COMESA-EAC-SADC mobilize USD 90 Million for climate change, with GM support

The Global Mechanism (GM) is delighted to announce that its support to the Common Market for East and Southern Africa (COMESA) has facilitated the mobilization of approximately USD 90 million from Norway, the European Commission and the United Kingdom in support of the Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation Programme of COMESA, the East African Community (EAC) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC), over the next five years. The programme aims at unlocking resources for promoting strategic interventions to sustain productivity and livelihood improvements for millions of climate-vulnerable people in the region.

The Programme recognizes the Global Mechanism (GM)’s pivotal role in the process - particularly in fostering the linkages between sustainable land management (SLM) and climate change financing mechanisms and instruments, in designing integrated financing strategies (IFSs) and investment (IIFs) frameworks that can be leveraged for climate change adaptation and mitigation, and in supporting the design of climate smart investment frameworks.

The launch in Lusaka on 16 April 2012 brought together COMESA-EAC-SADC countries and implementing partners to discuss the collective objectives and their specific roles in achieving the desired results. The GM was invited for the launch as a key partner of the initiative, having supported COMESA on this since inception.

In addition to contributing to the launch with a presentation on “Leveraging Finance and Investment Opportunities for the COMESA-EAC-SADC Climate Change Programme”, the meeting discussed significant details of the GM support as a key implementation partner. In particular, the GM will play a lead role in implementing Strategic Objective 2 - supporting member states to access adaptation funds and other climate change financing sources and mechanisms through national investment frameworks for climate adaptation in agriculture, forestry and other land uses. This leverages GM’s expertise in developing integrated financing strategies (IFSs) and developing integrated investment frameworks (IIFs).

The GM may support other objectives, such as “implementing climate vulnerability assessments and analysis” in relation to land degradation and drought, and “applying mitigation solutions in the COMESA-EAC-SADC region”, as it relates to carbon trading, which the GM has supported in the COMESA region through the establishment of a carbon fund.

Inarguably, COMESA and other partners see the GM as a key partner in the initiative with a leadership role in providing expertise on financing. The GM, for its part, is looking forward to providing continued support for this novel initiative, particularly in developing IFSs and IIFs. As a follow-up to the launch, the GM and COMESA are organizing three sub-regional workshops to achieve the objectives of the programme. Information on the workshops will be published under ‘Events’ on the homepage.