Uganda received approval on Thursday, January 14 of a US $1.5-million preparation grant from the Climate Investment Funds' Pilot Program for Climate Resilience (CIF PPCR) to develop a national Strategic Program for Climate Resilience (SPCR). Once developed, the policy-based SPCR will pave the way for climate-resilient transformation in the country through a broad set of resilience projects to be implemented through a unique multi-stakeholder approach. The African Development Bank (AfDB) will support Uganda as the lead implementation agency for the SPCR.
The country's Ministry of Water and Environment (MWE) will lead the SPCR's development through a multi-disciplinary and multi-stakeholder PPCR Planning Team, building on the country's existing climate-related policy and institutional frameworks. The team will ensure national ownership of the SPCR through extensive national and sub-national consultations.
"At the Paris global climate summit, the world's governments noted that the greatly needed push toward climate-resilient societies cannot be met with currently scarce resources," noted Gareth Phillips, AfDB's PPCR coordinator. "We are delighted that the PPCR has allocated this funding to Uganda to further their urgent work toward resilience. The country has signaled a strong commitment to support its citizens in building resilient agriculture, forests, and cities, and this new policy-based SPCR should go a long way toward ensuring that happens."
The SPCR will focus on creating an enabling environment for the country's resilience to climate change, tackling climate change vulnerability and increasing opportunities and incentives for targeted sectors and stakeholders, including private landowners. Working through the multi-stakeholder team, the SPCR preparation process will:
Assess institutional capacity for climate resilience coordination, including mainstreaming climate change in development plans, designing climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies and actions, and establishing the national climate change Information Management System (IMS);
Review and scale up climate change vulnerability assessment and risk activities that will identify key hotspots;
Assess hydro-meteorological (hydromet) capacity and development needs and procedures for using hydromet data in the design of climate resilient projects;
Undertake studies to address vulnerabilities and promote climate resilience in the agriculture sector to enhance food security and reduce pressure on land to minimize deforestation;
Review catchment/landscape/watershed approaches for climate resilience;
Identify mechanisms to enhance urban resilience and infrastructure including water supply and sanitation, and assess climate-induced migration implications for building resilient cities;
Create measures to manage the SPCR's social and environmental impacts, grievance and redress mechanisms, and benefit sharing arrangements;
Identify a pipeline of program investments;
Assess financial and investment needs to implement the SPCR.
With the funding in place, the country is poised to undertake its first joint mission in March, with the intention of submitting the final SPCR to the CIF PPCR Trust Fund Committee for endorsement in November of this year.
The country's resilience work in the SPCR will complement its other two far-reaching CIF Investment Plans (IPs) already in place: one designed to transform its energy sector through renewables under the CIF's Program for Scaling Up Renewable Energy in Low Income Countries (SREP), and the other to transform its forest sector under the CIF's Forest Investment Plan (FIP). The SREP IP is poised to transform Uganda's energy sector by building on its renewables resources including wind, solar and geothermal, and expanding the spread of sustainable energy throughout the country. The FIP IP will be used to help conserve and enhance forest landscapes to maintain the biodiversity, livelihoods, and economic opportunities which they support, and to scale up the country's REDD+ initiatives.
Together, the three national plans go a long way toward allowing the country to fulfill its ambitious climate-smart development commitments, and to address commitments under its Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC) submitted to the climate change convention in October 2015. Uganda is the first country to start the implementation of three CIF programs concurrently and the African Development Bank and World Bank will work together to identify and exploit the synergies inherent in this approach.
About the Climate Investment Funds (CIF)
Established in 2008, as one of the largest fast-tracked climate financing instruments in the world, the US $8.1-billion CIF provides developing countries with grants, concessional loans, risk mitigation instruments, and equity that leverage significant financing from the private sector, MDBs and other sources. Five MDBs - the African Development Bank (AfDB), Asian Development Bank (ADB), European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), and World Bank Group (WBG) - implement CIF-funded projects and programs.
