<\/p>\n

Faced with worsening droughts due to climate change, Ethiopia is joining an international initiative seeking to build global resilience against the problems caused by it and enable developing countries to become part of a united solution to the ongoing problem.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Funded by the\u00a0United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the\u00a0Global Climate Fund (GCF)\u00a0was established to help developing countries achieve national efforts to reduce national greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and adapt to the unavoidable impacts of climate change.<\/p>\n

The GCF is part of a united global response fuelled by the urgency and seriousness of the climate change challenge. That clarion call gained momentum worldwide after the 2015 Paris Agreement in which signatories agreed to collectively tackle climate change through the mechanism of implementing nationally determined contributions (NDC), a country\u2019s tailored efforts to reduce its emissions and enable it to adapt to climate change-induced challenges.<\/p>\n

Ethiopia is taking this multilateral global endeavour particularly seriously due to the massive changes the country is undergoing as it develops economically.<\/p>\n

\u201cEthiopia is one of the few countries that have submitted a very ambitious and conditional NDC to the UNFCCC,\u201d says Zerihun Getu with Ethiopia\u2019s Ministry of Finance and Economic Cooperation. \u201cEthiopia aims to cut 64 percent of emissions by 2030 and build a climate resilient and middle-income economy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Currently, Ethiopia has a relatively low carbon footprint compared to many other countries, having not industrialised, but Zerihun notes why it is important to take action now.<\/p>\n

\u201cProjections indicate that with population and economic growth, Ethiopia\u2019s level of emissions will grow significantly, from 150 million tonnes in 2010 to 450 million by 2030,\u201d Zerihun tells IPS. \u201cHence Ethiopia should focus both on mitigation and adaptation measures to reduce emission as well as build resilience and reduce vulnerability to the impacts of climate change.\u201d<\/p>\n

Approved in October 2017, Ethiopia\u2019s\u00a0GCF-backed project\u00a0will be implemented over the course of five years at a cost of USD50 million\u2014with USD5 million co-financed by the government\u2014to provide rural communities with\u00a0 critical water supplies all year round and improve water management systems to address risks of drought and other problems from climate change.<\/p>\n

The funding will go toward a three-pronged approach: Introducing solar-powered water pumping and small-scale irrigation, the rehabilitation and management of degraded lands around the water sources, and creating an enabling environment by raising awareness and improving local capacity.<\/p>\n

Guidance on the project\u2019s implementation is coming from the\u00a0Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI), a treaty-based international organisation that promotes green growth: a balance of economic growth and environmental sustainability.<\/p>\n

Climate change has a disproportionately worse impact on the lives and livelihoods of societies which depend on the natural environment for their day-to-day needs. In Ethiopia, about 80 percent of the population remains dependent on agriculture for their livelihoods.<\/p>\n

Those who are subsistence farmers are especially vulnerable to shifting weather patterns that can result in severe water shortages, devastating food production and livelihoods.<\/p>\n

When such natural disasters strike, the situation of vulnerable populations can quickly deteriorate into a food and nutrition crisis, meaning the poor, many of whom in Ethiopia are women, are disproportionately affected.<\/p>\n

This is what the Ethiopian GCF project seeks to mitigate, hence its focus on improving economic and social conditions for women.\u00a0 Over 50 percent of the project\u2019s aimed for 1.3 million beneficiaries will be women, with 30 percent of beneficiary households being female-headed.<\/p>\n

During the past three years, regions of Ethiopia have experienced terrible drought exacerbated by the ocean warming trend El Ni\u00f1o that is causing unusually heavy rains in some parts of the world and drought elsewhere.<\/p>\n

While El Ni\u00f1o is a complex and naturally occurring event, scientific research suggests that global warming could be making this cyclical event occur more frequently and intensely.<\/p>\n

Despite there being some scientific uncertainty about how the naturally occurring El Ni\u00f1o event and human-induced climate change may interact and modify each other, Ethiopia has experienced enough climate-related trouble so that its government doesn\u2019t want to take any chances.<\/p>\n

Hence Ethiopia is an example of an early adopter of green growth. In 2011 the country launched its Climate-Resilient Green Economy (CRGE),\u00a0a strategy to achieve middle-income status while developing a green economy.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe government\u2019s goal is to create climate resilience within the context of sustainable development,\u201d says Mitiku Kassa, Ethiopia\u2019s state minister of agriculture and commissioner for its National Disaster Risk Management Commission. \u201cThen, one day, we will be able to deal with drought without any appeals.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to challenges posed by El Ni\u00f1o, most of the world\u2019s scientific community agrees that significant long-term changes in the earth\u2019s climate system have occurred and are occurring more rapidly than in the past.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, continued emissions into the earth\u2019s atmosphere are projected to cause further warming and increase the likelihood of severe, pervasive and irreversible effects on every continent, including increasing temperatures, greater rainfall variability with more frequent extremes, and changing the nature of seasonal rainfalls\u2014all of which threaten Ethiopia\u2019s agricultural backbone.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just scientists making such claims. Ethiopian pastoralists in their seventies and eighties who have lived with frequent droughts say the recent ones have been the worst in their lifetimes\u2014and they aren\u2019t alone in noticing worrying trends.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile working in Central America, East Africa, and the Middle East, I\u2019ve always talked to older people, especially those in agriculture, and the message from them is consistent,\u201d says Sam Wood, Save the Children\u2019s humanitarian director in Ethiopia. \u201cWeather patterns are becoming less predictable, and when the rain comes, it is too much or too little.\u201d<\/p>\n

As of May 2018, the GCF portfolio has 76 projects worldwide worth USD12.6 billion with an anticipated equivalence of 1.3 billion tonnes of CO2 avoided and 217 million people achieving increased resilience.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re working with GCF in Senegal and Tajikistan [and] we think their work will be vital,\u201d the World Food Programme\u2019s Challiss McDonough tells IPS. \u201cWFP\u2019s goal of ending hunger cannot be achieved without addressing climate change.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the GCF can only do so much. The overall bill just for empowering Ethiopia to effectively respond to climate change is estimated at USD150 billion, Zerihun notes, a sum that can only be achieved through \u201chuge investment.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEthiopia allocates its domestic resources for climate actions [but it] should also mobilise support from international communities including the GCF to realise its vision and achieve its NDC targets,\u201d Zerihun says. \u201cThe GCF will make a significant contribution to Ethiopia\u2019s vision through financing projects and programmes as well as through helping Ethiopia build capacity to mobilise other climate finance sources and leveraging other investment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Source: IPS News<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Faced with worsening droughts due to climate change, Ethiopia is joining an international initiative seeking to build global resilience against the problems caused by it and enable developing countries to become part of a united solution to the ongoing problem.\u00a0 Funded by the\u00a0United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the\u00a0Global Climate Fund (GCF)\u00a0was established …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":9546,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-embassy-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/ethiopianembassy.be\/wp-content\/uploads\/ethiopia_climate_resilient_green_economy_strategy.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ethiopianembassy.be\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12067","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ethiopianembassy.be\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ethiopianembassy.be\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ethiopianembassy.be\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ethiopianembassy.be\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12067"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ethiopianembassy.be\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12067\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12069,"href":"https:\/\/ethiopianembassy.be\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12067\/revisions\/12069"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ethiopianembassy.be\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ethiopianembassy.be\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ethiopianembassy.be\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ethiopianembassy.be\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}