Guinea

National Focal Point

• Ministère de l’Environnement, des Eaux et Forêts (Ministry of Environment, Water and Forests)
• Direction Nationale Meteorologie (National Direction Meteorology)

National Strategic Documents and Timeframe

• NDC: 2016 – 2030
• National Adaptation Plan of Action (2007)

National Institutional Arrangements

Guinea’s NDC provides that the National Environment Department of the Ministry of Environment, Water and Forestry (MEEF) is responsible for co-ordinating the implementation of government policy on combating climate change.

The National consultative platform on policy to combat climate change (PNC-COP21) is tasked with monitoring and evaluating NDC implementation, as a consultative body. In addition, there is recognition of the need to appoint climate correspondents within each ministry and provide regular training concerning the integration of climate issues.

The NDC also provides that Guinea will create a steering committee within the national Council for the Environment and Sustainable Development, comprising experts from research institutes, the National Environment Department, Water and Forestry Department, Impact Studies Department and climate correspondents, to monitor and evaluate public policy on combating climate change.

Priorities and Needs

The NDC identifies the following vulnerable sectors crop and livestock farming; water; and the coastal and forest zone.  It also recognises the groups most vulnerable to climate change in different regions of the country, including in particular poor communities in rural areas such as farmers and small producers and people whose livelihood mainly depends on the use of natural resources (hunters, fishermen, salt producers, etc.).

Guinea’s NDC describes that, with its present favourable climate for agriculture, Guinea is both exposed and sensitive to climate change and has very little capacity to adapt.

Current and Planned Adaptation Efforts

Guinea’s NDC sets out the following commitments, and priority actions for each, in order to deal with the local consequences of climate change:

Preserve the quality and quantity of water resources:

• Preserve and restore the riparian forests at the spring heads and along the banks, in particular on cross-border watercourses
• Ensure the preservation of the banks and beds of national and transnational watercourses
• Seek alternatives to uses and offtake that are detrimental to water quality (brickmaking, dredging of riverbeds to obtain minerals, etc.)
• Ensure that the climate change dimension is taken on board in the institutional and legal frameworks and by the organizations responsible for managing and developing cross-border catchment areas
• Set up a system of hydro-ecological monitoring of international rivers

Put in place the measures needed to protect, conserve and manage ecosystems, revive economic activities and boost the resilience of communities in coastal zones

• Update the Mangrove Management and Development Plan (SDAM)
• Reduce the sources of mangrove degradation
• Include adaptation in local development plans and spatial planning tools
• Enhance scientific knowledge of the coast as a whole
• Develop rice production by improving yields through use of varieties better able to cope with the impact of climate change (particularly ingress of salt water)
• Extend the pilot initiatives already launched, especially the Increased Resilience and Adaptation to Adverse Impacts of Climate Change in Guinea’s Vulnerable Coastal Zones (RAZC) project, to all the municipalities on the coast

Support the adaptation efforts of rural communities to develop agro-sylvo-pastoral techniques

• Diversification of agricultural production
• Development of agro-ecological fish-farming techniques
• Low-input varieties and cropping techniques suited to a drier climate
• Controlled irrigation
• Inclusion of the climate change dimension in budgeting and development plans, programmes and projects
• Development of hydro-agricultural schemes
• Development of techniques to conserve and process agricultural, forestry and fish-farming products
• Better management of pastoralism, especially transnational pastoralism, so as to limit degradation of grazing and soil and reduce the risks of usage conflicts

Requirements for Additional Planning, Financial and Technical Capacities

The Republic of Guinea’s NDC sets out the gaps, barriers and needs in terms of its adaptation commitments. These include the cost of adaptation; funding needs for adaptation are estimated at between US$670 million and US$1.7 billion.

More generally, the NDC has a section on means of implementation which provides that to implement the NDC (both mitigation and adaptation contributions), the Republic of Guinea will employ: national budget, regional integration, international donors, carbon markets, and private funding.

Monitoring and Evaluation

The NDC sets out that there is a National consultative platform on policy to combat climate change (PNC-COP21) tasked with monitoring and evaluating its implementation, as a consultative body.