Africa-Press – Mauritius. A Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) was signed, this afternoon, between the Université des Mascareignes (UDM) and the Ministry of Environment, Solid Waste Management and Climate Change, during a ceremony held at the UDM Rose-Hill Campus.
This signature is part of the 2050 Facility financed by the Agence Française de Développement (AFD) amounting to 1.1 million Euros to develop long-term strategies in key adaptation and mitigation sectors for a more resilient, low carbon sustainable country. The Sustainability and Climate Change Programme (SCCP) and its website were also launched on that occasion.
The Minister of Environment, Solid Waste Management and Climate Change, Mr Kavydass Ramano, the Ambassador of the Republic of France to Mauritius, Mrs Florence Caussé-Tissier, the Director of the AFD (Mauritius & Seychelles), Mr André Pouillès-Duplaix, the Director-General of Université des Mascareignes, Dr Radhakrishna Somanah, and other personalities were present during the event.
In his address, Minister Ramano said that the 2050 Facility is a very important grant tool, created in 2018 in the framework of the ‘One Planet Summit’ in Paris, to support countries that are partners to France, in their transition towards a low-carbon and resilient development model.
He highlighted that the Facility will support Mauritius in the development of a long-term strategy for submission to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and to ensure coherence between the objectives of the next nationally determined contribution and the long-term decarbonisation and resilience objective.
The Facility, he underlined will focus on the two sectors most impacted by climate change namely, Tourism and Agriculture, and also the two most greenhouse gas emitting sectors, that is Energy and Transport.
The contribution of the University of the Mascarene Islands, he pointed out, will be crucial for the formulation of long-term strategies for the Energy, Transport and Agriculture sectors.
This will be done through the sponsorship of eight students, four PhDs and four Masters, from public and private institutions, under the SCCP, he indicated.
This partnership, therefore aims to strengthen cooperation between academia and policy makers in the formulation of long-term strategies and to develop local expertise in public and public and private sector institutions, he said.
Ambassador Caussé-Tissier, for her part, said that the Indian Ocean countries are among the most vulnerable countries being impacted by climate change.
To keep global warming below 1.5°C this century, as targeted by the Paris Agreement, the COP 21 member countries made a landmark agreement to combat climate change and to accelerate and intensify the actions and investments needed for a sustainable low carbon future, she recalled.
She reiterated, in that regard, the collaboration of the French Government to support Mauritius in the development of a long-term strategy at national level.
As for Dr Somanah, he spoke of the direct and indirect impacts of climate change on Small Island Developing States (SIDS). He highlighted that SIDS are economically, socially and environmentally vulnerable.
These vulnerabilities pose unique challenges to the achievement of sustainable development goals, hence the need for the support of partner countries especially now when the world is undergoing a global crisis, he stated.
The SCCP programme, he stressed, supported by the UDM will promote the advancement of quality research in this field, and create an interface between science and public policy.
Mr Pouillès-Duplaix qualified this cooperation programme as rich and ambitious and, which he said, will mobilise many actors in Mauritius to collectively respond to the challenges of combating climate change.
All this work will serve as a basis for the development of a long-term Mauritian strategy that takes into account the interactions between the different sectors of activity, the country’s own resources and likely developments on an international scale, he underscored.
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