Africa: Carbon trading - a new source of African finance

By all accounts, the Bisasar Road Landfill in Durban is an unsavoury place. Plunked in the middle of an Indian suburb more than 20 years ago, the site spreads the odour of rotting garbage over the surrounding community and emits thousands of tonnes of harmful methane gas into the atmosphere each year. Strange as it may seem, though, the stench may turn out to be the smell of money - if a controversial carbon financing deal signed last year between the city and the World Bank gets off the ground. At the inaugural Carbon Expo held in Cologne last June, Durban's Landfill Gas to Energy project became the first in Africa to be financed through an emerging global market in carbon credits.