Zambia among beneficiaries of $4.2 million climate change fund

Zambia is among the four countries to benefit from the US$4.2 million to help build technical capacity and monitor progress made to meet objectives of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change.

The funds which have been made available by the Global Environment Facility (GEF) will also benefit Comoros, Eritrea and Seychelles.

The US$4.2 million will be shared equally among the four countries and the objective is to help Zambia and the other countries improve capacity for transparent reporting on what they are doing, for example, in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

This is according to the GEF Conservation International Technical Director, Victor Esendi, at the Capacity Building Initiative for Transparency (CBIT) workshop in Lusaka on Wednesday.

“It is a five year project targeting to build technical capacity among the agriculture, waste, transport and logistics, cement production and all those sectors that contribute to climate change through waste and emissions, ” Esendi said.

He said the GEF was a multilateral funding mechanism to help countries prepare how to implement the Paris Agreement on climate change.

In officially opening the meeting, Green Economy and Environment Permanent Secretary South Chibamba, said Zambia had committed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent.

Chibamba said this commitment had been made in the country’s updated nationally determined contributions (NDCs) in 2021.

He said thus in a speech read by his Principal Climate Change Officer Kasanda Bunda.

“This project is timely as we commence the process of strengthen institutional and technical capacities to meet the requirements of the Paris Agreement on climate change,” Chibamba said.

He said Zambia had been facing challenges such as inadequate data for completeness, comparability, consistency and accuracy and lack of a regional integrated platform for learning and knowledge management of transparency related activities.

Other challenges cited include Inadequate institutional and technical capacity to operationalise the reporting requirements.

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