Getting money to where it matters

Shaping a new institution for Liberia’s environmental projects

Tackling climate change is consequently a national priority. The Government of Liberia (GoL) wants to build the resilience of climate-sensitive sectors and livelihoods, integrating climate change planning into all its development pillars and building the government’s capacity for effective climate change governance. These ambitions are set out in the Pro-poor Agenda for Prosperity and Development (2018-2023), Liberia’s five-year National Development Plan for “all Liberians [to] have the opportunity to contribute to, participate in, and benefit from national development.”

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has engaged various international and national, governmental and non-governmental organizations as development partners to help protect the environment and use natural resources sustainably. Many of these partnerships are geared towards supporting climate adaptation and mitigation efforts. The key to making them work is getting money to where it matters most and can have the best impact.

Although Liberia has a legal, policy and institutional framework in place, and significant potential to utilise climate finance, Government of Liberia recognises that there is inadequate enforcement of the framework, exacerbated by the EPA's technical and legal capacity gaps. This is why the EPA sought out the Oxford Policy Fellowship (OPF) to help ramp up its institutional capacity to tackle climate change. In this Story of Change Njeri outlines how she used a legal perspective to strengthening the operations of EPA.