13:40 – 15:00, Conference Room 6
Africa Climate Risks Conference, United Nations Conference Centre, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Introduction

Attaining Africa's development objectives - as framed by the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and the continent's wider development blueprint, Agenda 2063 - requires closing large investment gaps urgently in key sectors such as agriculture, water, energy, transport, and landscape and ecosystems. These sectors are very sensitive to climate impacts. Against a changing and uncertain future, it is important to ensure that the biggest investments need in infrastructure, agriculture, water, energy, ecosystems, among others, perform in both today's and future climate. This is why the African Union Commission (AUC), the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), the World Bank and the African Development Bank have teamed up to establish the Africa Climate Resilient Investment Facility (AFRI-RES), with initial funding form the Nordic Development Fund (NDF). The initiative brings to bear the comparative strengths of each of the partners to integrate long term climate resilience in investments in climate sensitive sectors, including water, infrastructure, energy and agriculture under four components of project-level support; training, advocacy, dissemination and communication of lessons learned to enhance public and private sector understanding of climate risks; guidelines, standards and compendium of good practice; and a knowledge portal.

The session will introduce the initiative and showcase some of the headways already made on this critical topic and have a discussion on the challenges and opportunities of integrating climate risks in the large-scale services gaps in Africa in climate-sensitive sectors.

Documents

Draft Programme