Climate Resilience and Environmental Sustainability

The long-term and wide-ranging impacts of climate change pose a growing and structural risk to poverty eradication and sustainable development, not least given a high level of dependency on rain-fed agriculture and forests for food security, livelihoods and access to energy. As much as 10 per cent of GDP may be lost annually due to climate change11 as increasing natural disasters, loss of water resources, forests and biodiversity, and population displacement, especially from ecologically fragile lowlands, take their toll. Impacts on social cohesion and peace are also likely to be considerable.

To sustain development gains and increase resilience, UNDP will promote leapfrogging to a green economy and faster adaptation to climate change.

UNDP will support efforts to adapt to and mitigate the impacts of climate change and build resilience through piloting, learning and scaling up of tested adaptation practices in the ecosystems of the highlands and lowlands that address the poverty-environment nexus. Strategies will include the integrated landscape approach for natural resource management and food security, the use of innovative models and tools for monitoring and gender mainstreaming, and the integration of climate resilience into policies and strategies. UNDP will continue to engage in the implementation of gender-responsive community action plans to ensure integrated adaptation and mitigation responses that simultaneously tackle sustainability and poverty. Support will be provided for upscaling weather index-based and risk insurance systems. At a broader level, UNDP will help update Ethiopia’s nationally determined contribution as part of the Climate Promise Initiative, and support the preparation of the third national communication under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and biennial reports.

UNDP will sustain and scale up its assistance for natural resource management and conservation of biodiversity. UNDP will support the implementation of the Government’s 10-year Forest Sector Development Plan (FSDP), the REDD-plus mechanism and the strengthening of forest sector institutions to enhance the conservation and development of forests for multiple benefits, building on partnerships with the Governments of Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Preventing forest loss, promoting restoration and integrating sustainability into major commercial crops such as coffee will be priorities to raise productivity, boost livelihoods and reduce poverty. UNDP will partner closely with regional and city administrations on the implementation of the FSDP and intensify private sector engagement in the sustainable use of forest resources for value addition and job creation, utilizing, among other things, an emerging partnership with KOICA to tap Ethiopia’s major bamboo forests. UNDP will support measures to improve the conservation of biodiversity resources and sustainably manage protected areas. Action on combating desertification, a growing threat, will be accelerated.

UNDP will focus on access to renewable, affordable and clean energy as a major catalyst for the transition to a jobs-rich green economy, ensuring that women and female-headed households benefit from this investment. UNDP will work at the three levels of policy analysis, advocacy and advisory services to de-risk and create an enabling environment for the emergence of a market at scale for renewable energy services; prototyping of business models and technologies with private sector participation; and development of bankable projects to crowd-in investment. Partnerships with sister agencies will be emphasized as will South-South cooperation, tapping ongoing collaboration with the Government of China and others.

UNDP will build up its portfolio on sustainable urbanization, continuing work on urban waste management, combining livelihood improvement, development of urban greenery and climate change mitigation. Building on continued support to the Beautifying Sheger Project in Addis Ababa, a Smart Cities Hub will focus on solutions using digital and analogue technologies to boost inclusion, sustainability and resilience, with a special focus on the role of women in advancing the New Urban Agenda.

UNDP will invest in early warning and risk management systems to deal with the rising threat of natural disasters. Early warning systems will be developed in vulnerable regions, linked to contingency planning. UNDP will support the generation of gender-disaggregated, multi-hazard disaster risk assessments and information products with increased emphasis on hazard specifics and calculation of associated damage and loss potential vis-à-vis various risk scenarios. UNDP will generate a climate and disaster risk governance baseline and strengthen disaster risk governance, including for recovery; integrate disaster risk reduction into national planning, budgeting and accounting systems; promote and support tracking of disaster risk management investments; and draw attention to gender-differentiated impacts and responses. (Read more in our Country Programme Document)

Celebrating a milestone - Bale Mountains inscribed on the World Heritage List (Oct 2023)