By Kimberlyn McKeever
MONROVIA, June 2 (LINA) – As part of efforts to increase the number of environmental experts in the country, Conservation International (CI) in collaboration with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Aether have certificated over 50 technicians from government line Ministries and Agencies.
The certification ceremony was as a result of a six-month project under the Capacity Building Initiative for Transparency (CBIT) project funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF) which seeks to equip technicians into becoming reliable Greenhouse Gas Emissions inventory data experts.
Speaking recently at the certification program held in Monrovia, the Executive Director of the EPA, Professor Wilson Tarpeh said that the project met its target goals due to the willingness of the EPA, CI and their partners to implement said project.
He noted that the implementation is also a way of strengthening Liberia’s national capacity by executing the transparency elements of the Paris Climate Agreement.
Professor Tarpeh added that since the inception of the project, it has made significant progress which includes: ensuring that there are procedures to measure, track and report mitigation and adaptation data from land use sectors like Agriculture, Energy and Waste, the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) transparency system that is put in place in accordance with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) standards, among others.
“We can now rely on the pool of sectorial experts to help develop and support the country’s National GHG, MRV inventory system, and we can also boast of having experts that are knowledgeable in making the country complete its NDCs through the gathering of quality data, analyzed data, ensure quality control and assurance in data processing as well as report on sectorial emissions among emitters,” said Tarpeh.
With these, he said, the capacity building gap in the GHG, MRV Inventory process is gradually becoming thin.
The EPA Executive Director, at the same time, thanked the Global Environment Facility for its support to Liberia in implementing the CBIT Project.
This support, he said, has given the country the enthusiasm to strengthen its commitment to the Paris Agreement and solicit funding for phase two of the project that will jump start soon.
“I must appreciate Aether in the United Kingdom for their immense support in reaching the project to its target,” Tarpeh cited.
Giving an overview of the project, the EPA, CBIT Focal Point, Mr. Arthur Becker explained that Aether limited based in the United Kingdom, engaged the government of Liberia to identify sectorial experts across NDCs sectors to embarked on a vigorous training that crossed several cardinal sectors.
Aether carried out intense training and was able to certificate 65 out of 96 initial participants.
The sole purpose of the training was to ensure reporting emissions level across the lenses of these sectors, with this, the training has a fundamental and corresponding benefit to reinforce Liberia’s drive in reporting GHG Emissions across different sectors and the existing sectors of the NDCs revised version which comes out to play a vital role in the next five years in terms of the country’s implementation.
For her part, the lead trainer on the CBIT project and consultant for Aether United Kingdom, Madam Emma Salisbury said that the essence of the project was to provide imposing greenhouse gas training to national experts engaged in the process, adding that data collected have been calculated together and produced sectorial greenhouse gas inventory report.
She said Aether has supported the development of the Monitoring, Reporting and Verification (MRV) system for the GHG inventory.
According to her, the project baseline study started in July 2020 and the focus of the training was August through December 2020, noting that the courses of the training were split into five sectors, including Energy, Agriculture, Forestry, Land Use and Waste sectors while participants of the training selected one of the courses to follow.
“All these were done through different mechanisms, some of which were workshops that put everyone together in order to learn from each other and discuss the outcome of the different training courses and at different stages of the project, there were also training webinars, regular trainings and assignments to help with the training process,” Emma explained.
“It is our hope that this certification process is going to produce a strong foundation for future greenhouse gas inventory engagement and capacity building,” Emma said.
Also speaking at the certification ceremony, CI, CBIT project manager, Mr. Nelson Jallah, said that the energy sector being the highest emitter of GHG, participated fully in the training thereby doing all courses provided and submitting all required activities data.
With this hard work shown by the energy sector, they were given the best participating hub certificate alongside the Forestry Development Authority who also exhibited consistency in the submission of reports and provision of data information for the GHG inventory.
“During the course of the project, there were hubs being established at relevant Ministries and Agencies as well as the University of Liberia. These hubs comprise the Ministry of Agriculture, Monrovia City Corporation, Ministry of Mines and Energy, Forestry Development Authority and the Ministry of Transport,” Jallah disclosed.
