By Madiba Singhateh
The Director of Water Resources, Lamin Mai Touray, said The Gambia is already feeling the impact of climate change.
“The Gambia is already feeling the impact of Climate Change with direct adverse bearing on the socioeconomic fabric of the country,” he said.
He said an increase in the frequency of climate events in The Gambia is caused by land use, land cover change, sea level rise and coastal erosions.
He made this statement at a 10-day capacity building training on climate change adaptation scenario development for The Gambia, funded by the European Union.
Director Touray added: “There is a reasonable degree of uncertainty based on IPPC 2004 classification that indicates an increase in the frequency of climate events compounded by land use and land cover change, sea level rise and coastal erosions in the Gambia.”
He informed participants that Climate Change in the atmospheric oceanic circulation is expected to exacerbate variations in weather and climate patterns across the world.
He said, “Based on the second national communication of The Gambia, mean annual temperature has noticeably increased with average minimum monthly temperature increase by about 0.53°C per decade.”
Further speaking, he said, the central objective of the workshop was to build capacity at DWR and the national level for improvement climate change downscaling and adaptation and the lesson learned, the good practices, the knowledge transfer and identification of opportunities and challenges will be shared during and after GCCA+ Project implementation and can be replicated within the scope of other interventions.
Speaking at the ceremony, Abubacarr Kujabi, the Project Coordinator, said what is expected of them is to set the target in the management of natural resources by the consultant and stakeholders.
He finally stated that capacity development will have strong and durable impacts beyond the GCCA+ Project implementation phase.
According to the organisers, the main objective of the training is to build capacity for the staff and the Department of Water Resources and other implementing partners at the national level to improve Climate Change Scenarios to development and management tailored to best practices in adaptation strategy.
