The 3rd Laamu Climate Change Forum opened in Laamu Atoll on Monday.
It is the final forum to be implemented through the Low Emission Climate Resilient Development (LECReD) programme. The 3-day forum, themed “Learning from Laamu”, focuses on sharing experiences and lessons learnt through the implementation of the LECReD programme, as shared by community stakeholders and national level partners.
Discussions at the forum are focused on extracting lessons from Laamu over three major topics: mobilizing climate action and green growth within an integrated planning approach, replication and scaling up of initial results from Laamu, and improving the community awareness and public participation in order to achieve LECReD.
The LECReD programme is funded by the Government of Denmark under a grant assistance to address the issues of climate change in the Maldives. The 3-year programme is executed and implemented by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and Ministry of Environment and Energy.
The forum was officially called into order by State Minister for Environment Abdulla Ziyad and Health Minister Abdulla Nazim Ibrahim. Speaking at the inaugural function, Ziyad highlighted the important role of the forum in creating increase awareness amongst stakeholders on formulating and implementing climate resilient developmental plans for the atoll.
Speaking at the function Laamu Atoll Council President Yoosuf Amir noted that local authorities, including councils, government ministries and NGO’s are assisting UNDP in carrying out various projects under LECReD in the islands of Laamu Atoll.
UN Resident Coordinator Shoko Noda highlighted the Maldives’ role in the international arena to raise awareness on climate change, especially to vulnerable small island states and coastal areas. She also spoke about the achievements of the previous editions of the forum.
According to the organisers, the forum comprises of panel discussions on local development planning, ecosystem resilience, public health and DRR, water safety and security, energy security, food security, women and climate change and will include technical visits to project sites.
More than 200 participants are attending the 3-day forum, including high-level government officials, heads of participating UN organisations, leaders of private sector companies, representatives from national and local level authorities, academia and non-governmental organisations.