Supporting Guinea Conakry to advance their NAP process

Guinea is a coastal country in West Africa and currently one of the wettest in the West African sub-region, with neighbouring countries dependent on rivers that originate in Guinea. However, climate change is predicted to have severe impacts on Guinea and its precipitation levels. Mean annual temperatures are expected to leap to up to 3°C above pre-industrial levels by the 2060’s, which could decrease total precipitation by around one third.

 

Guinea’s economic output is dominated by agriculture, livestock and fisheries, while mining is also a prominent industry. Such drastic decreases in precipitation will have significant impacts on these activities, which are highly vulnerable to climate change and have already been impacted. Droughts over the past 50 years (1961-1990 and 2002), as well as floods have already contributed to the decline of cereal crops. Other critical climate change impacts include sea-level rise, which already occurring along Guinea’s coastline, will cause increased salinization and flooding as well as shortages in drinking water, destruction of infrastructure and damage to mangrove ecosystems. After weak economic growth in 2014 and 2015, mainly due to the Ebola outbreak, the Guinean economy bounced back in 2016 with growth of around five percent. With sufficient climate change adaptation planning, such growth and subsequent development gains can be protected, paving the way towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. Mainstreaming climate change considerations into all aspects of national and sub-national planning is essential to preventing the drastically changing climate having severe effects.

 

The government of Guinea has established a set of policy frameworks geared towards sustainable development, which act as entry points for the mainstreaming of climate change adaptation. 

Key strategies include a national vision for development over 25 years (Vision 2040) and a five-year plan to implement the Vision 2040 – referred to as PNDES. The PNDES aims to give priority to: i) national capacity building on the fight against climate change; ii) promotion of clean energy and energy efficient technologies; iii) mitigation of greenhouse gases in the transport and agriculture sectors; iv) promotion of the use of household appliances with clean technology; and v) increase the capacity of carbon sequestration by means of agroforestry development. Guinea has also submitted a First (2002) and Second (2018) National Communication to the UNFCCC, as well as developed a Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) to the Paris Agreement. The NDC outlines some priority actions that deal with the local consequences of climate change. These are: (1) preserve the quality and quantity of water resources, for the benefit of the people of Guinea and the West African region; (2) put in place the measures needed to protect, conserve and manage ecosystems, revive economic activities and boost the resilience of communities in its coastal zone; and (3) support the adaptation efforts of rural communities to develop agro-sylvo-pastoral techniques enabling them both to continue their activities and preserve the resources on which they rely.