UNEP DTU Partnership expert joins adaptation board

A new board for the Adaptation Benefits Mechanism will promote adaptation action in Africa with UNEP DTU Partnership participation

November 5, 2019

Promoting climate adaptation action and help local communities adapt to the devastating impacts of climate change, the African Development Bank has appointed a group of renowned experts, among them UNEP DTU Partnership senior advisor Fatima-Zahra Taibi, to the executive board of the Adaptation Benefits Mechanism (ABM).

The ABM board is being assisted by an interim secretariat, which is placed in the Bank’s Climate Change and Green Growth department, headed by the director Dr. Anthony Nyong.

“We have on board some of the brightest minds in the climate change world, with tons of experience in different areas and with different stakeholder groups for ABM. They have the noble and pioneering task of convincing the world that adaptation action, just like mitigation action, has value and should be rewarded,” Nyong said.

“I am proud of the excellent composition of the ABM board, its regional distribution and full gender equality.”

Mobilizing finance for resilience

The ABM aims to mobilize public and private sector finance for enhanced climate change resilience and adaptation by creating a new asset – certified adaptation benefits.

The mechanism will assist developing countries with meeting climate change needs and priorities for adaptation set out in their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement, in particular those requiring international cooperation.

UNEP STU Partnership senior advisor, Fatima-Zahra Taibi joins the board with experience from the early beginnings of the ABM.
“Having worked on the inception of the adaptation benefits mechanism, I am excited to have been part of the journey and see it develop from an idea to something concrete with pilot projects under way and an established board. I am confident that it will deliver adaptation benefits in Africa where most needed, mobilize finance to help local communities adapt to the devastating impacts of climate change and assist countries in achieving the adaptation component of their NDCs,” she says.

Proving effectiveness

During the pilot phase, the African Development Bank and partners will seek funding from various sources to realize multiple small-scale resilience projects to test the mechanism on the ground. The demonstration projects will be used to develop methodologies for delivery of adaptation benefits, verify the outcomes and prove the effectiveness of ABM for mobilizing new adaptation finance for replication.

The concept of the ABM was developed by the African Development Bank with the support of the Climate Investment Funds, in collaboration with the governments of Uganda and Cote d’Ivoire and various stakeholders. The ABM is potentially applicable in all countries.

The board members are: Evelyne Batamuliza, a climate change finance and gender expert from Rwanda; Louise Helen Brown, a Namibian who formerly worked for the African Development Bank; Luc Gnacadja, who served as Benin’s Minister of the Environment, Housing, and Urban Planning from June 1999 to February 2005 and former Executive Secretary of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification; climate policy expert Dr. Axel Michaelowa; Senegal’s Daouda Ben Oumar Ndiaye, lead climate adaptation specialist at the Islamic Development Bank; Doreen Mnyulwa from Zimbabwe, director of the Regional Agriculture and Environmental Innovation Network for Africa; Fatima-Zahra Taibi from Morocco, senior advisor at the United Nations Environment /Technical University of Denmark (DTU) Partnership; and Assefa Tofu, director of the Ethiopia Dry Lands Development Program of World Vision Ethiopia.