GREEN CLIMATE FUND APPROVES USD 442,968 FOR HATOF Foundation’s READINESS PROPOSAL.
The Green Climate Fund (GCF) Secretariat has approved HATOF Foundation’s Readiness Proposal for the amount of USD 442,968 for “Capacity Building and Knowledge Management on Climate Change for Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) in Ghana towards the implementation of the Nationally Determined Contributions.”
The proposal, which was approved on December 3, 2021, marks the first readiness targeting support to CSOs in Ghana and makes HATOF Foundation the first NGO in Africa to have a readiness proposal approved by the GCF.
This GCF Readiness aims to strengthen the capacities of 10 Ghanaian CSO networks to contribute efficiently in the Nationally Determined Contributions planning and implementation processes through:
Engaging the National Designated Authority, Direct Access Entities and GCF on project design, selection, budget preparation, implementation, monitoring and evaluation;
Developing a CSO-tailored training module on preparing funding proposals to leverage non-state actors’ engagement with the GCF;
Developing a five-year Civil Society Climate Change Agenda and Action Plan; and
Developing GCF Concept note proposing how this initiative could be up-scaled nationally to facilitate agreement on direction and access to financing.
The Readiness will build on and maximize the efforts of previous and existing support in climate change capacity building related initiatives to ensure that CSOs in Ghana have access to relevant, up-to-date information about climate change trends and risks, receive suitable training and have enhanced knowledge on climate financing and paradigm shift strategies.
Over time, the Readiness support will enhance CSOs technical and institutional expertise to develop and effectively implement low carbon development climate compatible projects and programmes to contribute to the country’s long-term sustainable development.
With Centre de Suivi Ecologique (CSE) as the delivery partner, the GCF has engaged the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) for grant management support to the Readiness Programme, including the establishment of a grant agreement, performance monitoring and disbursements for the amount of USD 442,968 under the agreement.
The Ministry of Finance, the National Designated Authority of the Green Climate Fund, will provide leadership in implementing the Readiness Programme.
About the HATOF Foundation
The Green Climate Fund is the world’s largest climate fund, mandated to support developing countries raise and realize their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) ambitions towards low-emissions, climate-resilient pathways.
The Readiness and Preparatory Support Programme supports country-driven initiatives by developing countries to strengthen their institutional capacities, governance mechanism, and planning and programming frameworks towards a transformational long-term climate action agenda.
This Readiness is the fifth readiness the GCF has approved for Ghana.
Date: April, 27, 2017 Venue: UNDP Conference Room, Accra
Sustainable development has its goal as improving the negative effects of environmental pollution to satisfy the needs of present generation and at the same time ensuring the liveliness of the environmental factors for future generations. However, like the rest of the world, Ghana is faced with various environmental challenges that have both direct and indirect socio-political and economic impacts. The challenges include unsustainable exploitation of biodiversity and other natural resources, climate change, exposure to chemicals and other hazardous materials, land degradation, invasive and alien species, illegal trade in endangered plant and animal species, and indoor and outdoor air pollution. These challenges pose a great threat to the country’s sustainable development and green economy prospects.
In the quest to address the above challenges, Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs) have come into force to improve global, regional and local environmental governance. The achievement of the objectives of MEAs is thus dependent on the extent to which the general public and decision-makers are aware and understand the content of the various conventions and their respective national obligations.
The role of CSOs cannot be over emphasized. They are well placed to support localised response to environment, economic, and social sustainability through provision of relevant information. Unfortunately, limited capacity to understand the Multilateral Environmental Agreements that govern these challenges and national mechanisms formulated for their implementation have been identified as militating against the effective engagement of environment CSOs in ensuring better environmental governance in Ghana.
HATOF Foundation launched a one year national capacity building programme in April, 2017 titled “Capacity Development and Knowledge Management for Civil Society Organizations towards the implementation of Multilateral Environmental Agreements and national and sub-national policy, planning and legal frameworks” Funded by the Global Environment Facility Small Grants Programme (GEFSGP) Ghana, the main objective of the project is to enhance capacity of civil society to contribute to the implementation of MEAs (Multilateral Environmental Agreements), national and subnational policy, planning and legal frameworks and to gain knowledge in best innovative practices and systems for inclusive sustainable development. Specifically the project seeks to;
Enhance capacities of the CSOs to participate effectively in policy planning and formulation
Develop capacities of CSOs as “Barefoot Consultants” to access bilateral and multilateral funds
Establish “CSO-Government Policy and Planning Dialogue Platform” (which could be in partnership with the GEFCSO Network)
Establish barefoot training institute to train local people and CSOs in best innovative practices in sustainable agriculture, low carbon technologies, biodiversity enterprise development etc.
