On 20 February 2015, the Minister of Environmental Affairs, Honourable Edna Molewa, officially launched South Africa’s two NIE Climate Change Adaptation projects at a Ministerial Breakfast function at SANBI in Pretoria.
The projects which were approved by the Adaptation Fund in October 2014 and will see SANBI, which has been accredited as South Africa’s National Implementing Entity to the Adaptation Fund, administering a total budget of about R109 m (US$ 10m) over the next 5 years.
The uMngeni Resilience Project will be implemented in the uMgungundlovu District Municipality (uMDM) in KwaZulu-Natal, and the Small Grants Project will be implemented in the Mopani and Namakwa Districts in the Limpopo and Northern Cape Provinces respectively. These projects aim to create awareness, strengthen and assist rural communities to cope with extreme weather events occurring more often and severely due to climate change.
The establishment of the NIE and the project development processes has brought together a collaboration of various government, academic and civil society stakeholders. Present at the launch event were delegates from the SANBI Board, Department of Environmental Affairs (DEA), uMgungundlovu District Municipality (uMDM), Mopani District Municipality, Namakwa District Municipality, the Built Environment Support Group (BESG), SouthSouthNorth and WESSA.