07/10/2016
Twenty-eight participants from fourteen West Africa countries (Benin, Cabo Verde, Cote d'Ivoire, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea Guinea Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Togo) participated to the Sub-Regional Dialogue on the MRV framework West Africa held from 4-6 October 2016 in Lomé, Togo. The UNDP/UNEP Global Support Programme (GSP) organised the workshop, in collaboration with the Secretariat of UN Framework Convention on Climate on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and its Regional Collaboration Centre (RCC) of Lomé, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), ECOWAS Centre for Renewable energy and energy efficiency (ECREEE) and Centre Regional Agrhymet.
The workshop aimed to provide technical backstopping on the Measurement, Reporting ad Verification (MRV) framework, with a specific focus on the Energy and Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use (AFOLU) and to support countries and regional institutions for South-South and South-North Cooperation.
The workshop provided to participants with a better understanding of the international MRV framework and related provisions in the UNFCCC and the Paris Agreement, including the integration between National Communications (NCs), Biennial Update Reports (BURs) and Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs). Senegal, Ghana, Togo and Mali shared their experience and lessons learnt from their MRV processes, while the different agencies provided information on the type of support that is available regionally to support the MRV. ECREEE and Agrhymet also provided an overview of the situation in the region on the Energy and AFOLU sectors, respectively.
During the workshop parallel working group sessions for energy and AFOLU were run: technical and institutional issues related to the setup of national MRV framework were discussed among the 14 Western African countries. The last day of the workshop was fully dedicated to scope interest in establishing a country-driven West African South-South cooperation initiative on MRV. The participants expressed consensus on the establishment of such an initiative, shared ideas on its vision, functioning, timing, priority areas of intervention and expected outcomes. Participants also agreed to keep the momentum and move steps forward in the next months for the operationalization of the Network in the first half of 2017.
The workshop also resulted in a strengthened interagency collaboration between UNDP/UNEP GSP, FAO and the UNFCCC which will ensure a more effective support to the region.