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CABO VERDE - Climate Action
Cabo Verde is one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change. With a long and hard tradition of coping with cyclical droughts, the archipelago is also exposed more and more often to torrential rains, for which the agricultural production systems, the national infrastructures, urban housing and drainage systems have not been conceived for. Population and urbanisation are on the rise, fossil fuel and importation dependencies are intact, renewable energies are expanding rapidly. Tourism, the economic driver, has collapsed altogether with the COVID pandemic. Such is the context of the current formulation by Luxembourg of climate action in Cabo Verde.
Santo Antão, Plano alto Norte completely dried out after years of drought, Aug. 2019
In 2015, Luxembourg’s Climate and Energy Fund supported Cabo Verde in its efforts to prepare its first Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) for submission to the UNFCCC. Luxembourg’s International Climate Finance was confirmed as climate partner of Cabo Verde with the subsequent Cabo Verde request, in 2020, to support it again for the elaboration of the second NDC and the National Adaptation Plan (NAP).
As a consequence, the fifth Indicative Cooperation Programme 2021-2025, the ICP « Development –Climate-Energy (DCE) » between the two countries firmly establishes the climate sector as a priority bilateral intervention sector. For the first time, Climate action will occupy a central place in the ICP-DCE and will be structured around three main areas of intervention:
- mitigation actions which may include support for energy transition, including the switch to solar pumping and desalination in the water sector;
- adaptation actions, in support of the implementation of the Cabo Verde NAP; and
- support for strengthening climate governance.
The central position of the Climate action in an ICT is a first for both the Luxembourg Development Cooperation and LuxDev, who was mandated by the Ministry for the Environment, Climate and Sustainable Development of Luxembourg (MECSD) to formulate in 2020 a large climate action programme.
According to the Cabo Verdean request and the MECSD mandate, the LuxDev formulation mission (under programme CVE/401) is to deliver three outputs by early 2021:
- an updated and more ambitious second NDC, as well as its implementation roadmap;
- an outline of a NAP;
- a Climate Action programme technical and financial document (TFD), for a budget of 10 mio EUR and a duration of 5 years.
All along the formulation phase, capacity development activities for the benefit of the project’s national counterpart, the National Direction of Environment (DNA) and of main national climate stakeholders are being carried out.
To achieve this, LuxDev recruited a Chief technical Advisor (CTA) in June 2020, who took up post at the premises of the DNA, in Praia, Cabo Verde in August 2020. In November 2020, the formulation team was expanded to an assistant and a driver:
The formulation team
From left to right: For DNA, Cesária Gomes, UNFCCC Project Coordinator, Alexandre Nevsky Rodrigues, Director. For programme CVE/401 Ação climàtica, Pascale Junker, CTA, Maysa Cunha, Assistant and Ailton Alfama, Driver, at the DNA, Praia, Cabo Verde.
Whereas the COVID situation has delayed execution and hindered public participation exercises, the main activities are on track:
- two international consulting teams are supporting the project to design the NDC and the NAP;
- Online workshops are organised for consulting stakeholders, discussing findings and building consensus on the way forward;
- partnerships have been agreed with national actors so as to deliver an indicative map, showing in what municipality or community a mitigation or adaptation action has potential to be implemented;
- Training in English language (English is the international climate language) are ongoing, whereas exchanges within the Portuguese-speaking countries community have also intensified in the run-up to the second NDC submission by all countries to the UNFCCC.
The Luxembourg cooperation with Cabo Verde is in a good position to design an effective, quantified, documented NDC and NAP, since it is also the main bilateral donor of the essential energy, water and local development sectors. The climate action project is an opportunity to bring all this together, in the interest of the Cabo Verdeans.
On the basis of this formulation process and of the TFD approved by the Cabo Verde and Luxembourg sides, the planned Climate Action programme can start execution in 2021.
The future Climate Action project will be funded by the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg and implemented by LuxDev, the Luxembourg Development Cooperation Agency
The NDC
Nationally Determined Contributions, or NDCs, are the expressions of efforts to be made by countries in reducing national emissions and adapting to the impact of climate change. NDCs are at the heart of the 2015 Paris Agreement and the achievement of these long-term goals.
The GCF
The Green Climate Fund (GCF) was set up in 2010 and aims to promote the paradigm shift towards low-emission and climate-resilient development pathways by providing support to developing countries to limit or reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and to adapt to the impacts of climate change, taking into account the needs of those developing countries particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change.
LuxDev and the GCF
LuxDev was accredited to the GCF as an International Accredited Entity (IAE) in February 2019. Under this accreditation, LuxDev has access to a new source of funding, up to USD 10 million per project of low environmental and social risk level (category C). This funding can complement official development assistance and bilateral climate finance and, hence, contribute to a continuous shift to low-emission and climate resilient sustainable development in order to fight climate changes’ effects, affecting the most vulnerable.
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