The 23rd meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP 23) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was held from 6 to 17 November in Bonn, Germany, under the presidency of the government of Fiji, the first time that a small island nation has served in this role. This is the second COP since the adoption of the Paris Agreement at COP 21 in 2015 and since the Agreement entered into force on 4 November 2016, just three days before the start of COP 22 in Marrakech, Morocco.
As of 22 November, 170 Parties have ratified the Agreement. Of the 197 Parties to the Convention, 195 originally signed it. Nicaragua initially argued it was not strong enough but has acknowledged that there is no alternative to the Agreement and ratified it just prior to the start of the COP. Syria, embroiled in a civil war since 2011, signed up on 7 November, leaving the United States as the only country which has rejected it, although it can’t officially withdraw until 4 November 2020, one day after the next U.S. presidential election.
It was expected to be a transitional and technical COP – and it was — with delegates charged with the complex task of writing the so-called “Paris Rulebook” for all of the elements mandated in the Paris Agreement and Decision text which is scheduled to be adopted next year at COP 24. They also had to complete the design of the 2018 “Facilitative Dialogue,” a test run for the “Global Stocktake” which all countries will conduct every five years starting in 2023 to assess and strengthen their “nationally determined contributions” (NDCs) and global progress toward reaching the goal of the Paris Agreement: to hold the increase in global average temperature to well below 2°C and pursue efforts to limit the increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.
Fiji brought vision to this technical COP through the Pacific tradition of “talanoa,” derived from “tala” meaning “talking or telling stories,” and “noa” meaning “zero or without concealment.” In the Fijian context, frank expression without concealment, in face-to-face dialogue, can lead to all participants understanding each other’s feelings and experiences.
The main COP decision – to be known as the Fiji Momentum for Implementation – contains three elements: a call for enhanced Pre-2020 Implementation and Ambition, a reiteration of the Paris Agreement Work Programme, and the design of the Facilitative Dialogue, rebranded by Fiji as the Talanoa Dialogue.
Here’s a shortlist of issues where progress (or no progress) was made in Bonn:
The design of the 2018 Talanoa Dialogue was jointly prepared by the COP 22 presidency of Morocco and the COP 23 Fijian presidency and will be launched in January 2018 under the leadership of Fiji and the COP 24 presidency, Poland. It aims to take stock of the collective efforts of Parties in relation to progress towards the implementation of the Paris Agreement, namely, the long-term goal of holding the increase in global average temperature to well below 2°C and to pursue efforts to limit the increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. Many Parties, especially developing countries, worked hard to ensure that the Fiji Presidency will continue to guide the Talanoa Dialogue throughout the year.
The Fiji Momentum for Ambition decides that the outcome of the 2018 Talanoa Dialogue will feed into the COP stocktake on pre-2020 ambition in 2019. The pre-2020 decision and the Talanoa Dialogue together create an ongoing series of dialogues and reviews to enhance pre-2020 action, which will hopefully build enhanced trust to increase ambition for both mitigation and support in the post-2020 period.
The final decision on Loss and Damage is hopelessly weak. It includes no permanent agenda item for implementing “action and support,” only “encourages” parties to make available sufficient resources for the operation of the executive committee, and merely “encourages” the executive committee to mobilize and secure finance. The sole tangible action is an “expert dialogue” in 2018 to explore how finance might be secured. The bottom line is this: there is no guarantee of financial support for those affected by catastrophic disasters or even for the body tasked to find that finance.
The outcome of the climate finance negotiations on long-term finance (LTF) – continued efforts by developed countries to jointly mobilize USD 100 billion annually by 2020 – were predictably unremarkable, reinforcing largely agreed conclusions of earlier years, and made no substantial progress to show increased ambition pre-2020 to move faster or even go beyond this finance goal. No significant announcements of additional climate finance contributions were made at the High Level segment of the climate talks beyond some support for the Adaptation Fund (AF) and the Least Developed Countries Fund(LDCF). An opportunity to build more trust in the pre-2020 and Paris implementation processes was missed.
The COP serving as the CMP made further progress regarding the future of the Adaptation Fund, currently providing funding under the Kyoto Protocol, by deciding that it shall serve the Paris Agreement, with further decisions to be taken by the CMA in 2018 on whether it should do exclusively and under the guidance of and accountable to the CMA and what governance and operational revisions, including of its financing structure, are necessary to get the Adaptation Fund ready to do so..
While COP23 saw many attempts to promote quick technofixes for the climate crisis (ranging from nuclear energy to CCS, Bioenergy with CCS / BECCS to solar geoengineering) at side events and “climate action” spaces, there were also, encouragingly, increased debates between academics and civil society on transformational approaches and pathways for 1.5°C – targeting the fossil fuel and energy sector, transport, agriculture, lifestyles, financial institutions, GDP growth, and many other out of the (climate) box ideas. Members of the CBD Alliance expressed their alarm over increased talks of geoengineering in the UNFCCC in an Open letter to the UNFCCC: “Geoengineering is a distraction from the real priorities – emission reductions“.
