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The project "Developing Capacities to advance the National Adaptation Plan", supported by UN Environment Programme, has a contribution of USD $2,996,325 from the Green Climate Fund, over three years.
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Given its condition as an island state highly vulnerable to extreme weather events, the Dominican Republic urgently needs to strengthen its current planning framework to address medium and long-term adaptation needs.
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UNEP will provide technical assistance to the Dominican Republic to strengthen the generation of climate science, develop capacities to identify, prioritize, and implement adaptation strategies and advance in the integration of the private sector in the adaptation financing.
Santo Domingo, July 30th, 2019 - The Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources and UNEP hosted the Launch Workshop of the project "Developing Capacities to advance the National Adaptation Plan".
This project, financed through the Readiness program of the Green Climate Fund and whose duration is three years, aims to reduce the country's vulnerability to the negative impacts of climate variability and climate change, through: i) the integration of adaptation into regional and local planning schemes, as well as in the development of the most relevant productive sectors, ii) the strengthening of the monitoring and evaluation framework to measure the progress of adaptation and iii) the creation of an enabling environment that allows different actors to be linked to the medium and long-term adaptation financing scheme.
According to current climate projections, climate change is expected to intensify the negative impacts of extreme weather events in island countries such as the Dominican Republic.
Soyla González de Gutiérrez, Vice Minister for Environmental Management in the Dominican Republic, said it is necessary for the country to focus on climate change adaptation in order for humans to survive the new global scenario. “It is paramount to promote adaptation actions such as the National Adaptation Plan to be prepare as a country and contribute to the resilience of ecosystems and the lives of the people in the Dominican Republic”.
In turn, the Director of Climate Change of the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources of the Dominican Republic, Pedro García Brito, emphasized that in the process of adaptation planning it is necessary to integrate the different actors of the country, not only public officials of other institutions, but also civil society, the private sector and the academy. "Adaptation to climate change is a cross-cutting issue and therefore the various social actors must be linked from the beginning so that from their own institutions they can contribute to the national adaptation process."
UN Environment will provide technical support to the Dominican Republic to advance in the creation of technical and institutional capacities to address medium and long-term adaptation planning.
Marta Moneo, Adaptation Program Officer of UN Environment, mentioned that “We are at a very interesting time for adaptation to climate change, not only given the recognition of a global adaptation objective but also given the increasing efforts of the countries of the region to adjust their development agendas and models considering climate variability and change. It is necessary to move forward in a coordinated way in financing adaptation strategies that link both government actors and non-traditional actors including the private sector and academia”.
The process of accompaniment to the countries for the formulation of their National Adaptation Plans was established in 2010 under the auspices of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The objective is to help countries reduce vulnerability by increasing their adaptive capacity and community resilience. It also seeks to facilitate the integration of climate change adaptation into new and existing policies, programs and activities, and in particular, in the processes of definition and implementation of national development strategies.
For more information about the Dominican Republic NAP project, contact Jose Martinez Guridy (Jose.martinezguridy@un.org) and Sebastián Rodriguez (sebastian.rodriguez@un.org).
