The Government of Ethiopia has taken action to advance on climate change adaptation by developing its National Adaptation Plan (NAP-ETH) in 2017. NAP-ETH builds on ongoing efforts to address climate change in the country’s development policy framework as well as sectoral and regional climate resilience strategies and adaptation plans. NAP-ETH provides an overarching framework for Ethiopia’s adaptation, including 18 adaptation options which address key vulnerabilities and five (5) strategic priorities to facilitate an enabling environment for effective implementation of the identified adaptation options.
Addressing the NAP-ETH strategic priorities remains critical for realizing Ethiopia’s CRGE vision. This entails strengthening adaptation capacity to current and future climate risks. However, despite efforts to move from a project-focused to a programmatic approach, capacity development efforts to implement integrated climate change adaptation, per the NAP-ETH, has faced challenges due to multiple factors, including:
- limited access to a well-organized knowledge base to inform climate-resilient planning processes;
- absent and/or limited financial, technical and institutional capacity to implement and coordinate NAP-ETH policies, strategies and cross-sectoral planning; and
- limited institutional structures and technical capacity to initiate a functional, cross-sectoral and iterative NAP-ETH process.
Therefore, the preferred intervention approach is to strengthen Ethiopia’s technical and institutional capacity to:
- systematically integrate climate change adaptation into existing policies, strategies and plans as well as planning and financing processes at both national and sub-national levels; and
- shift from a project-based to an integrated strategic approach to adaptation.
In alignment with the objective of NAP-ETH, the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI) as a delivery partner has supported the Environment Forest and Climate Change Commission (EFCCC)- the National Designated Authority(NDA) for soliciting funding from Green Climate Fund (GCF) Readiness window to facilitate the Integration of the National Adaptation Planning Process in Ethiopia. The NAP GCF Readiness project aims to pursue further integration of climate change adaptation in development policies and strategies, including macroeconomic and sectoral policies and strategies at the national level, as well as regional and woreda plans and strategies. This will be achieved through the following strategic outcomes:
- Adaptation planning governance and coordination mechanism supported;
- Climate vulnerability and adaptation investment rationale strengthened;
- Adaptation knowledge management, information sharing, and communication enhanced;
- integration of adaptation into the country’s overall development policy and strategy pursued;
- Adaptation finance strategy developed; and
- Monitoring, evaluation, and learning capacity and system developed.