2 November 2015
Niger Basin Countries Adopt Climate Resilience Investment Plan
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The countries of the Niger Basin have jointly developed a Climate Resilience Investment Plan (CRIP) that outlines 246 priority actions for building climate resilience.

The nine member States of the Niger Basin Authority (NBA), Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Côte d'Ivoire, Guinea, Mali, Niger and Nigeria, collaborated on the Plan and pledged to advocate for technical and financial support to implement its priority actions.

wb_bassinniger27 October 2015: The countries of the Niger Basin have jointly developed a Climate Resilience Investment Plan (CRIP) that outlines 246 priority actions for building climate resilience. The nine member States of the Niger Basin Authority (NBA), Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, Mali, Niger and Nigeria, collaborated on the Plan and pledged to advocate for technical and financial support to implement its priority actions.

These West and Central African countries adopted the Plan at the Meeting of the Niger Basin Council of Water Ministers 2015 in Cotonou, Benin, on 30 September 2015, and at the Ministerial Roundtable of Ministers of Finance and Economic Development of the Niger Basin Riparian Countries in Lima, Peru, on 7 October 2015.

The urgency created by climate change, combined with weak monitoring and information systems, lack of proper infrastructure and limited governance capacity, has prompted the Niger Basin countries to integrate adaptation into development efforts and take a cooperative approach to managing the shared water resources of the Niger Basin, according to a World Bank press release. The CRIP aims to address many of the problems faced by the region, including through investments in reliable information systems, strengthened institutions and sustainable infrastructure.

The CRIP’s priority actions were carefully selected from existing planning documents and vetted through an inclusive and comprehensive consultative process. With an estimated cost of US$3.1 billion, the actions include climate insurance for farmers in Burkina Faso; changes to farming calendars and crop types in Benin; updates to the national gender policy in Cameroon; anti-erosion and anti-silting measures in Mali; fallow land restoration and agroforestry promotion in Niger; and rehabilitation of water storage structures in Nigeria.

The Niger Basin countries intend to present the CRIP at the 21st session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 21) to the UNFCCC in November-December 2015 in Paris, France. The Plan was developed with the support of the African Development Bank (AfDB), World Bank Water and Energy Global Practices and World Bank Cooperation in International Waters in Africa (CIWA) programme. [World Bank Press Release] [World Bank Press Release – French] [NBA Ministerial Roundtable Summary] [World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) Press Release]

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