Union environment ministry holds third regional workshop with state governments

Fourteen States/Union Territories from the southern and western regions of the country participated in the workshop. 

 

Inaugurating the workshop, Special Secretary, MoEF&CC, Susheel Kumar, emphasized the need for generating good quality project proposals in a time-bound manner, with full ownership by the state government departments, and with assurance that the project benefits will continue to flow in a sustainable manner after project completion. 

 

The NAFCC was established in 2015 to assist national and state level activities to meet the cost of adaptation measures in areas that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change. 

 

In 2015, under the NAFCC, 12 projects submitted by the Punjab, Odisha, Himachal Pradesh, Manipur, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Jammu & Kashmir, Meghalaya, Chhattisgarh, Mizoram, Telangana and Puducherry were approved at a total cost of Rs. 235.17 crore of which Rs. 118.33 crore has already been released, said the ministry. 

 

GCF is a financial mechanism under United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which aims to mobilize unprecedented levels of funding to invest in low-emission and climate-resilient development. 

 

The GCF Empowered Committee headed by Secretary, MoEF&CC approved, in principle, two project concept notes of Government of Odisha and Government of Haryana with a total project cost of USD 31.63 million (Rs. 211 crore) and USD 46.39 million (Rs. 310 crore) respectively in 2015-16. 

 

IThe ministry expects that the participants will acquire the requisite knowledge and expertise for preparing the good quality adaptation and mitigation projects for NAFCC and GCF for their respective States by May 15, 2016. 

 

Senior state government officials from Maharashtra, Telangana and Karnataka participated in the workshop. This workshop was organised jointly by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEF&CC) and National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD), National Implementing Entity for National Adaptation Fund on Climate Change (NAFCC) and Green Climate Fund (GCF). The discussions were guided by Joint Secretary, MoEF&CC Ravi S. Prasad and Deputy Managing Director, NABARD R. Amalorpavanathan. 

 

The Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change said that it has been organizing regional workshops to support the state governments to pro-actively pursue climate change adaptation and mitigation and building their capacity for accessing climate change finance from domestic and international sources. 

 

The first workshop was organized in January 2016 in Guwahati, Assam, for the eight states of the North Eastern region and the second in February in Patna, Bihar, for four states in the eastern region of the country.