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Thursday, March 28, 2024

World Bank hosts CSOs and Private Sector to deliberate on Climate Financing

By Lydia Kukua Asamoah, GNA 

Accra, Oct 31, GNA – As part of climate
change response measures, the World Bank, in partnership with the Climate
Investment Fund (CIF) have engaged Africa Civil Society Organisations in Accra,
to solicit their perspective on climate actions.

The CSOs and the private sectors actors are
being engaged under the Africa Region Stakeholder Dialogue Workshop on CIF and
other Climate Funds, to also explore ways to strengthen civil society and
private sector participations in climate adaptation and mitigation.

Participants from countries that were
implementing CIF projects, namely Ghana, Uganda, Kenya, Liberia, Sierra Leone,
Cameroon, Niger, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Gabon and Pakistan as well as the
private sector were attending the two-day workshop that opened on Thursday.

Mr Pierre Frank Laporte, World Bank Country
Director, in charge of Ghana, Liberia and Sierra Leone, said the impact of
climate change as already been felt in Ghana and throughout Africa could not be
over-emphasized.

He said climate change was a critical issue
for the World Bank and had become one of its corporate themes because it was
“impacting seriously on livelihoods and poverty” levels of people and so the
workshop was, bringing together participants to discuss how best climate financing
could be scaled-up with support from CSOs and the private sector.

He explained that the Bank tackles climate
change through its own resources and from other Trust Funds like CIF, in
providing funds for climate financing.

Mr Laporte mentioned that there were a set
of actions that the Bank was currently implementing in countries and so it
decided to engage the participants, especially the CSOs who were important
stakeholders, to create awareness of such actions to them, and to partner them
in their implementation.

He said in West Africa, the Bank had a
number of climate actions, including the tackling of the impact of Coastal
Management programmes, approved last year, and covering many countries from
Senegal, Cote d’Ivoire, Benin, Togo and Sao Tome, and there was also the Forest
Investment programme  running in several
countries including Ghana.

He explained that those projects were being
financed with the CIF, and they were to help tackle the effect of climate
change and human intervention and interferences on the forest

“The World Bank is committing several
billions of dollars” towards the programmes including the West Africa Coastal
management projects “that runs into billions of dollars” which also tallied
with each countries Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs).

The forest investment programme was also
costing the Bank millions of dollars, and in Ghana alone, the country was
receiving about 75 million dollars to tackle the forest project alone, he said.

He said, therefore, through the workshop,
the Bank expected the CSOs to propose other things that could be done
differently in helping accelerate the programmes.

The WB and CIF were currently implementing
the Regional Off-Grid Electrification projects (ROGEP) that aimed at increasing
electricity access of households and businesses using modern standalone solar
systems through a harmonized regional approach.

The ROGEP, among others was helping
transform the renewable energy sector, 
by developing standards for stand-alone solar systems for ECOWAS,
initiating off-grid projects for health, educational Centres and productive
uses in Nigeria and Niger as well as building the capacity of entrepreneurs to
improve their skills.

That project that was funded with 150
million dollars as international development fund and 75 million dollars from
CIF Clean Technology Fund, cover 19 countries in the Western and Sahel regions.

Mr Samuel Dotse, Chief Executive Officer of
HATOF Foundation, a Ghana-based environmental CSO, said the workshop was so
critical for civil society actors, especially in Ghana, whose role had been
recognized globally “as people who work at the grassroots level, the
opportunity to share their experiences and to learn more on climate financing.

He said the CSOs and the private sector in
Ghana had “not been too well informed about the various multilateral and
bilateral funds that are available in terms of climate mitigation and
adaptation.

“I think it is an opportunity for the
private sector in Ghana to now get themselves involved and develop their
capacities in order for them to develop verifiable, bankable and financially
viable projects for investment”, Mr Dotse said.

GNA

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