Steps are now afoot to ensure the country has access to the climate funding that’s available for climate change preparedness and adaptation available to affected smaller island nations like Papua New Guinea.
Lead agency Climate Change Development Authority together with its partners and stakeholders concluded a two-day validation work on the final draft of the National Adaptation Plan which is the first step to achieving the cause.
“There are two sides to climate change, you have the mitigation and adaptation. Climate change adaptation is mainly to do with enhancing the capacity of people at this time with the event of climate change with its intensity and frequency of the adverse effects happening to us,” General Manager Adaptation and Project Division Jacob Ekinye said.
He added, “We have to reduce the level of vulnerability and exposure of our people to those effects and we have to build their resilience so that they are able to cope with the adversities”.
“Under the Paris Agreement article, 79 under the climate change manage act section 74 provides for a national adaptation plan. Even you have heard of the global climate change facilities like the climate investment fund, especially Global Climate Fund (GCF), in order to solicit funding from those financing institutions; this is the box you have to tick,” Mr Ekinye said.
The Adaptation plan will be the first for the country in terms of its strategies and actions needed to deal with climate change impacts and meet international standards.
“This National Adaptation Plan, it has taken us two years, GCF funding we got if from a resource pool called the Reediness Finance to the tune of US D 1.7 million (to deliver this plan) and UNDP is our delivery partner,” Mr Ekinye said.
He added, “It’s not business as usual anymore, we have to factor in the climate change element in every development planning process”.
The CCDA is committed to ensuring this document is in place before the year-end.
Comments are closed.