By Innocent Odoh Member countries of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) have been given a lifeline of $1.9 billion from which they can draw funds to tackle economic challenges arising from climate change.
Indications to this development emerged on Wednesday, during a regional climate finance training workshop for accessing the Green Climate Fund (GCF), held in Abuja on Wednesday.
Africa Regional Adviser of GFC, Alpha Oumar Kaloga, told correspondents in an interview after the opening ceremony that the move was to help countries understand policy and procedure of GCF and outline a road map to access the fund.
“We aim at financing not small isolated projects but projects that are transformational, which would make an impact in the economic trajectory of member countries.
He said further that the fund is open to every member country and institutions of the member countries to gain access if they meet the requirements and the requisite standards.
Earlier in her opening remarks, Minister of environment, Amina Mohammed, said “ the major idea behind the establishment of this fund is the realization of the fact that amongst other factors, poor financial capability have caused developing countries and emerging economies to be lagging seriously behind in tackling the negative consequences of climate change, which is usually capital intensive, this has invariably increased their vulnerability and made them worst hit during climate-induced disasters.”
She added that the federal government is pursuing its Readiness Plan with the GCF in a bid to enhance the capacity of Nigeria to access benefit from the fund, stressing that this was developed by assessing the existing needs, gaps, challenges and opportunities in climate finance in Nigeria.
“Nigeria’s GCF Readiness Plan is expected to be a national reference document that will explicitly detail relevant institutions for GFC processes, strategies for project development, bankable projects to mention but a few,” she said.
She lamented the scourge resulting from the impact of climate change stressing that the sub-region will continue to positively engage in the global multilateral climate change processes towards adequate, predictable funding to developing countries to make positive change.
