By Olimatou Coker
National Alliance for Agro-ecology-The Gambia (NAAG) recently held a long forum to prepare National Champions by consulting with different stakeholders in-country ahead of the forthcoming global environment summit COP27.
The national preparatory consultation for COP27 was organized with financial support from Enda Energie, Senegal through the program on facilitating the participation of Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) in COP27.
The preparatory consultation also seeks to discuss and identify national priorities and challenges that would support preparations and engagement for National Champions ahead of COP27.
The objectives are to expose participants to the different methodologies and techniques of COP negotiation strategies to build a strong CSOs coalition to address the challenges of climate change and also to discuss and identify national priorities and challenges that would support the preparation for the COP27 engagement for National Champions.
Musa F. Sowe, president of the National Coordinating Organisation for Farmers Association (NACOFAG), said they want to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of CSOs to contribute to national climate change policy and strategy development.
Saydinah Alieu Jarju, fundraising manager at ActionAid-International, The Gambia, said his organization is passionate about how they would be able to address the impact of climate change.
He explained that they were able to contribute to job creation and food security by empowering and uplifting the status of women and young people through the agroecology project, thus reducing irregular migration.
“The issue of climate change needs to be addressed and the NAAG is in the right direction in addressing climate issues.”
Jarju indicated that ActionAid-the Gambia works with communities to inculcate the idea of climate change.
“And they also worked with their various partners in sustainable agriculture and climate change adoption with smallholder farmers such as the agro-ecology project which was funded by the European Union.”
Sambou Kinteh from the Climate Change Secretariat at the Ministry of Environment said his ministry is doing all it takes to cope with climate change and make COP27 a success.
He revealed that there are so many issues bordering climate change; from adaptation to mitigation and so other many things involved.
