GCF programming consultations begin
The signing of the Accreditation Master Agreement (AMA) with the Green Climate Fund (GCF) in Songdo, South Korea in September last year with the Environmental Investment Fund of Namibia (EIF) officially signalled the pursuance of the latter’s programming pipeline.In light of this, the fund last week commenced with the GCF programming consultation with stakeholders in the capital.
The EIF, under its mandate, mobilises resources and the fund’s vision is to be a recognised leader in the development and application of innovative financing mechanisms to support environmentally and climate-resilient development pathways in Namibia.
Last week’s consultations began with stakeholders on the first project on the EIF pipeline to be submitted to the GCF.
Through this project, the EIF intends to establish a sustainable financing facility that supports value chains and market penetration of agricultural production to enhance long-term adaptation capacities within the peri-urban environments. This sustainable financing facility will be key in creating jobs, upskilling workers, expanding service provision in areas underserved by the government, and increasing the tax base to fund important social and economic development objectives.
The objective is to create a blended financing facility in the form of a green guarantee scheme to de-risk the EIF Green Credit Line and attract an additional investments through leveraging from private sector and capital recycling.
Climate impact
Climate change and climate variability are some of the key drivers of immigration in Namibia. Urban households are increasingly finding it difficult to generate an income from subsistence agriculture due to climate change impacts, notably degraded lands, water scarcity, and rainfall variability, which keep subsistence agricultural production very low, with little chance of having surpluses that could be marketed.
As a result, many people in rural areas migrate to urban areas in search of livelihood opportunities.
Most migrants from rural areas and small towns usually settle in informal settlements in urban areas. This results in the proliferation of urban shacks, one of the most prominent phenomena of the growth of major towns and cities, and potentially one of the most pressing future challenges of cities and towns in Namibia.
Climate change is considered a key driver of rural-urban migration in Namibia. This project is strongly aligned and seeks to scale up the successes from the recently funded project by the government of Japan, titled Strengthening Namibia Food Systems to recover from emergencies and disease-related shocks through Building Back Better (BBB) that managed to reach up to 399 beneficiaries across four regions in Namibia.
The EIF was an implementing partner responsible for grants management. This project responded to the emerging need of food security while strengthening the resilience of respective communities to respond to climatic shocks. The interventions proposed by this project are intended to generate alternative income streams to complement subsistence agriculture through the inclusion of enterprise business solutions and value added components, which ultimately enhance their resilience to climate shocks.
Interventions
The project interventions target local authorities that have been identified to have constituencies with very low to low adaptive capacities.
In 2020, stakeholders were consulted during the scoping process and recommended to the EIF the formation of a Technical Working Group to be comprised of the EIF, the National Designated Authority (NDA) which is the Ministry of Environment, Forestry and Tourism (MEFT), the Association of Local Authorities in Namibia (ALAN), the Namibia Association of Local Authorities Offices (NALAO), the Ministry of Agriculture, Water and Land Reform (MAWLR), the Ministry of Urban and Rural Development (MURD) and the UN organisations (UNDP and WPF). It was this group that convened last week to discuss the proposal in more detail whilst also addressing the comments received from the GCF.
To expedite this process, the EIF has commenced with plans to recruit a technical expert to further develop this proposal which is intended for submission to GCF by March 2023.