By Adejumobi Adegbite
Ministers representing the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) have adopted the revised Environmental Action Plan (EAP) and associated Monitoring & Evaluation Plan (MEP) of the ECOWAS Directorate of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), which were submitted for adoption during a three-day Experts and Ministers Meeting at the Ouagadougou International Conference Center in Burkina Faso Feb.5–7, 2020.
In 2017 and 2018, USAID’s West Africa Biodiversity and Climate Change (WA BiCC) Program provided both technical and financial support to the ECOWAS Directorate of Environment, which facilitated the review of the EAP and development of the MEP to track/measure implementation of the EAP.
As part of its continuous institutional capacity-building support to ECOWAS DENR, WA BiCC, in May 2018, provided further support for the Technical Valuation of the EAP by environment experts from all 15 ECOWAS member states in a workshop organized in Abuja, Nigeria.
The Director of ECOWAS Environment and Natural Resources Directorate, Dr. Johnson Boanuh, and WA BiCC’s Technical Advisor to the ECOWAS Environment Directorate, Kwame Awere-Gyekye, joined other experts from West Africa at this year’s Experts and Ministers Meeting in Ouagadougou to review the expert validation report of May 2018 and also recommend it for ministers’ validation and adoption.
Awere-Gyekye noted that WA BiCC’s support to revise the EAP and develop a monitoring and evaluation plan will go a long way to assist the Directorate in attaining the strategic objectives of ECOWAS’ Environmental Policy and setting up an effective monitoring and evaluation system.
In addition to the EAP and MEP, the ECOWAS Roadmap on Fuel Economy and the Regional Coordination Mechanism for the Management of Chemicals and Hazardous Waste were also reviewed and presented by the ECOWAS Directorate of Environment.
In his opening remarks, Burkina Faso’s Minister of Energy, Dr. Bachir Ismael Ouedraogo, said, “Fuel specification considerably differs in our region. The legal limits of sulfur rate adopted contributes to the degradation of air quality, especially in urban areas and preservation of the natural environment. There is, therefore, an urgent need for our countries to avoid becoming dumping grounds for old vehicles and sub-standard fuels.”
In his welcome address, the Minister of Environment, Green Economy and Climate Change, Hon. Batio Bassière, expressed his happiness over the choice of his country to host the meeting and thanked the ECOWAS Commission for the initiative.
He noted that the strategic documents submitted for analysis shows the willingness of heads of state to ensure better environmental governance through WA BiCC’s supported monitoring and evaluation tools.