President’s High-Level Event: Progress in Advancing National Adaptation Plans

COP 22 side event

On November 14 in Marrakech, the COP 22 President H. E. Mr. Salaheddine Mezouar, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Morocco, hosted a high-level event to highlight the central role of the Green Climate Fund (GCF) and other entities in advancing adaptation through National Adaptation Plans (NAPs).

In this event, panelists highlighted opportunities for countries to use the NAP process to identify medium- and long-term adaptation needs, as well as to develop and implement strategies and programs to address those needs. It also emphasized the goal for NAP processes to be continuous, progressive and iterative, and for the processes to follow a country-driven, gender-sensitive, participatory and fully transparent approach.

Panellists Zaheer Fakir, GCF Board Co-Chair, and Javier Manzanares, GCF Executive Director a.i.,  made the exciting announcement that Liberia and Nepal will be the first countries to receive fast-track NAP grants under the GCF’s Readiness and Preparatory Support Program.

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Anne Hammill, Director of the NAP Global Network secretariat, was very pleased to participate in this event on the Network’s behalf.

In her remarks, Ms. Hammill said, “Since COP 20 in Lima, the Network has been offering a growing range of resources and services that address the growing need for NAP support. We do so with an emphasis on two critical themes in the NAP process: learning and coordination. Learning, because the challenge of accelerating and scaling up NAP processes will only be met if countries are able to learn from each other’s experiences and successes – to understand what works and avoid potential problems and losing time. And coordination, because NAP processes are massive coordination efforts across sectors, across scales of governance, and among different types of actors. And too often, coordination is taken for granted and under-resourced.”

Ms. Hammill noted a number of the initiatives that the Network has undertaken under these themes, including peer learning events, South-South peer exchanges, in-country NAP Assemblies and the expert advice and targeted technical assistance offered through our Country Support Hub.

She concluded, “The Network practices what it preaches [on coordination]. We recognize that we are not the only initiative providing NAP support to developing countries—as we can see from the panel here this evening. So we are coordinating with the other agencies—like UNDP, UNEP and FAO—and the GCF to leverage one another’s efforts and offer the best possible complement of NAP support to developing countries. The early outcomes have been promising and looking forward, we see that these kinds of activities will be important for supporting implementation of the Paris Agreement.”

Chair

  • COP President, H. E. Mr. Salaheddine Mezouar, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Morocco

Panel

  • H. E. Mr. Enele Sopoaga, Prime Minister, Tuvalu.
  • H. E. Mr. Tonato José Didier, Minister of Life Framework and Sustainable Development, Benin
  • H. E. Mrs. Ndahimananjara Johanita, Minister of Environment, Ecology and Forest, Madagascar.
  • Zaheer Fakir, Co-Chair of the GCF Board
  • Javier Manzanares, Executive Director (ad interim), GCF
  • Gustavo Fonseca, Director of Programmes, GEF
  • Helena Semedo, Deputy Director General, FAO
  • Adriana Dinu, Executive Coordinator, UNDP – Global Environmental Finance, UNDP
  • Anne Hammill, Director Resilience, IISD

 

Photos by IISD/ENB | Kiara Worth


Any opinions stated in this blog post are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policies or opinions of the NAP Global Network, its funders, or Network participants.

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