Côte d´Ivoire reaches milestone in adaptation planning

The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) produced a report in 2016 on climate change, agriculture and food security. The evidence it compiled indicated that the effects of climate change on agricultural production and livelihoods will intensify over time, and beyond 2030 will be severe across all countries and regions. Therefore, addressing food and agriculture must be central to global climate adaptation efforts. 

 

Furthermore, recent science is confirming a worrying truth; that our agricultural systems are a major cause of climate change, highlighted in the recent report on climate change and land produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This provides an added impetus to transform our agricultural systems; to make them resilient to changing weather and less carbon intensive. 

 

These dynamics ring especially true in a country like Côte d´Ivoire. With a fertile agricultural sector in the south of the country, that constitutes 27 percent of the GDP and employs around 70 percent of the national workforce, a lot is at stake. 

 

One of the government’s key interventions to address this is through the National Adaptation Plan process. The leading ministry – the Ministry of Environment, Urban Sanitation and Sustainable Development – laid out specific action points for the most critical sectors that the adaptation plans should address, which are: water resources; agriculture; livestock and fisheries; forests and land use; coastal zones; and energy. These are also the priorities identified by the country in its Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) to the Paris Agreement.

 

In late June of this year, a major milestone was reached in the National Adaptation Plan process. An inception workshop was held for the "Strengthening the integration of climate change adaptation into development planning in Côte d'Ivoire" project on 25 and 26 June. It is financed to the tune of USD 2.4 million by the Green Climate Fund and supported by the United Nations Development Programme. The workshop was chaired by His Excellency Joseph Séka Séka – the Minister of Environment - and welcomed 68 participants representing a range of stakeholders. These included sectoral ministries, research and development institutions, universities, the private sector, technical and financial partners, NGOs, local community organizations, as well as women organizations.

 

This three-year readiness project is instrumental for realising Côte d´Ivoire’s adaptation vision, which is to build a climate resilient society that is aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals. It will lead to the preparation of a National Adaptation Plan that outlines the adaptation priorities and guides the integration of climate change into national and sectoral development planning, focusing on the most vulnerable sectors and taking into account gender sensitivity throughout. 

 

A financing strategy, which includes private sector engagement, will also be developed and national capacities will be strengthened to develop a knowledge base that can inform future policy decisions. This project has been designed to align with other climate change efforts, in particular the implementation of the Nationally Determined Contribution – Cote d’Ivoire’s national promise to the Paris Agreement. 

 

All stakeholders' inputs are needed for its successful implementation and Mr. Séka Séka´s message to participants is testimony of this: 

 

 

Côte d´Ivoire launched its NAP process in 2015. In 2016 a stocktaking exercise was conducted on the past and ongoing climate change adaptation interventions, as well as an assessment of the gaps and priorities. Based on this stocktaking, a roadmap detailing an action plan was developed with support of UNDP.  This project proposal was submitted to the GCF in 2018 and was approved in 2019. In complement to this project, a National Climate Commission - to act as the coordinating body of the NAP process - is being established with support of the NAP Global Network. 

 

More information here.

 

 

The Green Climate Fund (GCF) is a global fund created to support the efforts of developing countries to respond to the challenge of climate change. GCF helps developing countries limit or reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to climate change. It seeks to promote a paradigm shift to low-emission and climate-resilient development, taking into account the needs of nations that are particularly vulnerable to climate change impacts.

 

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) partners with people at all levels of society to help build nations that can withstand crisis, and drive and sustain the kind of growth that improves the quality of life for everyone. On the ground in nearly 170 countries and territories, we offer global perspective and local insight to help empower lives and build resilient nations.