Regional meeting on ECOWAS draft Report on the State of the Environment Climate and perspectives

Regional meeting on ECOWAS draft Report on the State of the Environment Climate and perspectives

The Department of Economic Affairs and Agriculture, through the Directorate of Environment and Natural Resources, organized the regional meeting on the draft report on the State of the Environment, Climate and prospects for ECOWAS, from March 5 to 7, 2024 in Abuja, Nigeria .

The meeting brought together representatives of Member States, representatives of regional and international institutions (UEMOA, IUCN, WASCAL), the ECOWAS Staff and two external consultants.

The main objective of the meeting was to examine the draft ECOWAS report on the state of the environment, climate and regional perspectives in order to collect observations and contributions from experts in order to substantially improve the said report. .

This regional meeting was opened by Ms. Massandjé TOURE-LITSE, Commissioner for Economic Affairs and Agriculture. She recalled the objective of the meeting before dwelling on the state of environmental degradation. She underlined the existence of plans and strategies at the country and sub-region levels then indexed the insufficiency of data as confirmed by COP 27 and 28 on climate change and COP15 on Biodiversity. She also presented the specific objectives, namely: (i) better understanding our environment, our natural resources and our climate as well as their developments; ii) understand the challenges facing current efforts and identify the responses to them. The Commissioner closed her remarks by thanking the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) for its technical support, then wishing the participants fruitful work.

The draft ECOWAS Environment and Climate Report constitutes an important first attempt to provide Member States with relevant data and information on the environmental and climate status and trends of the region as well as political and operational recommendations.

The methodological approach adopted for its development follows the Driving Forces-Pressure-State-Impacts-Response model of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) which has been used in various ways to draft the Environmental Outlook global.

The draft report covers the following environmental thematic areas: i) Climate change and air quality; ii) Land; iii) Biodiversity and ecosystems; iv) Fresh waters; v) Marine and coastal environment; vi) Human settlements; vii) Waste.

It further presents the critical environmental points that require actions, to provide scientific evidence of the rapid changes taking place in the ECOWAS region, as well as their causes. This is to guide decisions on climate change and environmental management that will contribute to sustainable development efforts in the region.

This draft report also presents the summary of the national reports of each of the ECOWAS Member States . To this end, the Commission provided technical and financial support to five Member States including Côte d’Ivoire, Liberia, Gambia, Guinea and Niger for the drafting of their national reports.

The meeting made it possible to analyze the different sections of the report and relevant observations were made by the participants for its finalization.

At the end of this meeting, the participants adopted a road map and agreed, among other things, on the establishment of a select committee responsible for revising the document after the integration, by the consultants, of the observations made by the experts.