The Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI) and the Ministry of Planning and Development of Ethiopia (MoPD) in collaboration with the French Development Agency (AFD), under the Long-Term Low Emission Development Strategy (LT-LEDS) project, organized National Stakeholders Consultation and Modelling Training Workshop from June 21 – 25, 2022.
It is to be recalled that Ethiopia has signed the Paris agreement and is amongst the first Least Developed Countries that have submitted the ambitious nationally determined contributions (NDC) to mitigate climate change as well as to overcome its negative impacts. The Paris Agreement invites Parties to submit their Long-Term Low Emissions Development Strategy in order to achieve the ambitious commitment by all countries to limit the increase in global average temperature to well below 2°C and to pursue efforts to limit the increase to 1.5°C.
On 10th February 2021, GGGI signed a Memorandum of Understanding between (MoU) with the then Environment, Forest and Climate Change Commission (EFCCC) of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia and AFD for the Development of Ethiopia’s LT-LEDS. The specific objective of the proposed work is to support the Government of Ethiopia to develop the LT-LEDS and submit it to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The planned activities for the development of the LT-LEDS are financed by the AFD and implemented by GGGI. The LT-LEDS project was officially launched in May 2021.
The LT-LEDS project that is currently being implemented comprises seven sectoral working groups including macro-economy, agriculture, forestry, energy, waste, IPPU and adaptation. Each working group consists of government experts and sectoral experts from GGGI. The working groups have been working intensely to develop and finalize the business-as-usual (BAU) scenario such that the overall modelling framework is customized to the Ethiopian context the best way. As the next step, the macroeconomy team is currently working on finalizing the low emission development scenario of the LT-LEDS based on the analysis of the sectoral working groups. Establishing different working groups ensures that sectoral government experts contribute their knowledge and own the LT-LEDS that will be submitted to the UNFCCC by Ethiopia and implemented till 2050.
In light of the above, the national stakeholders’ consultation and modelling workshop was organized with the ultimate objective of conducting nationwide stakeholders’ consultation on the LT-LEDS project and gather any remaining inputs on the net-zero emission scenario for Ethiopia. The workshop also presented the modelling tools and methods used in developing the BAU and net-zero emission scenarios.
The national stakeholders’ workshop gathered close to 120 experts from regional line ministries and the federal Environmental Protection Authority (EPA), experts from the federal line ministries, GGGI’s global team of experts who joined virtually and in person, the 32 technical experts nominated by federal sector ministries as part of the working groups of the LT-LEDS process, academia, representatives from the MoPD and AFD as well expert from the World Resource Institute (WRI).
During the opening session of the workshop, H.E Dr. Getahun Garedew, Director General of EPA, noted that “We start this journey of preparing the LT-LEDS with the adamant belief that the strategy will pave the way for Ethiopia to bring together development and environmental objectives and avoid locking-in long-term consequences of policy decisions that would be more difficult to reverse in the future”. He acknowledged the contribution of Ethiopia’s key partners, the Government of France and AFD as well as GGGI for providing financial and technical supports. He concluded by expressing his gratitude to the representatives from line ministries, regional offices and important stakeholders who joined the workshop. Marjolaine Cour, AFD’s climate expert, made key note speech highlighting AFD’s commitment to fight against climate change through its financial and technical support to its partner countries. She also mentioned the importance of Ethiopia’s LT-LEDS strategy development as part of the Paris agreement’s invitation to countries to develop their Long-Term Low Emission Development strategy.
The workshop commenced with presentations on LT-LEDS for Ethiopia, starting with general subjects about why LT-LEDS matters, and an overview of the progress made so far. The presentations were followed by sessions on Ethiopia’s prospects for de-carbonization and climate-resilient development by 2050 creating a resilient economy and the relevance of climate change adaptation in LT-LEDS to create a resilient economy. Discussions took place after each session. The workshop then focused on sectoral policy interventions for low carbon development pathways in the energy, agriculture and industrial sectors. An analogous session followed focusing on forestry and waste sectors. In each of the sectoral presentations, the overall approached used, main documents reviewed, the BAU analysis as well as the mitigation actions identified and well explained. The macro economy-working group presented the results of the CBA conducted for the BAU as well as the low emissions scenarios of the LEDS across all the sectors.
Following the sectoral groups presentations and Q&A sessions, the wider stakeholders were classified in small groups to participate in breakout sessions according to their respective sectors, and the group discussions were guided by questions designed to gather inputs for the refinement of the low emissions scenarios. Sectoral Leads then presented on the breakout session results.
A three-day modeling training was delivered as part of the workshop from June 23 to June 25, 2022. GGGI experts delivered trainings on Macro-economy, IPPU, Waste and Adaptation modeling tools. Collaboration was made with the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) to conduct an in-person, highly interactive, second-phase training on Modelling long-term low emission pathways using the Low Emissions Analysis Platform (LEAP). In addition, collaboration was made with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) to deliver training on the NEXT modeling tool for Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use (AFOLU) sector experts. In total, 54 participants were benefited from the trainings. The participants included federal line ministry experts, the experts assigned by the government to collaborate on the LED, and relevant experts from the Ethiopian Women in Energy Network (EWiEN).
The workshop was successfully finalized, as the participants have agreed to validate the process of the development of the BAU and low-emissions scenario of the LT-LEDS under the condition that all the comments provided and agreed on will be addressed in the next revision of the document.