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Kenya has received a Sh16 billion financing agreement from the World Bank which is aimed at strengthening local resilience to the impact of climate change in the country.
It will be done through the financing of the locally-led Climate Action (ELLoCA) programme which is part of Kenya’s 10-year government financing locally-led climate action programme launched in June, 2020.
“Climate change remains the biggest challenge of our age with Kenya’s climate sensitive economy being prone to droughts and floods with an economic liability of up to 2.8 per cent of GDP annually. We have an immediate need to build climate resilience in sectors such as agriculture, water, energy tourism and wildlife which are not only affected by climate change but also by the adverse effects of the COVID-19 pandemic,” Treasury Cabinet Secretary Ukur Yattani said.
He noted that the programme will support the scaling up of community-led climate resilience actions while developing the capabilities of national and county institutions to plan, budget, report, finance and implement green initiatives at the local level.
“As a nation, we remain cognizant of the challenges that lie ahead but remain confident that with the support of the World Bank and other development partners coupled by Kenyan innovation and resilience, we will build our National and Counties capacity to manage climate risks and enhance our resilience with home-grown solutions in a collaborative and progressive approach between the two levels of government and owned and driven by local communities,” he said.
The ELLoCA programme seeks to create both an enabling environment and an innovative decentralized approach to tackling climate change impacts.
The implantation of the five-year programme will be led by the National Planning given its strong emphasis on climate finance with the adoption of the innovative participation, climate information, demand-driven capacity building and monitoring and evaluation of climate change actions.
President Uhuru Kenyatta on Tuesday while speaking virtually during the Africa Adaptation Acceleration Day emphasized the need for increased funding on climate change to mitigate the negative effects being experienced.
He cautioned that in the absence of urgent climate change adaptation action, Africa’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) risks contracting by up to 30 per cent by the year 2050.
“Evidence indicates that climate change will have a devastating socioeconomic impact across the world and quite severely in Afra. If we do not take any action Africa could, as a consequence, see its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) contract by up to 30 per cent by 2050 due to climate change,” the President said.
Consequently, the President rallied the global community to support the accelerated rollout of adaptation programmes in Africa so as to mitigate against the growing adverse effects of climate change as well as strengthen the continent’s resilience.
“While it is relatively more difficult to design and implement adaptation projects and while fewer resources are currently available for adaptation, we should not lose sight of the fact that adaptation is, without doubt, smart economics,” he said.
The Head of State’s message was contained in a recorded video address delivered Tuesday at a hybrid conference hosted by the University of Nairobi in partnership with the Global Centre on Adaptation (GCA) to celebrate the Africa Adaptation Acceleration Day, a pre-cursor to the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) that will be held in Glasgow, Scotland.
President Kenyatta pointed out that despite Kenya significantly increasing the amount of financial resources invested in adaptation programs in recent years, the country needed more international support to fully implement its updated Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs).
“To implement our NDCs, we plan to invest approximately US$8 billion over the next 10 years. This is just 10 percent of the total investment needed of the NDCs and we, therefore, need support from our international partners,” the President said.
He observed that the financing challenge is not peculiar to Kenya saying, globally funding for climate adaptation, which in 2017 averaged around 30 billion US dollars a year, needed to be increase tenfold to meet the growing needs of vulnerable communities across the world.
“Indications are that for an investment of 800 million US dollars in developing countries in climate adaptation programmes would result in benefits of up to 16 billion US dollars per year,” the President noted.
He said Covid-19 had exacerbated the funding situation with countries around the world collectively allocating over 20 trillion US dollars to the pandemic thereby greatly reducing resources available to combat climate change.
“However, climate change cannot wait while we address COVID19; we must address the two challenges together. Indeed, to make recovery truly sustainable, we need to institute green recovery measures that integrate adaptation and mitigation measures,” the President said.
This year’s report on the state and trends of adaptation in Africa was launched by GCA at hybrid conference. The report, among other provisions, lists adaptation actions and investment opportunities that exist on the continent.
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