EU gives €2m to back our climate change strategy
The European Union (EU) has shown its support for Seychelles’ national climate change strategy through a €2 million grant.
Foreign affairs principal secretary Barry Faure and the EU’s head of delegation for Seychelles, ambassador Alessandro Mariani, signed the financing agreement yesterday at the Maison Quéau de Quinssy, Mont Fleuri.
Present were Environment, Natural Resources and Transport Minister Joel Morgan, British high commissioner Matthew Forbes and French ambassador Philippe Delacroix.
And also there were President James Michel’s special environment adviser Dr Rolph Payet, foreign affairs technical adviser and permanent liaison officer with the Indian Ocean Commission Jeanette D’Offay, and Climate and Environmental Services director general Wills Agricole.
This grant has been awarded under the EU’s Global Climate Change Alliance initiative, increasing its general budget support for Seychelles to a total of €18.5 million.
The national climate change strategy aims at “minimising the impacts of climate change through concerted and proactive action at all levels of the society”.
The grant will support the five priorities of the strategy, which include increasing the national knowledge of climate change impacts and risks; putting in place measures to adapt to those risks; and moving to a low-carbon economy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
It will also help to mainstream climate change considerations into national policies, strategies and plans, and to build national policies and capabilities resilient to climate change.
The strategy presented by Seychelles last December during the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen will be developed with the help of the grant from 2010 to 2012.
Mr Faure said Seychelles has been chosen as the pilot country for this initiative and will benefit greatly from it.
The programme will be carried out by the Environment Department, he said, and the government feels very fortunate to have the EU as a reliable partner in this process. The government will ensure it is done effectively and achieves good results, he added.
Mr Mariani said we are all very much aware of climate change issues as there is solid evidence of its consequences.
“These consequences are clearly reported in the media, which play a vital role in educating the people,” he added.
He said the EU launched the Global Climate Change Alliance to focus attention on least-developed countries and small island states because they are among the most vulnerable.
Seychelles was among the few countries in this group that were able to attend the Copenhagen meeting and present their strategies to tackle climate change, he said.
He congratulated Seychelles and President James Michel for formulating its first national climate change strategy and for tabling it in Copenhagen.
Mr Mariani also met Vice-President Joseph Belmont yesterday morning, when he congratulated the government on its economic reforms.
Mr Agricole said the grant will finance different projects under the new strategy to help reduce future climate change effects such as coastal erosion.
He said later they will ask the EU for technical support as our capacity is very limited.