Niger Delta Concern At World Bank Climate Project

FOLLOWING last week's announcement by the World Bank that eight countries will be offered funding for adaptation to climate change through the bank’s new Pilot Program for Climate Resilience (PPCR), leading environment and development organizations in the Niger Delta, Nigeria's main oil and gas region, are already expressing deep concern that approximately half of that funding will be in the form of loans.

Spokesman for the concerned Niger Delta groups, Nnimmo Bassey, told our correspondent yesterdasy on telephone that they are of the view that while this programme will provide grants for technical assistance to integrate climate resilience into national plans and budgets, the projects to implement those plans would be largely financed through loans.

“Adaptation funding is compensation for damages done and, as such, must be given in the form of grants,” Bassey, who is the Chairman of Friends of the Earth International (FoEI), a global federation of environmental rights advocacy groups, said.

According to Bassey who is also the Executive Director of Environmental Rights Action (ERA), ''to offer a vulnerable country a few million dollars to integrate resilience into development plans, but then to stipulate that any project originating from the plans will have to be funded by loans entirely misses the point. In many cases, a country will have no other option than to take on loans just to access desperately needed funding.”

Similarly, the Executive Director of the Jubilee USA Network, Neil Watkins, in an on-line statement to our correspondent added, ''instead of having the ‘polluter pay,’ with the new World Bank climate resilience fund, the polluter gets paid.''

Continuing, he said, ''the World Bank must provide grants, not loans, to finance adaptation to climate change. After all, the bank’s largest shareholders caused the climate crisis through their emissions. Asking poor countries to go into further debt to clean up a mess they didn’t create is outrageous.”

From the perspective of the Niger Delta activists, the PPCR seems to represent a top-down, donor-driven initiative which allegedly lacks meaningful participation from civil society, particularly from impacted oil-bearing communities.

Also commenting, the President of Egbema Movement for Justice (EMJ), Robinson Uroupa, said ''rather than fund this undemocratic process, countries should be wise to put money into the Adaptation Fund under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.''

The Pilot Program on Climate Resilience is however, the first operational programme in the World Bank’s Strategic Climate Fund. The Fund was approved by the World Bank’s Board of Directors on July 1, 2008.

The objective of the PPCR is to explore ways to integrate climate risk and resilience into core development planning. It is expected that it will provide approximately US $500 million in grants and loans.

In the mean time, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Cambodia, Mozambique, Nepal, Niger, Tajikistan and Zambia have been invited to participate in the PPCR.

ENDS

© Scoop Media