On Monday October 2, 2023 in Ouagadougou, the Minister of Environment, Water and Sanitation, Roger Baro chaired the opening ceremony of the regional 2023 assessment and 2024 planning workshop of the BENKADI regional program.

The said program is essentially focused on combating the harmful effects of climate change in four West African countries. These include, among others, Burkina Faso, Benin, Ivory Coast and Mali. It started in 2021 and ends in 2025. 

For the Regional Director of the BENKADI program, Sylvestre Tiemtoré, this workshop will allow us to take a retrospective and uncompromising look at the implementation of the activities of the BENKADI regional program in 2023 in the four member countries of the Consortium and to capitalize on good practices for the programming for the year 2024.

“As a result, we can see a lot of progress in the four countries. The major challenge on which the program was focused is to improve the effectiveness of public environmental policies in the four countries,” he added.

As far as Ivory Coast is concerned, the program mainly focused on the fight against deforestation. The commitment of the population alongside the government through awareness-raising actions to help minimize the harmful effects of coastal erosion in this country.

In Benin, the program works to promote the integration of the ecosystem-based approach. 

Also, a law was passed to integrate this approach into public environmental policies which will allow populations to be more resilient to the effects of climate change. 

For Burkina, the program supports the government in adopting the unique framework of conventions which allows all stakeholders, according to the convention to fight against desertification or climate change and biodiversity, to be able to dialogue with the State.

With regard to Mali, BENKADI has made it possible to support 24 municipalities which are in the process of integrating the sustainable land management approach into municipal economic and social development plans.

Note that in 2024, the program intends to accelerate progress in terms of texts, laws and implementing decrees. 

Minister Baro expressed his gratitude to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of the Netherlands for its constant commitment to supporting “our” countries in the search for solutions to the various challenges of development and sustainable environmental management, and more particularly , its commitment to supporting this West African civil society initiative through funding from the BENKADI Regional Program.

Latribunedufaso.net

Source: DCRP/MEEA