€6.5m German grant awarded to Jordan's environmental sector

The German Organization for Technical Cooperation provided a 6.5 million Euro grant to Jordan to address the issues of solid waste management, climate change, and the protection of local ecosystems under several agreements, which were signed on the sidelines of the Eco-Cities forum.
The deals were signed on Monday by Minister of Environment Taher Shakhshir and Barbara Schweiger, the head of the GIZ Environmental Programme in Jordan, to promote bilateral technical cooperation in the Kingdom’s environmental sector.
The first agreement will address the challenges posed by the increasing pressure on solid waste collection and management in certain governorates affected by the high influx of Syrian refugees.
The German Agency and Ministry of Environment will join forces with the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and the municipalities of Irbid, Mafraq and Karak to improve solid waste collection systems by training their staff in the maintenance and repair of the motor pools and in organizational advisory systems.
The municipalities supported by this project face challenges in guaranteeing an efficient and effective management system for their vehicles. Through the project, experts will train technicians on the job using fully equipped mobile repair trucks. Further, a monitoring system will be developed for the maintenance of the fleet.
For the first time in Jordan, a project to address the theme of ecosystem services will be implemented through the support of the German Organization on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).
The main strategic objective of the project is that biodiversity and ecosystem services are increasingly taken into account in national policy decisions, specifically with regard to their significance for adapting to climate change. The Ministry of Environment will be strengthened in its development of a National Biodiversity Policy with guidelines for the evaluation of ecosystem services, which will be presented to Parliament for approval.
Due to the increasing challenges posed by climate change at the national and global levels, the Technical Organization will provide support for the Ministry of Environment in implementing two projects related to climate change policies and the international negotiations process.
The first project, commissioned by the BMZ, will support the environment ministry in enhancing its capacity to implement the National Climate Change Policy that was endorsed in 2013. The Policy, the first of its kind in the region, will act as a platform for all national stakeholders to coordinate their activities and mobilize resources for tackling the challenge of climate change and help them reduce the Kingdom’s increasing greenhouse gas emissions.
The second project aims to develop the intended nationally determined contributions toward climate change, which will be presented by Jordan at the Conference of the Parties on Climate Change, to be held in Paris in 2015, as it seeks to launch a new global agreement on climate change.