Ethiopia receives $50m grant from Green Climate Fund

Ethiopia has received $50 million from the Green Climate Fund (GCF) for climate-resilience projects, the Ministry of Forestry, Environment and Climate Change said last week.

The country is experiencing increasingly unpredictable weather patterns and according to reports, small scale farmers and pastoralists are likely to bear the brunt of negative impacts of climate change.

About 85 percent of the population depends on agriculture for its livelihood and irregular rainfalls have left the agricultural sector vulnerable. Agriculture accounts for half of gross domestic product (GDP) and 83.9 percent of exports.

About 85 percent of the population depends on agriculture for their livelihood Photo: Nuruinternational

Ethiopia launched its green development strategy in 2011, whose aim is to build a sustainable green economy to become a global “green economy front-runner”.

The country launched its ambitious five-year economic Growth and Transformation Plan (GTP II 2015-2020) and intends to reach middle income status by 2015, and “reaching this goal will require boosting agricultural productivity, strengthening the industrial base, and fostering export growth,” the United Nation Development Programme observes.

To finance its green development strategy, the country hoped to secure $250 million from the fund through the Ministry of Finance and Economic Co-operation, but Kare Chawicha, Deputy Minister of Forestry, Environment and Climate Change said GCF experts decided on the grant’s ceiling, Star Africa reported.

GCF is based in South Korea. It is a unique global platform to redistribute funds to countries to “help vulnerable societies adapt to the unavoidable impacts of climate change”. The organisation was founded within the United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC), the organisation coordinating COP21.

Source: Star Africa