Several African ministers in charge of water are taking part in the 22nd Conference of Parties-COP22 organized in Morocco (7-18 November). Water issues are at the top of the COP22 agenda. Burundi has submitted five projects to be supported.
COP22 session
Eric Nkurunziza, activist in environment and lecturer of environment law at the “Université Lumière de Bujumbura” said COP22 is the continuation of COP21 held in Paris last year. “The attendees in COP21 conference adopted some recommendations on climate change. However, the latter weren’t yet fully implemented in the respective countries”, said Nkurunziza. He said the participants of COP22 must focus on how to put into force the Paris Agreement on climate change. “The developed countries which polluted more the world must make a major contribution to solutions while the developing countries including Burundi need more technical and financial support to be resilient to climate change”, he said. For achieving this, Nkurunziza suggested two main ways namely mitigation and adaptation measures.
Emmanuel Niyonkuru, Minister of environment, water and urban territory said five projects have been presented at COP22 for support. “There were promises in Paris during the last conference. Today, the 22nd conference of parties is the “COP of action” to put into force the promises of the earth planet”, said Niyonkuru.
Five projects in favor of Burundi
The minister said that the most interesting thing at the African level is the fundraising for the projects. The latter were elaborated and transmitted to the UN convention. On behalf of Burundi, the ministry of environment through its department of water and mineral resources management submitted five projects that will be discussed during COP22. “We hope that our partners who promised to support us will be mobilized to contribute more to the fundraising”, he said.
The projects include the mechanisms of water resources’ protection and stabilization of the rain dynamics of Mirwa, the protection of Lake Rwihinda in Kirundo Province, the sanitation of the shore of Lake Tanganyika, the quality monitoring of rivers and lakes in Burundi as well as the promotion and management of waste solid in urban centers.
“These are additional projects that were asked by the Kingdom of Morocco in addition to the projects we set up when we prepared COP22”, said the Minister.
During the opening ceremony of COP22, the question about finance related to the projects in Africa was raised.
Salaheddine Mezouar, Foreign Minister of Morocco and COP22 President emphasized that while the $100 billion climate finance roadmap by 2020 for developing countries is a great start to leverage private financing, more needs to be done. “We are optimistic about the emergence of green finance, including the Green Fund and COP22 would also concentrate on finding ways to optimize climate friendly financing, especially towards adaptation projects. COP22 will be a COP of solutions, where partnerships, initiatives and projects will be made to reinforce capacity at the project level to help make them more “bankable”, he said.
According to COP22 President, the key areas for climate finance to be addressed during COP22 are in renewable energies, water, agriculture forests and climate adaptation.
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