The Nile Basin Initiative recently conducted a 4-day training on Climate Services for Infrastructure Investments (CSI) at the Lake Victoria Hotel in Entebbe. The training workshop, which took place from May 9-12, 2022, aimed to achieve several objectives including to build a core group of NBI-affiliated practitioners in hydraulic infrastructure design who will champion the climate proofing/risk assessment methods developed by NBI; to promote NBI’s role as a climate service provider and exercise its functionalities, such as access to data, guidance, learning offers and registration for the newly established Community of Practice; to strengthen the capacity of the NBI countries to respond to and adapt to climate change challenges by using climate services in planning and climate risk assessment of infrastructure investment. The training workshop also aimed to conduct an intensive training in the climate proofing methodologies developed by NBI; collect feedback, from the experts on the NBI climate services products that are part of the training to support their finalization and improvement; and facilitate networking and exchange of their climate proofing stakeholders with a view to building a core community of practice around for the use of NBI’s climate services and climate proofing approaches that can be used in preparing bankable climate resilient infrastructure projects. NBI has significantly improved its capacity on providing climate services to advance the preparation of bankable climate resilient infrastructure projects as often required by many donors, such as Multilateral Development Banks. Thereby, NBI sets the standard to mainstream climate considerations into the project development cycle and thereby aligns with its relevant policy frameworks, such as environmental and social safeguards. NBI has been constantly developing its portfolio of climate services such as improved provision and access to climate data and products, easy access to human capacity building (e-learning), interactive climate proofing guidance for practitioners, as well as laying the foundation for the constitution of a Community of Practice, operationalized through NBI’s Integrated Knowledge Portal (IKP). Beneficiaries of these climate services include NBI’s Member States and their designated authorities as well as investment projects that are pipelined through NBI’s investment programmes, such as the Nile Equatorial Lakes Subsidiary Action Programme’s investment project and Eastern Nile Technical Regional Office. With the additional financing under GIZ, NBI intends to make use of the Secretariat’s latest climate service to strengthen the capacity of the Member States to respond to and adapt to climate change challenges by using climate services in planning and climate risk assessment of infrastructure investment. In this phase of the capacity building, it wishes to put the emphasis on climate risk assessment of the Nile Equatorial Lakes Investment Programme (NELIP) Multipurpose Projects infrastructure that will be constructed for hydropower and irrigation schemes development in the NBI region. Dr Modathir Zaroug,
Regional Water Resources Modeller
Nile-SEC, ENTEBBE