by Boubacar Macalou (ELP 2016) | Director, Center d’Etudes et de Renforcement des Capacites d’Analyse et de, Mali

1. Background and context:

The United Nations Convention for Climate Change (UNCCC) was adopted in 1992. A few years later, it was signed and ratified by the Malian National authorized institutions. The same measures were adopted for the related Kyoto Protocol.

After the ratification acts, a number of initiatives have been undertaken to implement both the UNCCC and the Kyoto Protocol. These initiatives included among others: National Parliament Acts as well as decrees and diverse types of Administrative Instructions from many ministries of the National Government. A lot of public policies were also adopted by the authorized authorities as the National Environmental Protection Policy, the National Wetlands Management Policy, among others.

Many projects and programs have been launched in line with the public policies implementation. Some of the operations covered the whole country whereas the others were limited to specific administrative or geographic zones.

Moreover, in 2015, almost 200 countries adopted the Paris Agreement on Climate to fight Climate change negative externalities. To reach this objective, many guidelines have been mentioned in the Agreement, including capacity building activities.

2. What I did and what I’m planning to carry out in the near future:

In 2013, the Think Tank I have been leading for 10+ years was asked to bridge capacity needs for many development stakeholders in the area of Environmental Management. As we cannot meet all of the needs, I decided to organize first a lecture on the theme of Climate Change Economics. Because of the numerous questions raised by the participants and as many needs were expressed, we decided to support two major activities which are as follows:

(i) The launch of a Master’s degree training program in the area of Climate Change Economics at The University of Social Science and Management, based in Bamako, Mali. The related study/research was completed with the support of Professor Ahmadou Aly MBAYE, the chair of a Ph.D. program in Climate Change Economics at the Cheikh Anta DIOP University of Dakar, Senegal and Former Dean of the Faculty of Economics and Management Science at the same University.

(ii) Early in March 2016, as I have successfully applied to the 2016 ELP course on the one hand, and because of my background on the other hand, I have been designated by my colleagues to lead the formulation of a National program to strengthen adaptation capacities to climate change for the main stakeholders in the most important economic development sectors.

In relation with this assignment, although I started writing the document before the 2016 course, it’s only after I have completed the three-week training program that I had the appropriate inputs to achieve it satisfactorily.

The whole 2016 ELP course has been helpful for me during the exciting exercise. I have selected inputs from both the presentations done by the brilliant teachers as well as from the splendid reading materials. Mostly, inputs came from the following themes of the course: (i) Environmental Policy, (ii) Project Management Leadership, and (iii) Collaborative Leadership.

The next step is the validation of the document by the Technical Committee, which is one of the governance bodies of the Think Tank. In order to network with the ELP Alumni, I will invite all of them to the validation meeting. Thus, a network on Sustainable Environmental Management will take place. The Network members, if needed, will assist in both the decision-making level and field level to bridge some capacity gaps.

Finally, since my Team is not supposed to attend the implementation, I’m planning to assist those who will be in charge of it on a voluntary basis. Once in this position, I will strongly suggest methods, tools and techniques from the scientific-based courses of the Beahrs ELP. For the involved communities, for example, the following themes will be privileged: (i) Agroecology; (ii) Diversified farming; (iii) Climate change; (iv) Conservation; (v) Forest Economics; and (vi) Sustainability. For the professional staff, most of the activities will be related to the following subjects: (i) Environmental Policy; (ii) Collaborative Leadership; (iii) Sustainability; (iv) Marketing; (v) Impact assessment; and (vi) Project Management Leadership.