By Fatou Saho
On Thursday, the Ministry of Environment Climate Change and Natural Resources (MECCNAR), with participants from different sectors, hosted a day long technical meeting at the Senegambia hotel for a new project to mitigate and implement climate change action in The Gambia.
The meeting came after the ministry secured a 3-year funding from Canada’s environment and climate change department to support transformative pilot projects of monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) for climate action in West Africa.
The deputy permanent secretary of MECCNAR, Babucarr Zaidi Jallow, mentioned in his opening remarks that the project will improve the effectiveness and efficiency of policy decisions and investments to archive the ambitious national development target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) by 49% below business as usual within the next 7 years.
He added that: “This project aims to support national development priorities and capacities to plan, finance, and archive greenhouse gas emission reductions and the implementation of low carbon solution to local development challenges. With a strong, dynamic MRV-MA system, decision makers can periodically readjust to find the most efficient and effective policies to archive climate targets and make the best use of available resources.”
Jainaba Fatty, national focal point, said she is with strong conviction that the monitoring, reporting, and verification for climate action on the rapid roll out of the photovoltaic systems, will create a substantial difference in the national and regional actions against impacts of climate change.
The lead coordinator of the pilot project, Dr Mamma Sawanneh, said the objectives of the meeting are to officially launch the implementation of the MRV PV pilot project, discuss the institutional arrangements establish legacy and track priority mitigation actions in The Gambia.
Dr. Sawanneh again noted: “One of the major priorities of the Gambia is to enhance technical, systemic, and institutional capacities to actively monitor the progress and impacts of climate change, energy generation, and development strategies”.
