Establishment of a climate change competence centre (4C Maroc)
Project description
Title: Establishment of a national competence centre for climate change
Commissioned by: Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU)
Country: Morocco
Lead executing agency: State Secretariat to the Minister of Energy, Mines and Sustainable Development, in charge of Sustainable Development
Overall term: 2013 to 2020
Context
Morocco’s geographical location makes it very vulnerable to the negative impacts of climate change. Since signing the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (1992), the country has been actively engaged in combating these impacts. The first national emissions statistics were compiled in 1994. A national plan to tackle global warming was presented in 2009. This reflects the country’s desire to remain a small producer of greenhouse gases, despite a high level of economic growth. At the beginning of the project there was no formal structure to address climate change either at national or regional level. The climate change competence centre is intended to remedy this situation.
Objective
Morocco’s ability to adapt to climate change and reduce greenhouse gases has been strengthened by the climate change competence centre (4C Maroc).
Approach
The project supports the development of Morocco's climate change policy and of the national Green Investment Plan. Anchoring the project in the State Secretariat for Sustainable Development and developing the independent climate change competence centre (Maroc 4C) define a sustainable institutional framework. The training needs of the relevant stakeholders in climate change are analysed and the necessary courses offered. The project shares examples of good practice and develops tools for sustainable knowledge management, including climate databases, indicators of vulnerability to the negative impacts of climate change and monitoring greenhouse gas emissions. At the international level, the project supports South-South and triangular cooperation with the climate change competence centre’s African partners.
Results
4C Maroc was formally established in October 2016 as a public interest group. It brings together public and private stakeholders from civil society and research institutions. The 4C Maroc website contains databases (projects, research and experts), national climate change policy documents and positive examples.
The structure of the future Designated National Authority for the Green Climate Fund has been designed. The project also facilitated the accreditation of the Moroccan Agency for Agricultural Development.
The project supported the development and planning phases for the implementation of Morocco’s nationally determined contribution and the establishment of a national monitoring system for greenhouse gas emissions. This monitoring system has contributed to the climate reports to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change since 2016. It has also been officially institutionalised since October 2018.
Various target groups have benefited from the training provided by 4C Maroc. The courses covered climate change in general, but also dealt with more specific topics, including, for example, climate finance (from which the private sector, banks and African partners particularly benefited), the development of nationally determined contributions (these courses were mainly aimed at the public sector in Morocco and African partner countries) and the integration of adaptation measures into planning (several women’s cooperatives in particular took advantage of this training). Since the UN Climate Change Conference in Warsaw in 2013, Moroccan climate negotiators have undergone continuous training for climate summits, which has improved their active participation in the negotiations.
The 4C project also supported the Steering Committee of the 2016 UN climate summit in Marrakech. The project has organised several major events in this context, including informal negotiations, expert workshops on nationally determined contributions and adaptation metrics. The latter has since developed into a cycle of annual conferences.
At the 2016 UN climate summit, King Mohammed VI announced the establishment of a climate experts’ network within the climate change competence centre. This will also contribute to supporting the newly-created African climate commissions (Sahel, Congo Basin and small island states). 4C Maroc now houses the Secretariat of INCCCETT 4CB (International Network of Climate Change Centers of Excellence and Think Tanks for Capacity Building).