Capacity-Building in Climate Action for Public and Private Sectors

The Climate Change Division in the Ministry of Economic Growth and Job Creation is targeting public and private sector stakeholders for capacity development in climate action.

“We want to place on record, the need for significant capacity-building if we are going to move forward,” said Principal Director of the Climate Change Division, Una May Gordon.

She was speaking at the Division’s inaugural Capacity-building Initiative for Transparency (CBIT) workshop with key partners and stakeholders on Tuesday (January 29), at the Terra Nova All-Suite Hotel, St. Andrew.

The CBIT workshops are in keeping with the Paris Agreement on Climate Change transparency requirements.

The Paris accord, to which Jamaica is party, is an agreement within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) dealing with greenhouse gas emissions mitigation, adaptation and financing, starting in the year 2020.

Ms. Gordon said the Division will start engagement with the private sector stakeholders in two weeks.

“There is a need to strengthen both the public and private sector in MRV-related systems and these are all part of the transparency framework,” she noted.

Stakeholders will meet with local agencies and international consultants to register their input on climate change activities.

Discussions from the consultations will shape the project proposal to be submitted to the Global Environment Facility (GEF), an international funding organisation on environmental issues, for review and approval.

The project is aimed at developing and implementing a platform to centralise and manage climate change-related information from different institutions and creating the national MRV system.

The project will also test the viability of blockchain technology to monitor progress towards implementing the country’s Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) to a minimal global temperature increase.

If successful, Jamaica will deploy the technology to test other possible NDC support activities such as facilitating clean energy trading, enhancing climate finance flows, and improving carbon emissions trading.

The Climate Change Division’s initial project concept was approved by the GEF to be pursued and is funded through the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) to the amount of US$1.3 million.

It is the first CBIT project to be implemented by a multilateral development bank.