As part of its ongoing efforts in supporting Iran to enhance its national capabilities to mitigate climate change, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations is providing training opportunities to Iranian experts.
The program is aimed at enhancing their knowledge and skills to scale up climate investment for agricultural and rural development sectors, leverage partnerships with global funding bodies and build climate-resilient development pathways.
Some 20 representatives from Iranian public and private sectors attended this round of workshops where they were provided with requisite vision, understanding, tools and hands-on training on developing climate rationale, collecting required data and information, assessing project idea, concept note and full proposals during a five-day workshop, FAO’s representation office in Tehran wrote on its website Fao.org.
The International Affairs Bureau of Iran’s Department of Environment told Financial Tribune that the workshop was held in two rounds. The first round of “readiness program”, as FAO calls it, was held from Oct. 5-7 and the second round took place on 26th and 27th of the same month.
More workshops on the subject will be held in the following months, but the exact dates have yet to be announced, DOE told us.
The attendees were trained on critical project-formulating concepts, including paradigm shift, theory of change, simplified approval procedures and performance measurement framework, according to the six criteria for Green Climate Fund investment.
Within this workshop, the national approval process for accessing GCF funds was also reviewed and discussed by the participants. This assessment process, which is called the No-Objection Procedure is an evaluation method developed for the National Designated Authority at the Department of Environment. NOP will enable NDA to evaluate, assess and score all prospective concepts and projects that wish to access GCF funds.
Partnering with the Department of Environment and the Green Climate Fund, “FAO is committed to support Iran’s National Designated Authority and respective stakeholders to engage with the international bodies and to access the climate finance to limit or reduce greenhouse gas emissions, adapt to the impacts of climate change and boost climate-resilient development in the country,” Gerold Bodeker, FAO’s representative to Iran, said in his remarks delivered at the workshop in October.
“FAO stands ready to assist the Islamic Republic of Iran as it raises its ambition on climate action. The organization works closely with its international and national counterparts to build a good understanding of global green-climate approval process modality and criteria among engaged stakeholders in the country.”
FAO, being the lead UN agency in promoting climate-smart approaches, practices and techniques in the agriculture sector, implements the project “Green Climate Fund Readiness and Preparatory Program of the Islamic Republic of Iran”, which supports the country in its efforts to preserve the environment and biodiversity, and build resilience among millions of rural family farmers.
FAO has also started the implementation of a Technical Cooperation Program project to enhance the resilience of Iranian rural communities and agricultural systems against the effects of extreme climatic events in collaboration with the Agriculture Ministry.
Funded by FAO, the project is focused on improving the knowledge and capacities of Iranian stakeholders for soil and water management in four target provinces: Golestan, Khuzestan, Lorestan and Sistan-Baluchestan. The organization lends its expertise to Iranian parties to strengthen the national disaster risk management systems and mechanisms, Mehr News Agency reported.
In this regard, FAO recently organized an inception workshop, bringing together different stakeholders of the project, including experts from the MAJ Department of Water and Soil; the Energy Ministry; Iran Meteorological Organization; Forests, Rangeland and Watershed Management Organization; MAJ’s Office for Disaster Risk Reduction; the Agricultural Research, Education and Extension Organization; provincial officials and local communities, to establish an operational national agriculture monitoring system to take steps for the implementation of the project.
Participants discussed the project's implementation requirements and challenges, and the progress made so far in the inception phase.
The experts also examined the shared inputs for provincial-level strategies for climate-resilient soil and water management, and disaster risk management.
Mentioning the extensive damage caused by the 2019 floods to the country, Bodeker, in his opening remarks at the event, emphasized that “the project strengthens stakeholders’ capacities in climate-risk informed soil and water management, flood-risk management systems and mechanisms, and water and soil resources rehabilitation measures to address and mitigate the damages and losses to the agriculture sector caused by floods.”
Bodeker added, “All these activities are aimed at reducing risks and enhancing the resilience of stakeholders, enabling them to cope with future extreme events and consequently improving food and nutrition security of flood-affected agricultural communities in the target provinces.”
Promoting the establishment of enabling policies for climate change action, FAO provides support to strengthen member-country capacities to plan, implement and report on climate change adaptation and mitigation and build the resilience of the agriculture sector.
