Ethiopia’s Approach to Reduce Vulnerability to Climate Change, Land degradation and Loss of Biodiversity

1. Ethiopia’s Approach to Reduce Vulnerability to Climate Change, Land degradation and Loss of Biodiversity Environment and Development Challenges and Opportunities for LDCs 28 February 2011

2. Concerns associated with environment for development are put high on the political agenda • The right to live in a clean and healthy environment is one of the fundamental human rights in Ethiopia. • Since 1995, important policy, legal and institutional measures have been being taken • There has been a growing perception and commitment

3. Environment is placed prominently in the Growth and Transformation Plan of Ethiopia (GTP) Programme: ‘’Building a climate resilient green economy’’. Goals: • Integrate actions required to adapt to climate change into development • turn into a middle income country with a zero-net carbon emission • build a climate resilient green economy at least in 30% of the Woredas, and • ensure effective compliance with the existing environmental laws

4. Interventions are prioritized to achieve the stated 4 goals under the GTP • Diversify the application of renewable energy, including through the use of biofuel and biogas • Increase the application of compost to enhance soil fertility and productivity • Increase vegetation cover through the management of areas closed off to grazing • Enhance ecosystem capacity to maximize goods and services sustainably • Reverse and halt the trend of unsustainable consumption and production • Build a climate resilient economy at all levels and in all sectors • Boost the process of building a middle income Ethiopia with a zero-net carbon emission

5. Who is championing the initiative building CRGE in Ethiopia? • H.E PM Meles is behind the CGE agenda • Ethiopia is taking a leading role in both the regional and global response to climate change. • The Environmental Council aims to achieve the ambitious objective of a Climate Resilient Green Economy by 2025. • The Environmental Protection Authority is fostering a rule based compliance, cooperation and synergistic approach amongst actors and stakeholders.

6. How will the plan of building CRGE be implemented? • The process of building CRGE does not favour dispersed and fragmented projects except for demonstration purposes. • Ethiopia accepts to pursue all the multilateral environmental conventions to which it is a Party, but not implement each one of them as separate entities. • To build a climate resilient green economy, we will need to be flexible and innovative. We will need to learn from our mistakes and refine our approach based on emerging evidence and thinking.

7. Main challenges • Enhancing the level of the quality of the available human capital, • Using the maximum potential of our social capital for development, • Raising the quantity and quality of our physical capital, • Reversing and halting the deterioration of our natural capital, and • getting rid of financial limitations that hold back our potential

8. Conclusion • We have one critical challenge. It is lack of finance to transfer technologies required for building a climate resilient green economy. • Otherwise, we know where we are, we know where we want to get and we know how to get there.