Ethiopia’s struggle against climate change gets a boost from green climate fund
ADDIS ABABA: Faced with worsening droughts due to climate change, Ethiopia is joining an international initiative seeking to build global resilience against the problems caused by it, and enable developing countries to become part of a united solution to the ongoing problem.
Funded by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change ( UNFCCC), the Global Climate Fund (GCF) was established to help developing countries achieve national efforts to reduce national greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and adapt to the unavoidable impacts of climate change.
The GCF is part of a united global response fuelled by the urgency and seriousness of the climate change challenge.
That clarion call gained momentum worldwide after the 2015 Paris Agreement in which signatories agreed to collectively tackle climate change through the mechanism of implementing nationally determined contributions ( NDC), a country’s tailored efforts to reduce its emissions and enable it to adapt to climate change-induced challenges.
Ethiopia is taking this multilateral global endeavour particularly seriously due to the massive changes the country is undergoing as it develops economically.
“Ethiopia is one of the few countries that have submitted a very ambitious and conditional NDC to the UNFCCC,” says Zerihun Getu with Ethiopia’s Ministry of Finance and Economic Cooperation. “Ethiopia aims to cut 64 per cent of emissions by 2030 and build a climate resilient and middleincome economy.”
Currently Ethiopia has a relatively low carbon footprint compared to many other countries, having not industrialised, but Zerihun notes why it is important to take action now.
“Projections indicate that with population and economic growth, Ethiopia’s level of emissions will grow significantly, from 150 million tonnes in 2010 to 450 million by 2030,” Zerihun tells IPS.
“Hence Ethiopia should focus both on mitigation and adaptation measures in order to reduce emission as well as build resilience and reduce vulnerability to the impacts of climate change.”
Approved in October 2017, Ethiopia’s GCF-backed project will be implemented over the course of five years at a cost of US$ 50 million — with US$ 5 million co-financed by the government — to provide rural communities with critical water supplies all year round and improve water management systems to address risks of drought and other problems from climate change. The funding will go toward a three-pronged approach: Introducing solar-powered water pumping and small- scale irrigation, the rehabilitation and management of degraded lands around the water sources, and creating an enabling environment by raising awareness and improving local capacity.
Guidance on the project’s implementation is coming from the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI), a treaty-based international organisation that promotes green growth: a balance of economic growth and environmental sustainability.
Climate change has a disproportionately worse impact on the lives and livelihoods of societies which depend on the natural environment for their day-to- day needs.
In Ethiopia, about 80 per cent of the population remain dependent on agriculture for their livelihoods.—