A N$127-MILLION grant secured by the ministry of environment should benefit more than 200 000 people in Namibia through projects aimed at strengthening climate resilience in vulnerable rural communities.
This was said by environment minister Pohamba Shifeta during a media briefing in Windhoek on Wednesday.
The Environmental Investment Fund of Namibia secured the grant from the Green Climate Fund during the Global Programming Conference in South Korea last week.
Shifeta said the funds would be used to implement a five-year ecosystem-based adaptation approach project from November this year to 2024.
“This project was conceived as a result of climate change impacts on terrestrial ecosystems,” Shifeta said. “[It] is based on the premise that biodiversity and ecosystems provide valuable services that increase the climate resilience.”
He said the activities undertaken as part of the project would maintain and enhance ecosystem integrity to support the generation of food and income in order to reduce the severity of negative socio-economic impacts of climate change, adding that the project came at an opportune time, on account of the country’s severe current drought.
Shifeta also touched on the outcomes of the 2019 Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) conference, which left a number of Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries pondering leaving the multilateral treaty.
At the end of the conference, the environment ministers of Namibia and Botswana expressed disappointment with the outcomes of the conference, after all of the proposals and documents out of southern Africa were not supported by a majority of other Cites member states.
“That poses a serious setback to our conservation programme, which is based on sustainable use of our wildlife resources and as provided for in our national constitution,” Shifeta said.
He charged that the science-based convention has turned into a non-sustainable wildlife tool and no longer upheld the principles on which it was founded.
“Namibia will consult broadly in consideration of our membership to the Cites. We cannot be affiliated to something that does not support our interest and the well-being of our people,” he said.
Credit: by Arlana Shikongo- Namibian.com.na
