By Maimuna Sey-Jawo
The Ministry of Environment Climate Change and Natural Resources through its Pilot Programme for Climatic Resilience (PPCR) recently organised a day-long training for National Assembly Sub-Environmental Committee Members on climatic smart agriculture held at a local hotel in Senegambia.
Speaking at the day-long training, the Project Coordinator for the PPCR Bubacarr Jallow spoke at length on the significance of the forum. He said the pilot project is a grant from the World Bank at a tune of 1.5 million dollar aimed at developing a strategic investment programme for The Gambia in terms of climate change with a view to helping communities to build more resilience across country.
“We made stakeholders consultation country wide which just finished recently, thus we have met more than 140 institutions in the Greater Banjul Area. We were also able to go around and visit project sites to know what is the gap and the way forward,” he stated.
According to him, they have conducted training for stakeholders from all the regions which was targeting 40 farmers and 20 technicians. “Today we are here training National Assembly Members as they are legislate arm of Government. We are the confident that, after the end of the day-long training the NAMs’ knowledge will be boosted on climate change effect and other related issues,” the Project Coordinator for the PPCR added.
For his part, the Majority Leader of the National Assembly Kebba K Barrow who also doubles as the National Assembly member for Kombo South of the West Coast Region, noted that some of the key issues discussed during the forum are issues related to resilience and mitigation and “all this things boil down to law, understanding the issues that affect citizens in the area of climate change.”
For his part, Honourable Yahya Gassama NAM for Kiang East, said climate change is a global issue which the Gambia is not an exception. “These are some of the things that we are going to discuss at the National Assembly, that’s why we are called here today to discuss some issues related to climate change and map out the way forward,” he added.
Honourable Gassama challenged the environment ministry to embark more on nationwide sensitisation campaign on climate change.
The monitoring and evaluation officer of the central project coordinating unit of the ministry of environment, Ousman Babu Cham, said the aim of the training is to bring together NAMs to have an insightful discussion of climate resilience that the ministry is implementing.
“We look at the environmental challenges that we are facing in the country as every year we have a problem of waste management and water flooding problem. As a result we are meeting different stakeholders across the country to discuss the issue with them,” he explained.
