Recognising of your commitment to Climate Change action and to the protection of nature and the environment, biodiversity and local livelihoods, we call on you to create a global mechanism and fund to help poor and developing countries maintain the integrity of their World Heritage Sites and conservation priority areas that lie over fossil fuels reserves.
We think these reserves should be included in the unburnable fossil fuel category.
Why is this important?
Without such a mechanism there will be no way to ensure countries do not go ahead with fossil fuel exploration and exploitation in conservation priority areas, specially if the reserves are low development cost.
This effect will be even stronger in a world of restricted fossil fuel extraction due to unburnable fuel policies and will put even more pressure on low to average cost reserves, including those under World Heritage Sites, protected areas or otherwise known to be of priority for conservation, and on which many local and indigenous people depend for their livelihood.
Without this fund, it is not realistic to assume that poor and developing countries, affected by scarce resources, acute poverty and social development problems, may accept leaving fossil fuel reserves unexploited and forego the income they can thus obtain to help solve these problems.
