The Global Environment Facility (GEF) has committed US$4.6 million to the project on Building Resilience through Innovation and Knowledge Services (BRICKS), an initiative to promote sustainable land and water management in key landscapes and climate-vulnerable areas of West Africa and the Sahel.
The project will advance monitoring and knowledge services, as well as spread lessons and good practices in twelve countries across the region.
15 October 2013: The Global Environment Facility (GEF) has committed US$4.6 million to the project on ‘Building Resilience through Innovation and Knowledge Services’ (BRICKS), an initiative to promote sustainable land and water management in key landscapes and climate-vulnerable areas of West Africa and the Sahel. The project will advance monitoring and knowledge services, as well as spread lessons and good practices in twelve countries across the region.
BRICKS is the regional component of the Sahel and West Africa Program to Support the Great Green Wall Initiative (SAWAP/GGWI), and the GEF’s contribution to the GGWI, which is a pan-Africa proposal to tackle poverty and address land degradation in desertification across the Sahel-Saharan region.
Present at the signing ceremony, held in Washington D.C., were Naoko Ishii, CEO and Chairperson of the GEF, and Colin Bruce, World Bank Director for Strategy and Operations in the Africa Region, alongside officials from the Interstate Committee for Drought Control in the Sahel (CILSS), the Sahara and Sahel Observatory (OSS), and the West and Central Africa Office of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN/PACO).
Speaking at the ceremony, Ishii said the project is “a key contribution from the GEF to the commitment to transformational change in the drylands. The BRICKS project will support a regional platform to ensure coherence in approaches toward sustainable land management across the region. And the participation of CILSS, OSS, and IUCN will strengthen the opportunity for involving civil society and grassroots organizations in the overall program.”
Djimé Adoum, CILSS Executive Secretary, said, “Through projects such as BRICKS we aim to build capacities of African institutions, strengthen country project implementation and secure robust development gains that not only help reduce poverty but also build the resilience and coping capacities of poor communities living in ecologically fragile, harsh environments.”
Additional funding for the SAWAP is coming from the GEF-administered Least Developed Countries Fund and the Special Climate Change Fund, as well as investments from the World Bank in agriculture, local development, forests, energy and disaster risk management. [GEF Press Release] [IISD RS Story on SAWAP/GGWI] [Global Mechanism News Release]