The Green Climate Fund (GCF) has approved US$697,183, equivalent to $145,620,613.21, for Guyana in Readiness Support for the agriculture sector.
Head of Office of Climate Change (OCC) Janelle Christian was reported by the Department of Public Information (DPI) as saying that approval was received by the country’s National Designated Authority (NDA), Minister of State Joseph Harmon, in June.
Christian added that approval of the funding is a testimony to Guyana’s continued engagement with the GCF, which started two years ago.
According to the DPI report, she explained that the idea for funding for the agriculture sector was first advanced during a regional workshop hosted by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (UN/FAO) in May, 2017, in Port of Spain, Trinidad. A proposal was then put forward for the Adaptation and Resilience Building in Guyana’s Agriculture sector.
At that time, the OCC head said, Guyana was ahead of its sister countries in terms of capacity building and accessing support but took the opportunity to fast-track the process of mobilising resources for this important sector.
Following the meeting, the FAO fielded a mission to Guyana in June, 2017, to assist the Ministry of Agriculture, its sub-agencies and the OCC to work on crafting the Readiness Proposal, which focused on generating resilience agriculture in the coastal area of Guyana.
The report said in October, 2017, as a first step to formulate the Full Funding proposal, FAO Guyana signed two letters of agreement with the University of Guyana (UG) Faculty of Earth and Environmental Sciences and the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture, which currently have a coordinated work plan for the delivery of baseline information, climate change vulnerability and other assessments.
