Climate change experts has called on African governments to put in place carbon pricing regulation to earn taxes from greenhouse gas emissions.

El-Hadji Diagne, Lead Negotiator for Climate Change Markets, said in Nairobi that carbon pricing is an opportunity that the continent could not afford loss.

Diagne said this during the 10th African carbon Forum in Nairobi.

Diagne told countries to apply pricing measures, including taxation methods that are used in taxing fossil fuel to shift the burden for the damage back to those who are responsible.

He said that with the existing regional economic blocs, managing carbon pricing can be easier once the provisions are put in place.

The expert observed that instead of dictating who should reduce emissions where and how, a carbon price gives an economic signal that makes polluters decide whether to discontinue their polluting activity, reduce emissions or continue polluting and pay for it.

He told delegates that they have a better option putting legal framework in place as carbon price also stimulates clean technology and market innovation, fueling new, low-carbon drivers of economic growth.

Also, Dirk Forrister, the CEO of International Emissions Trading Association (IETA), told African governments to put policies in place and begin to look for the right carbon investors.

He told African countries to borrow from Colombia, which has enacted carbon pricing that provides a direct transfer of resources from a polluting sector of the economy, mainly transportation, to projects protecting the environment.

Memory Machingambi, a senior economist for environmental and fuel taxes at South African Treasury, announced that her country is set to launch the first carbon tax in the continent.

Machingambi said her government developed a national policy reform paper that contains polluter based principles.

She noted that the project that is being done in collaboration with the World Bank will offer 60 per cent tax free threshold for every entity will be covered by the tax.

Machingambi observed that carbon price will be tied to pro-poor programmes to help fund damages they incur in their farms, health care costs from heat waves, droughts and flooding and sea level rise.

According to the UN Framework on Climate Change Convention, some 40 countries and more than 20 cities, already use carbon pricing mechanisms.