With the technical and financial support from its partners including the European Union, French Development Agency, Adaptation Fund, Climate Green Fund, Swedish Cooperation and FAO, ECOWAS encourages partnership, synergies and sharing of experiences and knowledge resulting from various projects and programmes, with a view to further strengthen exchanges and cooperation among States, and foster robust national and regional public policies, taking climate and agroecological issues into account.

For this purpose, ECOWAS fifteen (15) Ministers for Environment, validated the ECOWAS Regional Climate Strategy on 29th April 2022. This Strategy is the result of a collaborative process of more than one year, implemented through the support Project for global alliance against climate change in West Africa (GCCA+WA), among regional institutions, ECOWAS Member States, technical and financial partners and civil society. This process was concluded after a two-day high-level workshop on April 26th and 27th in Accra, Ghana. Similarly, with climate change affecting all of us, the response imposes participation from all. The regional Climate Strategy is a catalyst of the action of all stakeholders.

By adopting this strategy, ECOWAS is committed to supporting its fifteen (15) Member States to make climate a priority for political action in the region, consistent with its Vision 2050. Impacts of climate change are transboundary and it is together that ECOWAS Member States will take up this challenge. This is also an opportunity for expressing the voice of the region internationally, while conveying messages of a united and interdependent region on climate negotiations.

Complementary actions from other ECOWAS projects such as the Support Project for agroecological transition in West Africa and the Project to promote climate-smart agriculture, also contribute to building a culture of resilience of the populations in order to address the climate challenge.