The UN Capital Development Fund, through its LoCAL Climate Adaptive Living Facility, this month launched the first in a series of capacity building exercises for local government officers in Ghana focusing on circular economy and climate smart agriculture approaches. The activities are deployed as part of the LoCAL-ACE project, which seeks to Advance Circular Economies and climate smart agricultural approaches and is funded by Norway.

Circular economy (CE) and climate smart agriculture (CSA), as development pathways, are important concepts that have promise for ensuring sustainable socio-economic development under climatic change conditions. Municipalities and Districts through the planning processes, have an opportunity to mainstream CE and CSA into their development processes. Knowledge is therefore needed, to enhance their capacity to be able to promote, implement, monitor and evaluate CE and CSA.

The training saught to address knowledge gaps uncovered during a Needs Assessment conducted on CE and CSA principles in local development planning in November 2023, which highlighted that capacity building of Municipal and District Assemblies in these areas has the potential to promote climate resilience.

“In Ghana, the Municipal and District Assembly Staff are the closest government representatives interacting with communities on a day-to-day basis,” said Angela Yayra Kwashie, UNCDF Technical Specialist in Ghana.

“With a sound grasp of circular economy approaches and the value of climate smart agriculture, they have the potential to apply this knowledge in local level decision-making and planning – which is good for communities, local governments and ultimately for meeting Ghana’s objectives on adapting to the impacts of climate change.”

On 5th December, UNCDF facilitated a one-day workshop, to build the knowledge and technical capacities of 18 key staff of the initial three LoCAL-ACE District Assemblies (Effutu Municipal, Fanteakwa North and Ada East Districts) in fulfilling their mandates in respect of the CE and CSA, as part of the implementation of their respective District Medium-Term Development Plans (DMTDPs) and Annual Action Plans (AAPs). Circular economy principles prioritise recycling and reuse of resources with the goal of a zero-waste approach to resources. Climate smart agriculture prioritises sustainable food production that also boosts resilience to climate change.

The trained local government representatives will now be able to effectively mainstream CE and CSA principles into the planning and budgeting systems towards the selection and implementation of their initiatives to be implemented through Performance Based Climate Resilience Grants of the LoCAL mechanism.

The technical assistance facility deployed under the Norway funded LoCAL programme in Ghana, also provided pertinent tools and developed guidelines and toolkits pertaining CE and CSA, for the effective delivery of services and project implementation in the target Districts. These should promote climate resilience whilst applying CE and CSA principles and solutions, using the LoCAL approach, under the oversight of District Assemblies.

Further trainings are planned in 2024 as achieving a successful adoption and scaling up of CE and CSA principles and solutions at the local government level requires consistent investment in capacity development.

“This is just a beginning,” said Ms Yayra Kwashie. “We will continue to assess results and deliver and shape our trainings accordingly to ensure that Municipal and District Assembly Staff have the skills they need to work with communities for sustainable climate resilience at the local level.”

Find out more about LoCAL here

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