On April 25th opened the first Annual Conference on Ethiopia’s Green Development Path. The aim of the annual conference is to create an effective forum for policy makers, researchers, and practitioners to discuss the latest knowledge on the challenges and opportunities of realizing Ethiopia’s climate resilient and green development agenda.
This year’s conference theme is “Enhancing the Green development agenda in Ethiopia” and has brought together policy makers, researchers, practitioners and different stakeholder. The conference was opened with welcoming remarks from H.E. Mr. Mekonnen Manayazewal, Executive Director, EDRI and with an opening remarks from H.E. Dr. Gemedo Dalle, Minister of Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MEFCC).
The morning session contained a Research Keynote speech by Prof. Thomas Sterner, university of Gothenburg and former chief Economist of EfD. It was followed by a high level panel discussion on “Achieving the CRGE Vision: Opportunities and Challenges” by panelists from different expertise and institutions. The panelists were:
- H.E. Dr. Gemedo Dalle, Minister of MEFCC
- Dr. Mulugeta Mengist, Director of Climate Change Affairs, Office of the Prime Minister
- H.E. Ambassador Andreas Gaarder, Norway Embassy
- Dr. Mike Toman, Lead Economist, World Bank
Lack of coordination, finance and knowledge are among the most mentioned challenges of the CRGE implementation. Dr. Mulugeta Mengist, Director of the Climate Change Affairs from the prime minister office, emphasized more on the challenge in knowledge and learning. Furthermore, He stressed that there should be a national initiative to build the national learning capacity and suggested research institutions like ECRC/EDRI should serve as a bridge to share knowledge with policy makers.The afternoon session continued with a discussion on ECRC/EDRI’s flagship collaborative project on Carbon Pricing.
The second day of the conference started with presentations of research on the Climate Resilient Green Economy (CRGE). Researchers from different institutions presented their work on sustainable land management to climate variability, strategic integration of dryland eco-regions and institutional framework analysis for Environmental Impact Assessment. The presentations were then followed by a panel discussion on the direction of research on the CRGE. The panelists include:
H.E. Mekonnen Manyazewal, Executive Director of EDRI
Dr. Wubalem Taddesse, General Director of Ethiopian Environment and Forest Research Institute.
Dr. Gete Zeleke, Director of Water and Land Resource Center Director
Dr. Gunnar Kholin, EfD Director
The panelists elaborated on the challenges of, involvement of stake holders, research funding and knowledge management & implementation issues. The discussion focused on what the key challenges are to do research in the CRGE.
The conference ended with Dr. Haileselassie’s presentation on the Ethiopian Country Environmental Analysis (CEA) report, which is a collaborative project between ECRC/EDRI and the World Bank.
The event was organized by The Environment and Climate Research Center (ECRC) in partnership with Ethiopian Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate change (MEFCC) and the World Bank.