By Agency Reporter

Wednesday, 24 Nov 2010

Nigeria is the second largest beneficiary of the Global Environment Facility, the Chief Executive Officer of GEF, Mrs. Monique Barbut, has said.

South Africa is the largest beneficiary on the African continent.

Barbut, who disclosed this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria on Tuesday in Washington DC, also said that GEF had shown a lot of interest in environmental affairs in Nigeria.

She said, “As the second largest beneficiary of GEF programme in Africa, the fund had impacted positively on programmes implementation with tremendous benefits to the country in its drive to safeguard and ensure environmental safety.”

Barbut, who is also the chairperson of GEF, said that Nigeria in the past had challenges and difficulties in engaging with the body, but that with the right leadership in place, the country had taken its rightful position on GEF programmes in Africa.

She said, “Nigeria has had difficulties in the past, engaging with GEF because of the changes in government and the bureaucratic system that had limited the success recorded in these efforts.

“But now that we have the right leadership and partner in GEF, we will write a programme document with Nigeria for the next four years, which will be part of the Nigerian development strategies.”

According to her, with a programme document tagged; “Business Action Plan” for the country, Nigeria will see the top priority issues of environmental challenges being taken care of by GEF.

She also noted that GEF, in the past 20 years, had been the only multi-lateral financial institution in the world to finance all climate change mitigation and adaptation programmes.

She said, “GEF is the financier of the national adaptation plan on climate change in the country and the major financier of two thirds of the climate change projects in Africa.

“During the past three years, GEF has carried out programmes in Africa, worth $150m on land degradation and co-financied with other international donor agencies, projects to the tune of $1.5bn.‘‘

Source: Punch