

Sidi Si-Ahmed
Director, UNIDO Montreal Protocol Branch
E-mail