Financing – Green Climate Fund in French-speaking Africa: Senegal wins 11 projects
The Green Climate Fund has financed 177 projects at the international level and among these projects, there are 69 which go to the least developed countries and among which Senegal still manages to do well with at least 11 projects which were financed, Emmanuel Seck, program coordinator at Enda Energie, said on Tuesday. By Alioune Badara CISS (Correspondent) – Civil society organizations from Cameroon, Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso, Germany, Morocco, Madagascar and Senegal held in Saly, a regional workshop on the Green Fund process for the climate in French-speaking Africa. This meeting, led by the NGO Enda Energy, aims to increase the capacities of civil society organizations; but also to defend ambitious proposals, to provide expertise on the ground and to monitor activities financed by the Green Climate Fund at national and regional levels, thanks to broader societal mobilization for transformation and better impacts. According to Emmanuel Seck, program coordinator at Enda Energy, the Green Climate Fund was set up at the international level to channel funding from developed countries with a view to strengthening adaptation and mitigation in developing countries. Moreover, developed countries made a commitment, in 2009, in Copenhagen, to grant financing of around 100 billion dollars per year by 2020 to developing countries. This is why he reminded his comrades that there are resources which have already been mobilized by the Green Fund and which have enabled certain countries to have financing through projects which have been submitted. “At the international level, until today, we have been able to note that the fund has financed 177 projects at the international level and among these projects, there are 69 which go to the least developed countries and among which Senegal comes still doing well with at least 11 projects that have been financed within the framework of the Green Fund,” rejoiced Emmanuel Seck. So the fight of civil society is to ensure that these projects are carried out well. “It is at this level that Civil Society deemed it useful to organize itself more to ensure the analysis of projects upstream, so that the environmental principle and the social profitability of these projects can be considered. And that downstream, we can ensure that there are real impacts, whether on the social level, on the economic level, on the environmental level and on the institutional level. So, this is what justifies today, in relation to the project which was financed by the German Ministry of the Environment, through Germany Watch, that we Enda, in partnership with Avst Maroc, Jeunes Volunteers for the Environment (Jve) Cameroon, Jve Ivory Coast, we are organizing this workshop to strengthen information and knowledge,” declared the program coordinator at Enda energy. According to him, civil society actors have their role to play in project analysis, “especially if they come to appreciate what the country should benefit from. And moreover to manage to have a framework, especially since we are in the contribution determined at the national level, that we can have this framework which allows us to count the efforts of Civil Society at the national level. That is to say that at the local level, there are many projects that are being carried out and it would be important that we could at least postpone these projects and include them in the contribution; that is to say the report that Senegal will have presented at the national level in relation to its commitment to climate change. So, this is what brought us together to learn from each other what is being done in Cameroon, Morocco, Ivory Coast, Senegal and also in other countries. For the case of Senegal, he appreciated the salty land restoration project in the Saloum delta area, the objective of which is to regenerate these lands, so that they become much more productive. “Who occupies these lands? Who values them? These are the populations. So, these are the types of projects that we would like to promote, which directly impact populations, because they are the first to be affected by these issues of climate change. By land salinization, I mean the issue of coastal erosion, you see that there are coastal communities that are affected. The framework in which we are already shows you the initiatives that have been taken, for example within the framework of the Adaptation Fund, which makes it possible to protect not only economic sectors such as tourism, but also to protect communities,” underlined Mr. . Seck . abciss@lequotidien.sn
