The UN environmental agency plans to hold a major Africa-wide conference highlighting on how the more than 50 nations on the continent can transit to a low-carbon, resource-efficient Green Economy next year.

A statement from the Nairobi-based UNEP said on Wednesday the conference will be in response to the call by the African Ministerial Conference on the Environment (AMCEN).

"Africa is at key crossroads in its history. It is facing multiple challenges from overcoming poverty and coping with climate change to rising water scarcity and food insecurity in part linked with sharp levels of desertification," UN Under- Secretary General and UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner said.

The conference will showcase how smart policy moves and creative investments across sectors, ranging from agriculture and transport to fisheries and forests, can drive green and sustainable growth alongside job creation and livelihood for Africa's one billion citizens.

The conference will be among the first fruits of a partnership on Africa's options for a Green Economy backed by the African Union, the African Development Bank, the UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) which emerged on Wednesday at the VII African Development Forum in Addis Ababa.

"But it is also a moment of rising opportunities that many leaders in Africa are glimpsing from the potential for renewable energy such as wind and solar to the extraordinary economic importance of Africa's nature-based assets such as its forests, river systems and coastal waters--not to speak of a young and in many cases, an increasingly skilled work force," he added.

Since launching the Green Economy Initiative in 2008 during the height of the ongoing global financial and economic crisis, many countries have come forward seeking advisory services from UNEP on how they can tailor their economies along such a path.

In Africa, UNEP has started the implementation of a regional pilot partnership covering seven countries namely Burkina Faso, Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda, Senegal and South Africa in advance of the Rio plus 20 Summit where the Green Economy is one of the two main themes. Speaking at sessions on climate change and the Green Economy, Steiner pointed out that the "world was awash with crises". "It may seem that escalating crises and the often glacial international response means countries, including those on the African continent, are unable to respond. But Africa is not doing this," he added. "Indeed, when you look across this continent leaders and business, communities and citizens are seizing opportunities to re- define and re-focus their development paths along Green Economic lines," said Steiner.

"In part this comes out of understandable frustration with the pace of change internationally. And in part because many leaders here have glimpsed a future based on a transition to a low carbon, resource efficient economy in which environmental sustainability is the engine room," he added. Steiner highlighted these transitions with several examples, saying in July this year heads of state meeting under the Economic Community of West African States endorsed an initiative by President Aboulaye Wade of Senegal on significantly expanding solar power in order to boost energy access.

Meanwhile, in Kenya, where UNEP is headquartered, a new government feed-in tariff has triggered investment in what will be one of the biggest wind farms on the continent, 300 MW in the Turkana region.

Restoration of Kenya's Mau forest complex, after decades of degradation, is also underway after assessments produced by the government and with support from UNEP were indicating that the value of that forest to the economy - including tourism, hydro power, agriculture and the tea industry - is perhaps as much as 1. 5 billion US dollars a year.

Steiner said Ethiopia is also part of this transition, not least through some of its pioneering work in "green accounting" which has been putting monetary values on soil erosion and deforestation in terms of the impacts on GDP and the tripling of forest cover since the turn of the century.

"Uganda, a country where 85 per cent of the working population is employed in agriculture, has turned to organic production to boost exports and incomes," he said.

He said farm-gate prices for organic vanilla, ginger and pineapples are higher than for conventional produce.

Steiner underlined that a Green Economy is as much about spotlighting the economic absurdities at large in the world as showcasing smart policy decisions.

"Why are we investing in the means of capture - over capture - rather than in the recovery of the stock?" Steiner added.

"And which contribute to economic inefficiencies. Greenhouse gas emissions and the perpetuation of fossil fuel dependency or agricultural subsides, including fertilizers and pesticides allied to food wastes, represent one of the biggest market failures globally," said the UNEP executive director.

Earlier Steiner attended a debate on Environmental Diplomacy, saying it might seem new to some, but that it was as "as old as the Entoto hills, near Addis Ababa."

He said the difference between the past and the present in which communities and countries often used time-honoured traditions to resolve natural resource disputes was the sheer scale of humanity's contemporary footprint allied to the fact that pollution and degradation is now 'exported' hundreds and thousands of miles. "Some of the poorest and most vulnerable can become victims as a result of pollution generated not by them but by others - Environmental Diplomacy is about finding fair and equitable solutions to such realities," Steiner said.

"And perhaps more importantly of finding cooperative and forward-looking agreements between over 190 nations for managing- down impacts en route to sustainable development - agreements that recognize the historical responsibilities of some countries and increasingly the rights of generations yet born," he added. "Rights to a healthy and productive planet that will allow the next generation to reach its full potential rather than being marginalized or short-changed by an over-exploitative previous one, " said Steiner.

Delegates agreed that evolving Environmental Diplomacy is becoming an increasingly important and strategic policy platform for international relations and called for a further workshop that engages Africa diplomats at the UN headquarters in New York.