Minister of Environment, Climate Change and Technology Aminath Shauna has stated that climate change is not only an environmental issue but an economic issue as well. She made the remark at the inaugural workshop held to launch the Capacity Building for Improved Transparency of Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation Actions in the Maldives (CBIT Maldives) project.
At the workshop, Minister Shauna highlighted the vulnerability of the Maldives to the adverse impacts of climate change and the need for urgent action. She said that the country’s fisheries and agriculture sectors are at risk due to climate change, due to worsening weather reducing the productivity of fishermen and deteriorating land hindering farmers. She said that mechanisms need to be in place to assess these damages.
Additionally, Minister Shauna warned that climate change will get worse in the next 10 years and that now is the time to initiate mitigation and adaptation efforts at the national level. She said that the main challenge is the lack of sharing of information between institutions and that making the information available would allow the necessary policies to be formulated and implemented.
The CBIT Maldives project is aimed at capacity building for compiling the greenhouse gas (GHG) inventory, tracking mitigation and adaptation actions, and establishing a climate finance tracking system in the Maldives. CBIT is funded by Global Environment Facility (GEF) trust fund and executed by the environment ministry with implementation support from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).