By Ochieng’ Ogodo
Journalist-Kenya
The African
Development Bank (AfDB), in collaboration with Vivid Economics, has come up
with a report making concrete proposals to help facilitate access by African
countries to the Green Climate Fund.
Launched on the sidelines of the UN climate change
conference (COP18) in Doha 26 November to 7 December, the “Getting Africa Ready
for the Green Climate Fund” report strongly put forward a series of recommendations
for the Green Climate Fund board and African nations that will increase the possibility
of African countries accessing increased flows of climate finance from this
source, with the support of the AfDB.
“African countries are not fully prepared to effectively benefit from
all the possibilities the Green Climate Fund might allow”, said Anthony Nyong, AfDB’s manager in charge of Safeguards and
Compliance in a press release.
“This report, he said, highlights actions that will help African
countries overcome those challenges, with adequate assistance from the African
Development Bank.”
The report, drawing from experiences of
existing funds, has identified a number of key steps for African countries to
maximise the possibilities that comes by the GCF.
“While the GCF might provide domestic institutions greater
responsibility and accountability for flows of public climate finance raised
from international sources, the existing experience of direct access
demonstrates that many countries, including some in Africa, have had challenges
in realising the opportunities provided by direct access,” said John Ward, from Vivid Economics.
The report has listed
ten actions on the board that should be triggered to better meet African
countries’ needs. These include capacity building resources being fast-tracked
while more difficult design aspects of the GCF are reviewed.
The report also makes
a very strong case for direct access and project applications to be processed
and evaluated in many languages, including French as opposed to the current situation
in which applications for the Adaptation Fund, another global climate finance
mechanism of the UNFCCC, can only be done only in English.
Where English is not the first language,”
the report says, it puts off some
countries from even applying. About
Some 200 million people who are most vulnerable to climate change on the
continent do not have English as a main language. The GCF can learn from this.
The report also strongly
encourages African countries to prepare credible, robust pipeline of funding
opportunities derived from national or regional green growth or climate change
action plan.
Another key recommendation
is that African countries take early steps to prepare the infrastructure needed
to access the GCF, and each country will have to establish a Designated
Authority as the focal point for interaction with the GCF.
The report also invites
African countries to build a cross-departmental dialogue, on the opportunities
provided by direct access, but also engaging with civil society and the private
sector and, as appropriate, link this to broader fiscal reform processes.
The report has
identified six areas of action for the AfDB as a way of helping African
countries overcome all those challenges. “The African Development Bank can play
an important role in enhancing direct access to the GCF by African countries”,
says the report.
It recommends that
the AfDB puts a strong emphasis on supporting the capacity of the national
bodies, before and after accreditation. “An often missed point is that this
capacity building support may be required even after accreditation of a
national body”, notes the report.
The AfDB, the report
says, should also support the development of Africa-specific climate change growth action plans.
Ochieng’ Ogodo is a Nairobi based journalist whose works have been published
in various parts of the world including Africa, the US and Europe. He is the
English-speaking Africa and Middle East region winner for the 2008 Reuters-IUCN
Media Awards for Excellence in Environmental Reporting. He is the chairman of
the Kenya Environment and Science Journalists Association. He can be reached at
ochiengogodo@yahoo.com or ochiengogodo@gmail.com
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