National

Egypt’s landscapes, people, and economy are highly vulnerable to the ongoing impacts of climate change. To address climate change risks in the mid to long-term, Egypt has developed a policy framework underpinned by the 2011 National Adaptation Strategy (NAS), and the country has developed high-level political institutions with the mandate to implement the framework. Established in 2015 under the Prime Ministerial Decree #1912 and chaired by the Prime Minister, the National Council for Climate Change (NCCC) is the body responsible for managing the climate change portfolio at the national level. With this support from the Green Climate Fund (GCF), the Government of Egypt will advance the development of a national adaptation plan (NAP) with the goal of decreasing vulnerability to climate change.

In addition to the key implementing partner, the Ministry of Environment, the project partners include the Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation, Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation, the Information and Decision Support Center, Cabinet of Ministers and others. 

The project “Formulation and Advancement of the National Adaptation Plans Process of Egypt” started in March 2021 with the main objective to decrease country’s vulnerability to climate change through advancing the National Adaptation Plan (NAP) development. The NAP project aims to help Egypt build climate resilience by improving institutional and technical capacity for climate change adaptation planning, examining climate risks, determining adaptation priorities, integrating adaptation into national and sectoral planning and budgeting, and increasing investment in adaptation actions.

Climate change impacts in Egypt include the rising sea level, extreme weather events such as heat waves, flash floods, heavy precipitation, sand and dust storms, and water scarcity. These complex climate-related challenges will impact agriculture, food security, human health and the national economy. Egypt‘s ability to respond to these impacts is challenged by low technical capacity for adaptation planning and limited information on climate risks and vulnerabilities. To address the risks, the Government of Egypt began a NAP process in May 2015, which resulted in a roadmap for advancing adaptation planning.

The 2017 stocktaking exercise assessed accomplishments since 2015 and identified priority interventions for the NAP process. Based on this assessment, the NAP project focuses on the following outcomes: (1) Strengthening institutional and human capacities to coordinate and manage climate change adaptation planning and implementation; (2) Developing an integrated national climate risk assessment and identifying adaptation priority areas for inclusion in a National Adaptation Plan Framework document; and (3) Integrating adaptation priorities into national planning and budgeting processes. A successful implementation of this project will equip Egypt with the required climate risk information and understanding of priority adaptation areas to enable the government to conduct effective adaptation planning and start integrating climate adaptation into national development planning and budgeting. As a result of project activities improving capacity and climate adaptation governance, national ministries and the Government of Egypt will be empowered to help programs and projects across national and sub-national processes be more climate risk-informed, and climate adaptation indicators will be specifically incorporated into the national development strategy “Egypt Vision 2030”.

Funded by the Green Climate Fund (GCF) Readiness Programme, the "Integrating climate change risks into national development planning processes in Haiti" project is supporting the Government of Haiti to strengthen institutional and technical capacities for iterative development of the National Adaptation Plan (NAP) for an effective integration of climate change adaptation into national planning and budgeting processes.  

The project builds on lessons from the National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA) implementation, as well as complementary activities currently underway in Haiti to avoid duplication of efforts. In integrating climate change adaptation into development plans, the project seeks to align with inclusive climate change adaptation priorities into the country’s visionary Strategic Development Plan (PSDH), National Land Use Plan (SNAT) and its Disaster Risk Reduction Plan and Strategy.  

The only Least Developed Country (LDC) in the Caribbean region, Haiti’s primary economic sectors (i.e., agriculture, forestry and fishing) are heavily affected by climatic events. More than 50 percent of Haiti’s population lives below the poverty line, with 20.1 percent of people living in extreme poverty. According to the World Bank’s Climate Change Overview Country Summary (2022), political violence, economic imbalance, and population pressure has led to extreme environmental degradation in Haiti, with an estimated 98 percent of forests cleared for fuel. These destabilizing forces have left most Haitians extremely vulnerable to natural disasters. Haiti has embarked on many initiatives to strengthen its resilience to climate change. However, fragmented policies and data, weak technical capacity and inadequate climate financing, among others, hamper the country’s efforts to plan effectively and iteratively for medium-to long-term climate risks in its development planning and budgeting.   

The project is informed by stakeholder consultations, stocktaking of existing initiatives, policies, and strategies in Haiti that were conducted by the National Adaptation Plan Global Support Programme in 2017, which resulted in an action plan to implement the NAP. The Stocktaking Report highlighted the limitations and gaps including insufficient technical and institutional capacity to effectively coordinate and implement climate change adaptation measures; scattered data and information-sharing on climate change impacts and adaptation interventions; limited capacity to monitor climate change adaptation and inform policies; and inadequate budget allocations. These serve as the basis for the activities proposed in the project which were further confirmed by stakeholders.

The project is expected to deliver the following results under the three key outcomes:

• Capacities of the Technical Working Group, particularly MDE (Ministry of Environment) and MCPE (Ministry of Planning), to steer the climate change coordination and integration process are developed;
• Institutional barriers to the integration of climate change into development planning and policies are reviewed and key stakeholders are sensitized to climate change adaptation and development linkages;
• Mechanisms for regularly updating and reviewing adaptation are strengthened and feed into the iterative adaptation planning process;
• Haiti's National Adaptation Plan is developed;
• A system for economic analysis and appraisal of adaptation options is established and adaptation priority interventions are integrated into the SNAT, PSDH and PNGRD;
• Universities and educational institutions are capacitated to support adaptation initiatives and the NAP process;
• Financing and Investment Strategy for the NAP is developed through a gender responsive consultative process;
• Private sector engagement in climate change adaptation is strengthened. 

The NAP has been developed and validated by both the MDE (Ministry of Environment) and MCPE (Ministry of Planning); the regulatory framework and the vulnerabilities of priority sectors such as health, agrobiodiversity, and water resources have been assessed; the NAP financing and investment strategy has been developed through broad consultations with diverse stakeholders, including women’s organizations, and the communication strategy for the NAP process has been validated and disseminated across the country. In addition, the project has provided substantial support to various initiatives aimed at revising strategic documents, including the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC), the development of an operational plan for the National Risk and Disaster Management Plan (PNGRD) and the reinforcement of the EIS-Haiti database for the monitoring of climate indicators, among others. 

The project continuously works on strengthening the capacity of the key technical working group from sectorial ministries. As part of the documentation of lessons learned and best practices of adaptation interventions to encourage scaling up of successful approaches, the project has also compiled several good practices and lessons from adaptation measures. Ongoing collaboration with partners and stakeholders allows the project to continue the implementation and validation of the deliverables while developing synergies between climate change adaptation actions in the field.