EBAFOSA is the first every inclusive pan-African framework and platform, an institution with protocols – a constitution and rules of procedure adopted in an inclusive continental process guiding its actions.
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February 21, 2025
Strengthening Climate Resilience in Benin: EBAFOSA’s Role in Ecosystem-Based Adaptation Standards
Bohicon, Benin – February 17-21, 2025
At the heart of Benin’s ongoing efforts to enhance climate resilience, a pivotal workshop took place at Princess Hotel in Bohicon. Organized under the Projet d’Adaptation Basée sur les Écosystèmes (PABE), this event focused on validating preliminary draft standards for key agricultural value chains—including néré, sorghum, cashew, soybean, and their derivatives—through the lens of Ecosystem-Based Adaptation (EbA).
A critical aspect of this effort is ensuring that these standards align with EBAFOSA’s Compliance Guidelines, which champion sustainable, climate-resilient agricultural practices. However, initial gaps in coordination between the Benin Bureau of Standards (ANM) and EBAFOSA risked limiting the potential of these guidelines in shaping national resilience policies.
EBAFOSA’s Intervention: Aligning Standards with Climate-Resilient Development
EBAFOSA’s representative at the workshop, Houngbo Emile, played a crucial role in bridging this gap by engaging stakeholders and ensuring that the ANM’s draft standards integrate EBAFOSA’s Compliance Guidelines. His efforts helped clarify EBAFOSA’s mission and ensure that the standards align with climate-smart agriculture principles.
EBAFOSA’s approach ensures that national standards promote eco-friendly agricultural value chains that are:
Sustainable: Leveraging nature-based solutions to enhance productivity. Inclusive: Empowering local communities and smallholder farmers. Resilient: Reducing climate vulnerabilities and enhancing food security.Moving Forward: Strengthening Institutional Collaboration
To maximize impact, closer collaboration between PABE, ANM, and EBAFOSA is essential. By aligning policies and compliance frameworks, Benin can accelerate the implementation of climate-resilient agriculture and drive sustainable economic growth.
Next Steps:
Strengthen engagement between EBAFOSA and national policymakers. Support the refinement of Benin’s ecosystem-based adaptation standards. Scale up awareness on compliance with EbA-based guidelines for agribusinesses and cooperatives.EBAFOSA remains committed to supporting Benin and other African nations in leveraging ecosystem-based adaptation for sustainable development.
Policy Level: at policy level, EBAFOSA is supporting countries establish inter-ministerial policy task forces. Example of policy impacts;
Why EBAFOSA: achieving the UN Environment aim of scaling climate actions that enhance socioeconomic wellbeing needs stakeholders from diverse sectors – government, private sector, development partners, individual citizens – working towards the same end-goal. And to achieve this, a common and inclusive framework is needed to convene all these actors for partnerships. So EBAFOSA stands at the crossroad of multiple global change challenges - land degradation, desertification and recurrent drought and Climate Change that are the root causes of food insecurity in Africa.
Benin: the inter-agency policy task force has been constituted with 20 ministerial level focal persons drawn from key ministries of agriculture, energy, environment, planning among others needed to establish EBA based, clean energy powered agro-industrial zones. Operational level actors also included to inform policy processes and enhance implementation - 23 EBAFOSA Benin Regional representatives, and 24 members of the Specialized Committees.
Reshaping Africa’s food security and climate resilience through leveraging Ecosystem based Adaptation Assembly Policy Framework
Offshoots from EBAFOSA Benin National Branch Launch