The agenda of the APA – the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Paris Agreement – includes negotiations on features, information and accounting guidance of countries’ nationally determined contributions (NDCs), adaptation communications, transparency, the five-year “ratchet and review” mechanism of the Paris Agreement (the Global Stocktake), implementation and compliance, the Adaptation Fund, and other matters. Over the first seven days, countries proposed all of the elements they want included in the principles, rules, modalities, and procedures for each of those sections, which were captured in several “Informal notes” throughout the process. By the end of the session, the compilation of those notes totaled 266 pages and are annexed to a COP decision.
Another part of the “Paris Rulebook” creation is tasked to the SBSTA – the Subsidiary Body on Scientific and Technical Advice. These deliberations are crucial because they focus on international cooperation to enhance ambition as defined in Article 6 of the Paris Agreement. One provision (Article 6.2) establishes “internationally transferred mitigation outcomes” (ITMOs) for countries to meet their NDCs. With regards to land use in the Rulebook, observers are detecting a link between the CORSIA, the carbon offsetting scheme which was established last year by ICAO — the International Civil Aviation Organization, a specialized UN agency – and the numerous references in the SBSTA text to cooperative approaches “outside the NDC.” This refers to mitigation outcomes, including possibly from REDD+, the UN framework to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, being transferred to non-state actors such as CORSIA, which will likely require billions of dollars to offset growth in aviation emissions.
A breakthrough early in the second week after five years of what could only be called bad faith negotiations on agriculture came as a genuine surprise to many observers. Developed countries stepped back from their opposition to long-standing proposals from developing countries and agreed for the subsidiary bodies to “jointly address issues related to agriculture, including through workshops and expert meetings,” and to take “into consideration the vulnerabilities of agriculture to climate change and approaches to addressing food security.” The decision on agriculture mandates a submissions process – which includes observers — to provide information on a number of topics so that scientific talks can now progress into action and the UN system can provide more strategic support to countries that need it.
Civil society observers and activists with a handful of allies in governments continue to push for inclusion of the Human Rightslanguage from the preamble of the Paris Agreement into the Rulebook. Meanwhile, civil society, human rights defenders, and representatives of national and international human rights institutions held several meetings on the sidelines of COP 23 to establish a narrative that frames climate change as a human rights issue and to discuss legal avenues for holding big polluters accountable for human rights abuses resulting from climate change. Meanwhile, it was encouraging to see real progress achieved during the duration of COP 23 in a handful of investigations and court cases of strategic climate litigation around the world.
After several negotiating sessions over the first eight days of the COP, and with the specter of failure hanging over the negotiations, a final push propelled negotiators to agree on a Gender Action Plan (GAP). Building on the language of the Paris Agreement, the Gender Action Plan reminds Parties that gender-responsive climate policy continues to require further strengthening in all activities concerning adaptation, mitigation, and related means of implementation (finance, technology development and transfer, and capacity-building) as well as decision-making on the implementation of climate policies. Above all, it requires women to be represented in all aspects of the Convention process and gender mainstreaming through all relevant targets and goals in activities under the Convention as an important contribution to increasing their effectiveness.
The need to strengthen the efforts of local communities and indigenous peoples in responding to climate change was recognized in the Paris Decision text which established a platform for the exchange of experiences and sharing of best practices. A highly successful “open dialogue” on advancing the platform took place at the UNFCCC inter-sessionals this past May, and an agenda item on creating the platform was included in the official negotiations for the first time at this COP. So it was a big advance when final text appeared and was adopted. The Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples Platform is a small step towards recognizing and respecting the perspectives and knowledge of indigenous peoples in this process that can now be built on.
COP 23 was actually one COP in two zones – Bula and Bonn, two kilometers apart. The Bula zone was the site of the official negotiations, while the Bonn zone hosted dozens of civil society kiosks and hundreds of events. According to the UNFCCC list of participants, 16,028 people were registered – 9,202 delegates, 5,543 from observer organizations, and 1,283 media. An additional 5,940 people were accredited for the Bonn zone only. Thousands more participated in off-site events, marches, and demonstrations throughout the two weeks in Bonn and its surroundings. Several high-level announcements were made on the COP sidelines by coalitions of governments, corporations, and civil society.
The call for an end of the fossil fuel era throughout numerous events in the Bonn Zone echoed the messages of the People’s Climate Summitfrom 3-7 November, the Climate March that saw 25,000 people on the streets in Bonn on 4 November, and Ende Gelände, a peaceful mass civil disobedience action against open pit lignite coal mining in the Rhineland, from 5-7 November. All of these events articulated a message of global solidarity and climate justice and highlighted feasible alternatives to a corporatist approach to climate negotiations with false solutions in addressing the climate crisis.
Source: By Don Lehr, Lili Fuhr, and Liane Schalatek
