200 000 to benefit from climate grant

More than 200 000 people will benefit from the recent grant that the Environmental Investment Fund (EIF) secured from the Green Climate Fund. Environment minister Pohamba Shifeta this week announced the grant for the project aimed at helping rural communities adapt to the effects of climate change.The EIF secured a grant worth N$127 million from the Green Climate Fund during the Global Programming Conference in Songdo, South Korea, on 23 August.The grant was signed by the CEO of the Environmental Investment Fund of Namibia, Bennedict Libanda, and the executive director for the Green Climate Fund, Yannick Glemarec. According to Shifeta the grant is expected to benefit more than 200 000 rural people in 13 regions of Namibia.The five-year project will run from November 2019 to 2024. It will be implemented by the environment ministry.“This project was conceived as a result of climate change impacts on terrestrial ecosystems. These impacts continue to produce alterations in the boundaries between rangelands and other biomes, such as deserts and forests, directly through shifts in species composition and indirectly through changes in wildfire regimes, opportunistic cultivation, or agricultural release of the less arid margins of the rangeland territory,” said Shifeta.He said many of these effects are already affecting rural Namibia, with grazing conflicts, water scarcity, ever-spreading desertification and huge variability in production figures that are frequently reported.According to him the project is based on the premise that biodiversity and ecosystems provide valuable services that increase the climate resilience of local communities. Part of the project will be to maintain and enhance ecosystem integrity in order to support food production.“It takes the form of an ecosystem landscape approach to adaptation, which provides a framework to integrate policy and practice for multiple land uses, within a given area, to ensure equitable and sustainable use of land while strengthening measures to mitigate and adapt to climate change.”Shifeta said the EIF has so far received more than N$560 million from the Green Climate Fund for projects in the areas of agricultural resilience, renewable energy and ecosystem-based climate adaptation. “The institution has not only remarkably championed the climate change agenda in Namibia, but also continued to demonstrate global leadership on climate financing.”The ministry has also secured N$150 million from the Global Environment Facility for the implementation of the NILALEG Project - the Namibia Integrated Landscape Approach for Enhancing Livelihoods and Environmental Governance to Eradicate Poverty. The objective of the project is to promote an integrated landscape management approach in key agricultural and forest landscapes, to reduce poverty through sustainable nature-based livelihoods, to protect biodiversity and restoring forests as carbon sinks, and to promote land degradation neutrality. Implementation of the project is expected to start in October this year and the project will be implemented in Kunene, Omusati, Ohangwena, Kavango West and Zambezi regions. ELLANIE SMIT

200 000 to benefit from climate grant

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Namibian Sun 2025-04-03

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200 000 to benefit from climate grant

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Namibian Sun 2025-04-03

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