Raila Odinga in Oslo

KiN Reports - Oslo, Thursday.
Kenya's Prime Minister Hon. Raila Oginga is on a snap visit of Oslo to attend the climate and forest conference as part of a large delegation of development partners from various countries. The conference, hosted at Holmenkollen Park Hotel Rica in Oslo, launched a framework of interim partnership dubbed REDD+Partnership.

The purpose of the conference was to establish an interim partnership arrangement for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries (REDD+).

The conference resulted in a registration of financial pledges of U.S.$ 3.5 billion for the global fight against climate change.

Raila met among others the Norwegian Prime Minister, Jens Stoltenberg who was the host for this year's conference.

Speaking at the conference, the Hon. Raila expressed optimism that the framework and financial support covering 2010-2012 holds considerable potential for transparent, expeditious and equitable funding of climate change activities. He said that the disbursement modalities and the management architecture for the partnership must be transparent and well coordinated.

Kenya's Nobel peace laureate Prof. Wangari Maathai also addressed the conference.

Kenyans in Norway who did not make it to the conference have been calling KiN Newsroom to find out if there is a possibility of meeting the PM. The newsroom later confirmed that the meeting plan for the PM was too compact to the extent that finding a little room for further meetings including an informal one for Kenyans in Oslo was deemed impossible.

Hon. Raila leaves for London to meet with among others UK's minister for International Development (DfID), Stephen O'Brien, Foreign Office Minister, Henry Bellingham and UK's Prime Minister David Cameron this Friday.