In one more significant instance, Nepal, a small mountain country located between India and China, has announced that its attempts to reduce 50,000 tons of carbon have been certified by the CDM executive board that will earn the country income of US$350,000, a significant amount for the small economy.

``We have been informed that the CDM board has decided to issue us Certificate Emission Reduction (CER) for reducing carbon that will reward us with around US$350000,'' Nepal?s environment ministry said in a statement earlier this month.

These will be the second lot of CER?s earned as part of a program to reduce carbon emissions via bio-gas that has been approved by the CDM board. Nepal has already earned over US223000 dollars for reducing nearly 32,000 ton of carbon due to the same bio-gas program. A single biogas plant can reduce nearly 5 tons of GHG emissions annually.

Nepal is working on four sectors to earn carbon credits, namely, biogas, micro-hydro, improved stoves and bio mass gasification.

CDM is a provision of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), a mechanism under the Kyoto Protocol, under which clean projects in developing countries can earn tradable CER units that can be purchased by entities in developed nations to meet mandatory emission reduction targets.

Despite accusations of green washing and other leakages, innovative programs to reduce GHG emissions are being implemented in the developing world given global pressures to cut pollution.

For example, three watersheds in the districts of Dolakha, Gorkha and Chitwan in Nepal have obtained funding of US$95,000 under the Forest Carbon Trust Fund (FCTF) that focuses on sequestering carbon through community-based forest management.

The Nepal pilot project will enable examination of forest governance systems under Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation Plus (REDD+) funded by Norway.

The experience will offer prototypes for similar projects in Indonesia, India, Philippines and Malaysia among other nations.