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KATHMANDU, Nov 23: After missing the initial date for formulating a national adaptation program on climate change, the government is now hurriedly preparing to adopt the National Adaptation Program of Action (NAPA) within the next six months. The government has to finalize the NAPA document in order to become a beneficiary of the Least Developed Countries´ Fund (LDCF), which now has $180 million to be distributed among the developing countries.
“We should complete the NAPA draft within six months for the government to adopt it,” said Batu Uprety, joint-secretary, Ministry of Environment (MoE).
The government has to finalize the NAPA document in order to become a beneficiary of the Least Developed Countries´ Fund (LDCF), which now has $180 million to be distributed among the developing countries.
There are currently six thematic groups led respectively by six ministries under the coordination of the MoE. On the basis of the report prepared by the six thematic groups -- agriculture and food security, forestry and bio-diversity, energy, human settlement and physical development, health and disaster management, the MoE will recommend final draft to the cabinet for approval.
A team of six joint-secretaries visited Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, last week to study the NAPA of Bangladesh, which was recently adopted by the Bangladesh cabinet. “The MoE is looking at developing an action plan for Nepal in line with Bangladeshi government´s NAPA,” Md Ziaul Haque, deputy director (technical) of Department of Environment of Bangladesh, told myrepublica.com, adding, “It was an orientation program in formulating a concrete action plan on climate change for Nepal, which is now concerned about the Himalayas.”
The MoE was earlier set to complete the NAPA before the UN summit on climate change in Copenhagen (COP-15) to begin in mid-December as per the Bali Action Plan agreed in December 2007. According to the international agreement, every LDC is entitled to a grant of $5 million, which would be given through the Global Environment Facility (GEF).
“But we cannot directly access the fund. It has to be done through an implementing agency like the World Bank,” Uprety added.
The GEF partnership includes 10 agencies: the UN Development Program, UN Environment Program, World Bank, UN Food and Agriculture Organization, UN Industrial Development Organization, African Development Bank, Asian Development Bank, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Inter-American Development Bank and the International Fund for Agricultural Development.
An independent financial organization, GEF, provides grants to developing countries and countries with economies in transition for projects related to biodiversity, climate change, international waters, land degradation, the ozone layer and persistent organic pollutants.
However, many experts have pointed at the controversial nature of the NEP fund. Speaking at a program in the capital on the impact of climate change on the livelihood of the people on Nepal Monday, experts opined that the LDCF is “donor-guided” and it is not certain whether the present NAPA will actually prove fruitful in the long run. “Although NAPA is a good document, but just like many other national documents it might erode and lose its significance,” Dr Deepak Mani Pokharel. He said the stakeholders must be consulted before the government finalizes NAPA.
The MoE has, however, claimed that NAPA is being developed as the authorities have now recognized that climate change will have a very drastic and adverse environmental, economic, social and human consequences for the country.
akanshya@myrepublica.com
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