Nordic development fund eyes new climate project

Katia Moskvitch in SciDev.net: The Nordic Development Fund (NDF) that helps facilitate climate change investments in developing countries has started discussing several new project ideas with the World Bank — as the small fund celebrates its 25th anniversary.

One is an initiative to mitigate coastal erosion affecting West African cities, a problem that climate change is expected to worsen, says Sari Söderström Feyzioğlu, sustainable development manager at the World Bank.

The NDF, a joint development finance institution of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, helps the World Bank “add creative, cutting-edge climate change components to traditional lending and knowledge-generating projects”, she says. For example, the NDF will make it possible to “assess the robustness of future hydroelectric power investments in the face of climate change in the major [African] river basins,” says Feyzioğlu.

Another project under discussion is in Mozambique, she says, where the fund will support efforts to improve the governance of local, artisanal fisheries and transform fishing — a sector already facing habitat loss and degradation due to unsustai
nable use, and that climate change will further damage. The NDF was founded in 1989 to promote economic and social development by providing financing to developing countries. In May 2009, its aim became to provide financial support to developing countries on climate change issues.

It also works with partners such as the African Development Bank, the Asian Development Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB)....