BY PHUMELELE MKHONTA
MBABANE– Congratulations are pouring in for the Government of Eswatini’s win at the NDC Investment Awards at #COP27.
NDC is the acrimony for Nationally Determined Contribution.
One of the people that have commended Eswatini for a job well done is Commonwealth Secretary General Patricia Scotland, who took her congratulatory words to her official Twitter page today.
On her post, Scotland said she was pleased to welcome Minister of Tourism and Environmental Affairs of Eswatini Moses Vilakati.
“I extended my congratulations to the minister for the excellent work of Eswatini and receiving the Africa NDC Investment Award from Africa Investor.
“In our meeting, the minister and I discussed the success of the Commonwealth CFAH (Climate Finance Access Hub) adviser accessing Climate Finance for Eswatini projects, digital trade and connectivity, investing in smart cities, the Living Lands and also Commonwealth support in future,” said the Commonwealth SG.
Worth noting is that Eswatini is one of the 56 countries under the Commonwealth of Nations.
According to Wikipedia, Patricia Janet Scotland, Baroness Scotland of Asthal, born 19 August 1955, is a British diplomat, barrister and politician, serving as the sixth secretary-general of the Commonwealth of Nations. She was elected at the 2015 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting and took office on April 1, 2016. She is the first woman to hold the post.
She was elevated to the House of Lords in 1997 and, as a British Labour Party politician, served in ministerial positions within the United Kingdom Government, most notably as the Attorney General for England and Wales and Advocate General for Northern Ireland. She is a dual citizen of the United Kingdom and Dominica, where she was born.
Yesterday, we published that the Government of Eswatini was awarded ‘Best Urban Development NDC Investment Award Initiative’ today.
Eswatini was one of the 10 winning countries under 10 different categories.
The awards were presented at #COP27 in Egypt which have been from November 7, 2022 and will be on-going until November 18, 2022.
The award was received by Minister of Tourism and Environmental Affairs Moses Vilakati and Eswatini delegates.
In an interview with this reporter, NDC Coordinator Dr Deepa Pullanikkatil said this was an exciting win for Eswatini.
“The Strengthening Urban Resilience in Eswatini (SURE) project is part of Eswatini’s Green Climate Fund Country Strategy and is a project led by National Disaster Management Agency and addresses the disasters on infrastructure including that of flooding which have been experienced in our cities recently.
“The award is a global recognition and will bring with it support to develop the sure proposal further and mobilise finance which is much needed to address our climate vulnerabilities,” said Pullanikkatil.
The NDC Investment Awards are the only international, pan-African awards that recognise and reward both public and private sector institutions who are working to innovate and break new ground to mobilize investment and private sector participation at scale, in NDC Paris aligned climate investment commitments and projects.
World governments and global development finance institutions recognise that there is no single Net Zero pathway that can be followed to address the SDGs and Paris Agreement infrastructure and energy multi-trillion Dollar financing gap for bankable green transition Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) and Net Zero infrastructure projects.
The only way would be to exponentially increase the scale and speed of global institutional investor allocations that can be rapidly deployed and perform at both project and asset levels in emerging markets and developing countries.
